I love poets, painters and pianists. I even like some politicians. I like people from Russia. I like people from Ukraine. I like people from a lot of countries. I can't bear the thought of houses and cities being destroyed that were once the place of birth of people whose books, music and paintings I love. Here are photos of some of the people whose work I admire – and who were born in Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Lviv, Dvirkivshchyna or Bolshoy Fontan. Nationality isn't important. Culture is. I hope that once we will only remember Charlie Chaplin, and not the dictator he made look ridiculous.

• 
  Lesya Ukrainka
  born in Novohrad-Volynskyi, 1871
• 
  Kazimir Malevich
  born in Kyiv, 1879
• 
  Anna Akhmatova
  born in Odessa, 1889
• 
  Mikhail Bulgakov
  born in Kyiv, 1891
• 
  Isaac Babel
  born in Odessa, 1894
• 
  Ilya Ilf
  born in Odessa, 1897
• 
  Golda Meir
  born in Kyiv, 1898
• 
  Yevgeny Petrov
  born in Odessa, 1902
• 
  Vladimir Horowitz,
  born in Kyiv, 1903
• 
  Sviatoslav Richter
  born in Zhytomyr, 1915
• 
  Emil Gilels
  born in Odessa, 1916
• 
  Simon Wiesenthal
  born in Buchach, 1908
• 
  Zbigniew Herbert
  born in Lviv, 1924
• 
  Mark Taimanov
  born in Kharkiv, 1926
• 
  Andriy Shevchenko
  born in Dvirkivshchyna, 1976

• 
  Moscow, 24 Febr. 2022
• 
  London, 24 Febr. 2022
• 
  Berlin, 3 March 2022
• 
  Paris, 5 March 2022

As Sting said in 1985 (and again in a new version on Instagram in 2022^[1]):
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too