At the 1:24 point of this video, you will clear­ly see a fight­er with an SS Gali­cia patch on his back. This is the UK Sun and it is a piece about a priest hon­or­ing the dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5yZnxS2zc

Also, the Peace Corp advi­so­ry below caused a decent stir on Black areas of Twit­ter. Has­n’t real­ly made a main­stream media buzz, unsur­pris­ing­ly. Peo­ple are spread­ing a decent arti­cle from Yahoo news about it on var­i­ous forums, how­ev­er, the orig­i­nal source is the Atlanta Black Star, which is just an insane source and I did­n’t know that Yahoo news even car­ried their stuff. So I decid­ed to hunt it down with­out rely­ing on the Black Star. In the end, they got it right, but they should not be sourced any­way.

Here is a tweet from a Black guy who spread the word.

https://twitter.com/tamisawyer/status/1508540653847801856

Here is the actu­al advi­so­ry. Wow, turns out lots of Ukraini­ans don’t like Black peo­ple! What a shock. Even when they are Peace Corps advi­sors there to help their cause. And guess what? They aren’t too big on the LGBT either. But you won’t hear that from Rachel Mad­dow, Steven Col­bert, Ander­son Coop­er, or the rest.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/ukraine/preparing-to-volunteer/diversity-and-inclusion/

Pos­si­ble Con­sid­er­a­tions for African Amer­i­can or Black Vol­un­teers

Vol­un­teer Voic­es: “‘Peo­ple of col­or’ face many chal­lenges liv­ing in Ukraine, as a Peace Corps Vol­un­teer. How­ev­er, African-Amer­i­cans will con­front far more com­pli­cat­ed issues. For mod­ern parts of Ukraine, African-Amer­i­cans are part of the com­mu­ni­ty and day-to-day life. How­ev­er, there are many Ukraini­ans who have nev­er seen a Black per­son before. Their under­stand­ing of African-Amer­i­can cul­ture is fueled by the media and African stereo­types. You will gen­er­ate lots of inter­est and curi­ous stares.

So, these stares can make you uncom­fort­able and annoyed. Ukraini­ans’ ini­tial per­cep­tion of you may be that you are from Africa; it may not. It does help if they under­stand that you are an Amer­i­can, and the train­ing in PST will help you con­sid­er ways that you will engage with these assump­tions.”

“It is not uncom­mon for Ukraini­ans to refer to African-Amer­i­cans as “[N‑Word]”. Vol­un­teers of col­or may be called ‘a mon­key’ or may see children’s games with Black­face. Being aware of the his­to­ry of dehu­man­iza­tion for peo­ple of African descent may help inform where this comes from; it does not jus­ti­fy it. It will be at your dis­cre­tion to deter­mine the intent. No mat­ter the intent, staff rec­og­nizes the impact that hear­ing that word may invoke hurt and anger. If you view it as unlearned [some­thing the per­son has nev­er been exposed to], it may be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to edu­cate that per­son.

LGBT

While sex acts are not crim­i­nal­ized, the Ukrain­ian LGBT com­mu­ni­ty faces dis­crim­i­na­tion and civ­il rights abus­es relat­ed to sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. Ukrain­ian soci­ety gen­er­al­ly views being gay, les­bian, or bisex­u­al as abnor­mal. While net­works of gays and les­bians have formed in some of the larg­er cities, LGBTQ life is hid­den from the pub­lic and kept very dis­creet. Some LGBTQ Vol­un­teers in Ukraine have found that being open about their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion at their sites has had a neg­a­tive impact on their effec­tive­ness.