Life in Ukraine

Before Russia's full-scale invasion, 42-year-old Kateryna Savenko was a mother, a wife, a steelworker, and a lifelong resident of Mariupol. When the siege began on February 24, 2022, her life became a daily struggle for survival amid relentless Russian shelling.

Thousands of people gathered in central Kyiv on June 21 for the 10th annual Kyiv Pride March, calling for legal recognition of same-sex partnerships and stronger protections against hate crimes.

“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.

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.