Part 3: A Dream Contested
On several visits to Georgia over the past three years, I have attempted to interview members of the Georgian Dream (GD), but have found little willingness to meet with an American who has worked as both a journalist and an academic.
Letter from Kyiv
Late autumn used to be the season for revolutions in Kyiv. Since last year, this has changed, and in July 2025 there was the first mass protest since martial law was instituted in 2022. It was dubbed “the cardboard Maidan,” though it was not on the Maidan, not on Kyiv’s Independence Square exactly, but on a square not far from.
Part 2: “Foreign Agents”
Georgia’s politicians may be used to politics as a blood sport, but leaders and members of non-governmental organizations inhabit a different world. Many of them are volunteers and are paid little or nothing. And yet, despite mass arrests, police violence, and a series of laws restricting freedom of expression and assembly, civil society continues to function in Georgia.
Part 1: Georgia’s Fading “Dream”
Arriving in Tbilisi in early March, I was looking forward to meeting friends and colleagues and to interviewing a number of Georgians. They could help me understand what I knew from several previous trips to Georgia was a rapidly deteriorating political situation. I had a long list of politicians, academics, journalists, and civil society advocates to speak with.
Getting About in Wartime
It is hard to stay put during a war for several reasons. In wartime, even people with limited mobility, if they want to survive, are forced to become "mobile.”
Letter from Kyiv
Wartime Kyiv is sometimes criticized for its hedonism… That’s what keeps the country sane… the modest trappings of civilization. We need our flag, and we need a disco-ball. Without either one, the hardships of the last years would make no sense.
Letter from Kyiv
In Kyiv, an invisible competition for the country’s future shape is percolating. More a tectonic than a political competition, it is proceeding slowly and at times painfully.
Dark Winter
For the past few days, Kyiv has been wrapped in a thick coat of ice. From tree branches to electrical cables, everything glistens in a frozen stillness. The streets and sidewalks have turned into a giant open-air ice-skating rink, causing joy for some and worried, unsure steps for clumsy people like me. Where there is enough snow, children use any support they can find – from trash bags to old-style wooden sleds – to race down the city’s many hills.
The Arts of War
So many in the world of foreign affairs and military expertise miscalculated how the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine would play out. Once again, as has happened so many times throughout history, a smaller but spunky nation has held off far more powerful marauders.
Student Life in Ukraine
By 2022, the war had been going on for half of my life, sometimes in the background; but this time it would be constant. The invasion brought the war louder and closer. It entered every Ukrainian home and life, including mine.