Minneapolis Is Not Far From Ukraine

2026-01-15

Freedom Line logo :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

Minneapolis.

I did not expect to write this word from an invaded country and feel it land so close to home. Two months passed since my last article here in this journal The Freedom Line. Some asked if I had abandoned, but I had not. I was taking some considerations because I was receiving threats. Messages telling me to stay out of American domestic matters. Strange messages telling me to be “careful.” :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

After four years writing about war, I am past the point of being frightened by words.

What threat is bigger than Russia?

I write from a place where missiles decide the rhythm of days. Where fear has already failed as a tool of control. If intimidation worked, Ukraine would have disappeared long ago. Trolls and random “warnings” do not scare me.

What scares me is silence when an evil pattern becomes clear.

And Minneapolis made that pattern impossible to ignore. :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}

Illustration at point of Minneapolis description :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}

A woman shot. Federal forces acting above the law. Language twisted until killing becomes protection and protest becomes terrorism. More agents sent, no truth offered. This is not disorder, my friends. This is method. Design. Every authoritarian system follows the same path. Unidentified units appear with hidden faces and unmarked cars. Oversight is removed, immunity is granted, cruelty is renamed as safety… Those who act above the law are protected, and who dare to exist in the way are criminalized. :contentReference[oaicite:5]{index=5}

Image linking Minneapolis with Ukrainian script memory :contentReference[oaicite:6]{index=6}

I know this script. It is familiar to every generation of Ukrainians. Renee Nicole Good reminded me of people in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro. Places where ordinary people were told they were a danger simply by existing.

Minneapolis today is not Ukraine because of snow on the streets. Minneapolis is Ukraine because of courage. :contentReference[oaicite:7]{index=7}

Over these four years of war, Minnesota has been present in my life in a very real way. People from all over the North Star State — Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth — wrote to me so many times, telling me that Ukraine inspired them. Duluth, where Bob Dylan was born, was an added honor to me at a time when we are needing so much the answers that are still blowing in the wind… Everywhere, you said that our resistance in Ukraine gave you strength. Now it’s you that are inspiring us. :contentReference[oaicite:8]{index=8}

Minneapolis and Sevastopol, in our stolen Crimea, share the same latitude, forty-five north. But what truly links us today is resistance, not geography. :contentReference[oaicite:9]{index=9}

Image after resistance section :contentReference[oaicite:10]{index=10}

I still remember a message I received last year. A kind reader from Minnesota wrote to me from her hospital bed while going through cancer treatment. She told me that reading one of my articles made her remember she was still alive. In her words, not just breathing, but alive. I did not know how to answer her then, I still do not. But I know that message became part of this line. It was proof that this was never only about a distant war on another continent, but a place where life crossed borders and reached people who were hurting. Here and there. There and here. That is why what I am seeing now in the United States is so personal to me. :contentReference[oaicite:11]{index=11}

Further images from the Substack post :contentReference[oaicite:12]{index=12}

I am shocked by how fast things are deteriorating in America. Scenes we never thought we would witness on American soil are now real. Armed intimidation, fear used openly as policy. And there has not even been one full year of this government. This is a global machinery of abuse. The same methods, the same language. The same hunger for power without limits. The man leading your country is now using the same methods as the man invading mine. This is not exaggeration. We have learned that cruelty advances only when people decide to lie down. I stand with Minneapolis. I stand with Renee. Just as you have stood with Ukraine. :contentReference[oaicite:13]{index=13}

Closing image :contentReference[oaicite:14]{index=14}

Minneapolis is Kyiv.
I am Renee.

And this line holds until this machinery breaks and the law finally matters again.

— Viktor Kravchuk :contentReference[oaicite:15]{index=15}