Ukraine Dispatch 2: One Great Night in Kyiv

Welcome to my Ukraine Dispatches, updates from my latest visit to Ukraine. This is my second dispatch. My first one, which covered Ukrainian military training as well as a certain incident with a snake, is available to read at this link.

Last night, I was privileged to catch up with my friends Yuri Sak and Gennadiy Kurochka in Kyiv. Yuri and Gennadiy are strategic communications experts and have worked extraordinarily hard since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion in February 2022 to ensure Ukraine’s strategic messaging penetrates into European, American and Asian audiences. This has been crucial to sustaining international support and assistance for Ukraine over the course of the war.

Yuri and Gennadiy have also become good friends of mine over the last few years. Whenever we are in the same part of the world - Australia or Ukraine - we ensure we catch up. So it was wonderful to see them last night.

They had a surprise for me. It was a big one.

Before having dinner, they took me to the site of their latest project in Kyiv. It was a massive mural on the side of the factory that had been hit multiple times by Russian missiles and drones. The yellow, aging factory, and an adjacent office building, had been hit so many times by the Russians that it is unlikely that they will be rebuilt until after the war. Several floors had collapsed entirely and the building was open to the elements.

It provided a suitable, if somber site for the mural.

And the mural is huge. It is nearly six stories tall and dozens of metres long. It celebrates Ukraine’s ongoing struggle to defend its freedom against the brutal Russian invasion.

The mural has some interesting features.

The central part of the design features David and a beheaded Goliath. No prizes for guessing that David is Ukraine and the now headless Goliath is Russia. Interestingly, if you look close to Goliath’s head, you can see spiderwebs. This was a deliberate inclusion to celebrate the June 2025 Operation Spiderweb that was executed by Ukraine to successfully attack Russian airbases.

The mural also acknowledges the support of Western nations and their provision of weapons and munitions. The right side