Life in Ukraine

“Russia’s war in Ukraine is probably the most filmed...You can see everything directly. Many military personnel have GoPros. No feature film would have as much power as these actual frames,” explains military director Volodymyr Sydko. Since 2022, Ukraine's film community has massively integrated into the war effort, offering an alternative approach to filmmaking by returning to its absolute fundamentals.

When investors ask Oksana Markarova—Ukraine’s former Finance Minister—about Ukraine, she gives them an answer they do not expect. "I'm not trying to tell investors it's safe in Ukraine," she told me. "I just want to say that it's not safe in the world. In that world, Ukraine is the place that already has a proven track record of being resilient in non-safe conditions."

Sometimes, the chorus starts in English, and sometimes, the next verse turns to Ukrainian. For a growing number of Ukraine’s biggest artists, that blend has become the soundtrack of a nation determined to tell its story to the world.

“They have an illusion—the veteran has an illusion, the wife has an illusion, the child has an illusion—that they can return to the life they had before the war. And they hurt themselves against this illusion,” says Liudmyla Frolova, psychotherapist, head of the multidisciplinary team of “Veteran’s Family,” Caritas-Spes Ukraine, which helps veterans to heal the invisible wounds of war.

For more than four years, Russia has waged war on Ukraine largely under the cover of darkness, launching nightly drone and missile attacks that have left millions of civilians chronically sleep-deprived and scientists warning of consequences that may outlast the war itself.

Balancing life as rock musicians, active-duty soldiers, and volunteers, the members of Boombox are turning their music legacy into support for the front lines.

The first thing that stood out in Druzhkivka—a frontline city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region—was not the destruction. It was the people. Despite near-daily Russian drone attacks, FAB bomb strikes, and artillery fire, thousands of civilians still remain in this frontline city, trying to survive another day under constant threat.

The first KЇ FEST international theater festival, held from May 7 to May 10, concluded in Kyiv after drawing approximately 4,000 visitors over four days.

“Shredder” lay for 16 hours with tourniquets cutting into both legs, Russian FPV drones circling above. When he woke up and realized his legs were gone, he cracked a joke. What followed was a system designed to make sure he wouldn’t be left behind.

One workday, stitched together from a winter of blackouts, air raids, cold showers, improvised coffee, and other daily workarounds that keep everyday life moving in wartime Kyiv.