Mitryasova, O. CHRONICLES OF THIRST: DOCUMENTING MYKOLAIV'S WATER SECURITY CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS IN A WAR-AFFECTED CITY: Monograph. Mykolaiv: PMBSNU, 2026, 124 p.

CHRONICLES OF THIRST: DOCUMENTING MYKOLAIV'S WATER SECURITY CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS IN A WAR-AFFECTED CITY 4.3. COSSACK ATLANTIS: HYDROLOGICAL MEMORY THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE LOST AND FOUND In December 2025, the cultural landscape of Mykolaiv was enriched with an event that is directly related to the philosophical understanding of the water crisis and the ecological fate of our region. Mykolaiv artist Olga Artym donated her iconic triptych "Cossack Atlantis" to the funds of the Mykolaiv Regional Art Museum named after V. V. Vereshchagin (Fig. 4.3). This work, created back in 2023 — after the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant and Mykolaiv's ongoing struggle for drinking water. The transfer of the triptych to the V.V. Vereshchagin Museum at the end of 2025 is a deeply symbolic act. As the director of the museum Serhiy Roslyakov noted, this gift is evidence that the Mykolaiv school of painting continues to live and reflect on the most difficult topics of today. Artistic archipelago of memory The triptych "Cossack Atlantis" is not just landscape painting. This is a complex metaphor for a flooded history, where water acts both as a destructive element and as a thickness of time that preserves memory. The work consists of three parts, which together form a panoramic vision of Velykyi Luh, a sacred territory for the Ukrainian Cossacks, which was sacrificed to Soviet industrialization and the creation of the Kakhovka reservoir in the 1950s (Fig. 4.4). For Mykolaiv, which in 2022-2026 itself became the epicenter of the water crisis, this work was a painful reminder that water has always been a political tool. Olha Artym's Cossack "Atlantis" is the voice of those lands that went under water to power the turbines of the hydroelectric power plant, which 70 years later became an instrument of ecocide. Triptych Symbolism in the Context of Water Hazard In the context of our "Chronicle", Artym's work acts as a cultural bridge between two tragedies: Historical flooding (1950s), when there was a loss of the Great Meadow, floodplain forests and Cossack siches under the thickness of the artificial sea; The current crisis (2023–2026) during the drainage of the Kakhovka reservoir after the terrorist attack on the hydroelectric power plant, which caused a humanitarian 103