I am a Ukrainian journalist and writer. I champion global awareness about the Russian colonial legacy.

Ukrainians, like myself, are emerging as leading voices in exposing Russian colonialism for a simple reason: we have the most intimate understanding of what it is and what it does. Our language, family histories, and identities were almost wiped out during centuries of unchecked Russian colonial violence.

Many elsewhere are born into their national identities and take them for granted. But due to colonial erasure, this is not the case for Ukrainians like me. Even though Ukrainian history dates back millennia, reconnecting with my roots always required serious investigative journalism skills.

Growing up in southern Ukraine, I was always confused about where I came from, the history of my own country, and even my own family. Why I am brought up speaking Russian in a Ukrainian-speaking family? Why do we have so many gaps in our family tree and missing family members we never spoke about? Why I grew up knowing more about anything Russian than the history of my village? It took me years of connecting the dots to realize that this gaping hole of knowledge is not a happenstance, but a carefully crafted design of domination and subjugation.

And that little I knew about my roots, I felt profoundly ashamed of it. Because so many of our ancestors were wiped out, punished, repressed, and pillaged for exhibiting any signs of Ukrainianness, I grew up in a culture heavily conditioned by colonialism that centered the “civilizational greatness” of anything Russian — even years after formal Russian rule was over.

It was literally easier for me to come out as queer than as Ukrainian. I did the former when I was 16. I did the latter in my very late twenties. 

But similarly to my queerness, once I reconnected with my roots and went through decolonization, now I can’t imagine myself being anything other than unapologetically Georgian, Roma, Asian but — above all else — Ukrainian. As more of my fellow Ukrainians and people across other former Russian colonies are going through the same identity awakening, we are gaining a louder global voice that exposes the neverending cycle of Russian colonial crimes.

The cycle that the rest of the world cannot stay blind about anymore. The cycle that has to stop. The cycle that has to end in justice.

I do my part the best way I know how:

My work and anti-colonial bridge-building took me as a speaker to parliaments and foreign ministries of the UK and Sweden, Senate hearings at the US Congress, and the European Parliament. I was featured by NowThis, the Emmy-winning TV show Gaycation by VICE, Voice of America, BILD among others.

❤️🖤 Who’s Maksym Eristavi?

Maksym Eristavi is a Ukrainian journalist, writer, and author of “Russian Colonialism 101,” an illustrated guide to Russian colonial crimes. A self-described 'Russian colonialism storyteller in chief,' he champions global awareness about the Russian colonial legacy. This mission is personal: a mixed Ukrainian with Asian, Roma, and Georgian roots, several generations of his family suffered from genocides, assimilation, and identity erasure throughout centuries of Russian colonial rule.

Eristavi has a two-decade journalism career behind his back that included championing mainstream English-language coverage of Eastern Europe by indigenous voices. He went from covering both Ukrainian pro-democratic revolutions, being the country’s youngest news anchor and newsroom manager to founding international operations at the leading news startup covering Eastern Europe, and becoming a contributor to leading global outlets, such as RFERL, BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Politico and the Washington Post. At the same time, Bild and The New York Times called his social media reporting an essential source on the region. He led pioneering English-language coverage of the Russian disinformation warfare, Russian colonialism, and human rights violations in Eastern Europe. 

He is the founder of Volya Hub, the first storytelling hub expanding public awareness about Russian colonialism, and a co-founder of #UkrainianSpaces, a multimedia hub that amplifies Ukrainian perspectives and decolonizes global Ukraine conversations.

Eristavi also pioneered queer representation in Eastern European media and remains one of the few openly queer journalists in the region. In 2021 I co-authored ‘Untapped Power,’ a book promoting the idea of inclusive foreign policy rooted within human rights equality and a decolonized view of Eastern European queerness. He was a 2015 Poynter fellow at Yale University with a focus on informational wars and pan-regional LGBTI civil rights movements. Eristavi was also a 2016-2017 fellow at the Millennium Leadership Program and a former Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council. He was also a 2020-2022 Transatlantic Leadership fellow with a DC-based Center for European Policy Analysis.

In October 2015 Eristavi was featured among the 10 most prominent LGBTI people in Ukraine during the first-ever queer project at the country’s biggest modern art center.

His work and anti-colonial bridge-building made Eristavi a featured speaker at leading universities, many parliaments, and foreign ministries, including hearings at the US Congress and the European Parliament.