All articles
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Three Days at 8 Degrees or Below: Ukraine’s Rule for Turning On the Heat
District heating, which sends hot water from heat-producing plants to buildings, is widely used in Ukraine's cities. The heating season is set by local authorities based on outdoor temperature, tariffs are set by the regulator and local authorities, and household tariff increases are frozen under martial law. This article traces the rules as they stood in legal texts as of September 2026.
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A Song, a Film, a Festival, a Holiday: 56 Years of “Chervona Ruta”
Composer Volodymyr Ivasiuk's song "Chervona Ruta" was first broadcast on a Chernivtsi television program in September 1970. In 1971 a musical film of the same name was made, and in 1989 a music festival named after the song began in Chernivtsi. In May 2026 Ukraine's parliament established a "Day of Ukrainian Music" tied to the festival's dates.
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From Six Grocery Stores to 1,320: ATB, the Supermarket Chain Born in Dnipro
ATB, a food supermarket chain headquartered in Dnipro, says it began in 1993 with six grocery stores and, by early 2026, had 1,320 stores across 22 oblasts. This article separates the company's own claim of being “Ukraine's largest” chain from the figures in the state company register, the store counts that differ between versions of its own history, and the revenue and profit recorded in that register, based on materials available as of September 2026.
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“Idleness Is the Mother of All”: Monomakh’s Instruction to His Children
Volodymyr Monomakh, 12th-century grand prince of Kyiv, left his children a text combining moral instruction with a record of his own travels and hunts. It survives in only one manuscript, the Laurentian Codex of 1377, and was first published in 1793. This article compares theories of when it was written and where it sits within the manuscript, drawing on encyclopedias and a critical edition.
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98% of the Harvest Comes from Households, Not Companies: Ukraine’s Walnuts and Exports
In 2024 Ukraine exported 23,318 tonnes of shelled walnuts, mostly to European countries such as France and Romania. According to the State Statistics Service, more than 98% of the harvest comes not from agricultural enterprises but from residents' households. This article looks at the difference between in-shell and shelled walnuts, how “ranked Nth in the world” comparisons work, and the trade relationship with Japan, based on statistics available as of September 2026.
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1661, or 1784? When Lviv University Actually Began
Lviv University dates its founding to 1661, when a Polish king granted a Jesuit college "the dignity of a university." The Canadian Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine instead dates it to 1784, when an Austrian emperor opened it. This article lays out what each of those two years actually involved, and traces the shifting name and language of instruction, drawing on encyclopedias and the university's own history.
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From a Reconstruction Registry to a Public Investment System: Ukraine’s Digital System “DREAM”
DREAM, the Ukrainian government's digital system for registering and publishing reconstruction and public-works projects, began in 2022 as a pilot project and, under a July 2026 government decision, became the mechanism for managing the country's entire public investment. This article looks at the underlying decisions, the bodies that manage it, the stages a project goes through, and how to read the 14,611 projects listed, based on the legal texts and public statements as of September 2026.
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Did Yurii Kulchytsky Open Vienna’s First Coffee House?
Yurii-Frants Kulchytsky, a merchant from Galicia who carried messages during the 1683 Siege of Vienna, is credited in Ukrainian encyclopedias with opening Vienna's first coffee house. But Vienna's own city history wiki calls that a legend, saying the first coffee-serving privilege in 1685 went to an Armenian, Deodato. This article lays three sources side by side.
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1654, the Year Kharkiv Was Born: Japan’s Jōō 3
Kharkiv's founding is usually dated to 1654. That year, Cossacks who had settled at the edge of the steppe built a fort where two rivers meet, and the town later became the center of a Cossack regiment. The same year in Edo, the Tamagawa Aqueduct was completed, and the monk Yinyuan arrived in Nagasaki. This article lines up events in both places on one timeline and looks, source by source, at what “1654” actually counts.
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Workplace Checkups Once a Year, Specific Health Checkups From Age 40: Cancer Screening Through Your City or Ward
Japan has three kinds of health checkups: the one your employer runs, the "specific health checkup" (tokutei kenshin) that health insurers run for people aged 40 to 74, and cancer screening run by the city, town, or ward you live in. This article covers who is covered when working part-time, who pays, the ages and intervals for the five kinds of cancer screening, the removal of sputum cytology from lung cancer screening in April 2026, and the change to workplace checkups coming in April 2027.