In August 2021, I was contacted by an editor at Kunsht (https://kunsht.com.ua/), a Ukrainian media group that covers science and technology “to promote critical thinking among Ukrainian youth.” Kunsht interviewed me for a podcast series on magical thinking in relation to astrology and numerology, and although doing the interview over Skype was a very enjoyable experience, I promptly forgot about it.

In March 2022 after Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, I was reminded of the group and took another look at its website. What I saw was both heartbreaking and enormously impressive. With the help of Google Translate, I discovered that the Kunsht group had transformed their site to provide useful science-based information for a country under siege. Prior to the attack, Kunsht was featuring articles such as “Preserve the Youth: How to Study Vaccines for Children” and “Back in the Past: Can We See the Big Bang?” After the war broke out, its articles had titles such as “Food during War: What and How to Cook,” “Russian Troops Control Two Nuclear Power Plants: What Is the Threat?,” and “What Is Botulism and How to Safely Eat Canned Food.”

I contacted two of Kunsht’s editors, who said they had moved their operation to safe locations. They seemed to be in remarkably good spirits but had quite obviously seized the opportunity to employ their expertise in science to provide practical, potentially lifesaving information for their fellow citizens. One of the editors told me, “We are, of course, optimists, so we moved our ‘ordinary’ materials to mid-April.” By publication time, their optimistic hopes for a quick end of the war had not been realized, but their valiant science communication effort continued.

If you would like to support Kunsht’s work, you can do so at https://kunsht.com.ua/druzi/.