Author: Lee Matz

Reports from Ukraine: This feature is part of an original Milwaukee Independent editorial series that recorded news from cities across Ukraine, including Milwaukee's sister city of Irpin, in May 2022. It was the first and, at that time, only news organization in Wisconsin that traveled to the country since it was invaded. The purpose of this journalism project was to document personal stories and events that detailed or showed the conditions of the war at that time, and their connections to Milwaukee. mkeind.com/reportsfromukraine “I am often asked what the war in Ukraine is about. And I have three answers...

While Eastern Ukraine is brutalized by Russia’s effort to annex large portions of the independent nation, Ukraine itself is the site of a less visible religious battleground. All forms of faiths in Ukraine are trying to contain the corrosive influence, and in some cases dominance, of Russian controlled religions.

Reports from Ukraine: This feature is part of an original Milwaukee Independent editorial series that recorded news from cities across Ukraine, including Milwaukee's sister city of Irpin, in May 2022. It was the first and, at that time, only news organization in Wisconsin that traveled to the country since it was invaded. The purpose of this journalism project was to document personal stories and events that detailed or showed the conditions of the war at that time, and their connections to Milwaukee. mkeind.com/reportsfromukraine It has been often said that the Ukrainian residents of the nation’s two major cities live...

Jews had lived in Brzeżany since the sixteenth century, making up the second-largest ethnic group in the town after the Poles. Berezhany is located between Lviv and Ternopil, the two cities that were my entry and exit points in Ukraine. It was said that the cemetery was as old as Berezhany itself, a testimony to the history of the community.