NV Exclusive

When we talk about Russian aggression, the conversation often revolves around missiles, drones, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and propaganda. Yet one of the most insidious fronts of this war lies far from the battlefield — in lecture halls, academic conferences, and research networks. A study by Japanese scholar Sanshiro Hosaka offers a rare window into how this intellectual front operates.

I’ve been living for a week now in apartment №40 of the Slovo (“Word”) House in Kharkiv — the apartment of Ukrainian journalist Petro Lisoviy. It’s hard to describe the sensation — as if time folds in on itself. You wake up not simply in a room but in a point of singularity, where the air still carries the voices of poets and dreamers who believed that The Word could save a nation.