Thank you for taking the time to talk to us! Tell us about yourself. Where are you from, and what do you do?
Hi, my name is Kostia, and I am a co-founder of the Zaporizhzhia-based micro-media Yaktytam. Together with three of my colleagues, we opened a micro-media in April 2022, two months after the start of the full-scale invasion. We decided to tell the citizens of Zaporizhzhia, those who are far away, those nearby, those who have left, those who are still there, those who are in the temporarily occupied territories, about how the city lives. We decided to finally raise the issues that had been bothering us for a long time, but which remained in the kitchen or bar. We decided to discuss it not only in our small company, but also with all the people of Zaporizhzhia.
What values and principles are embedded in its core?
Our main value is love and respect for our hometown. Zaporizhzhia has never been among the top Ukrainian cities, and for a long time in the 2000s and 2010s, the question of whether to leave the city after school was not even raised, the answer was always yes. Finally, a few years before the full-scale war, this began to change. Zaporizhzhia was getting better. Gradually, we were moving towards the formation of civil society. Now, especially during the war, when many people are leaving again, it is very important for us to make them understand that Zaporizhzhia is holding on, it is unbreakable, and it will welcome back all those citizens, who left, together with those who stayed. After the war is over, we will rebuild the city. In fact, we are already doing it now, telling people’s stories, telling how the reconstruction is going on in Zaporizhzhia. Perhaps, love and respect for the city is our core value.
What challenges is your media facing?
Perhaps one of our biggest challenges is that many people in Ukraine do not know how Zaporizhzhia is living. Some of them think that Zaporizhzhia is occupied. We very often hear from people in western regions of Ukraine that Zaporizhzhia has allegedly been occupied already. If it is not captured, then it is eagerly awaiting russian soldiers. None of this is true. Our main challenge is to break down these stereotypes about Zaporizhzhia that russian propaganda has been growing not for years, but for several decades. We need to work on them now, and finally, to refute them, to show that Zaporizhzhia is an unbreakable cossack city that did not wait for the occupiers and is not waiting for them now, but is doing everything to end this war as soon as possible.
You have a whole series of podcasts on Instagram. What is their purpose? And how did this idea come about?
Even before the full-scale invasion, my colleagues and I thought that Zaporizhzhia really needed a psychotherapist. We wanted Zaporizhzhia to come, lie down on the couch and talk about all the pain that our citizens have. That’s why we created this psychotherapeutic podcast. First of all, it is a place for us to discuss our own pains.
Who is considered a Zaporizhzhian? What about those who left or came to Zaporizhzhia and love it? Can they be considered true Zaporizhzhians? What if your ancestors came from russia at one time to «raise up» this region? Can you consider yourself a Zaporizhzhian and a Ukrainian? What about our stereotypical symbols of Zaporizhzhia – the Sich, the Cossacks, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, the main avenue? Do we need to come up with new symbols? And we discussed all these things, sometimes inviting interesting people.
Actually, the purpose of our podcast was to get Zaporizhzhia through these psychotherapy sessions. It seems that we succeeded. Eventually, listeners started writing that our podcasts give the feeling of a heart-to-heart conversation about something so close to home over a cup of tea, coffee or even wine, regardless of where people are at the time of listening. Then we realized that we want to continue this.
I want to go back in time a bit to February 24th. What was your day like? Did you plan to move to a safer area?
I’ve been staying in Zaporizhzhia since the first day of the full-scale invasion, not leaving for a long time. It was very scary, there was some misunderstanding of what would happen next. I am very glad that I went to volunteer at the headquarters that was helping the military. I spent the first three months of the full-scale invasion there, just running around different offices and putting together packages for the military. It was food, household chemicals, clothes or ammunition. Then my friends invited me to lunch, where it was decided that we wanted to create a micro-media.
We launched on April 24th. We worked for free, not getting anything for it, because we were a new media. Likewise, we produced two posts a day, quickly gained an audience from all over Ukraine. Then we decided to change the focus to Zaporizhzhia. We thought many people would unsubscribe when they stopped reading news or texts about all of Ukraine. But no, people did not unsubscribe, and now we are just keeping these people from all over Ukraine on Zaporizhzhia topics – it’s very cool.
Recently, I read a discussion about painting the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian People in Kyiv in rainbow colors to show support for the LGBTQ+ community. What are your thoughts on this?
I really resonate with the view of the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, who says that all Soviet contexts should be removed from this arch and given a completely different meaning. No matter what they did to the arch before, even the crack that was there, it still does not remove the Soviet context. The rainbow completely changes the whole monument, so in general I support this idea. I think it’s interesting. How realistic it is, how successful it will be, and what else is needed for this, besides the proposal, is a matter of debate. But I really like the idea.
You are the host of the «Gay News» show from Gender Zed. Can you tell us more about this project? What is its goal?
It all started as a joke. My colleagues and I decided to make a TikTok video where we wanted to combine the concept of standard television news familiar to an older audience, with some kind of fan or news related to the LGBTQ+ community. We made a pilot episode as a joke, and didn’t think we would continue it, but we got a lot of reactions from the audience that it was cool, and they wanted it to continue. So we started doing it further, and soon moved away from the crazy lighting and terrible sound. Gradually we grew, as a result we now have two professional cameras that film this content weekly, and a person who edits it separately. Last week we got an amazing visual design done. Now it’s just like full-fledged news.
The goal of the project is to not let anything related to LGBTQ+ people get lost in the news feeds, where there is just EVERYTHING now. Because we live in a super informational world. The goal was to make something that could gather all this news, like a news aggregator, but only related to the LGBTQ+ community. So that people could find out everything interesting that happened in the LGBTQ+ world over the past week in five minutes.
In your opinion, are there positive changes in attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community? And what should be worked on more?
People’s attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community have changed, because people are always afraid and hate what they know nothing about. When more people became visible, when they started coming out, especially LGBTQ+ military. People started to understand that LGBTQ+ people are just people like others. They don’t differ in anything except their sexual orientation or gender identity. But this needs to be enhanced, because there will soon be many challenges for Ukraine in general and for the LGBTQ+ community in particular. How much longer will the fighting last, how much longer will there be war, what will happen after victory? All of this are incredible challenges for society and the LGBTQ+ community. So work needs to be done on this, it cannot be forgotten.
I agree with you! You said so many warm things about Zaporizhzhia. What is the city of your dreams?
I don’t dream about something incredible, I just want my city to be rebuilt. For us to heal all those scars that the russians left on us during this war, and which, unfortunately, will continue to do so. I want people to come back to our city and continue to make it the best city in Ukraine, because for me, it is. It is the best and the closest city to me.
Translator: Yuliia Koleha
