We are an international intellectual collective based in Odessa, Ukraine's great Cosmopolis. We take a dim view of culture wars and defend the right to dissent from latter-day dogmas, especially those that come dressed as virtue.
We make the Enlightenment wager on human freedom, reason and argument. In wartime Odessa, we leave room for independent thought, uncomfortable questions and the pleasure of disagreement.
Through open debates, salons and residencies, and against growing pressures to conform and purify, we are keeping Odessa what it has always been: argumentative, irreverent, worldly.

Read our new SubstackDispatches from Odessa

A wealth of writing, thinking and argument inside Ukraine rarely travels beyond its borders. Some of the most interesting voices are also among the least comfortable: those who refuse to surrender their right to question Ukraine's politics, challenge newfound orthodoxies or think out loud about its future.
Dispatches from Odessa will bring these voices into global circulation with essays, arguments and conversations.
Our first dispatch -- Not Destined to Fight -- is an epistolary manifesto: a correspondence between a Ukrainian soldier and a Russian about war, hatred, peace, responsibility and the possibility of reconciliation.