Life in Ukraine

First, there was a picture of a Shiba Inu in a helmet dunking on Russian propaganda. Then came the convoys full of drones, generators, medical gear, and scopes, rolling across Europe into a warzone. This is the story of NAFO, the meme that became a movement.

“I was given a weapon, a uniform, and the rank of senior soldier,” actor Yaroslav Podshyvalov says. “The Russians were already on the outskirts of Kharkiv. The path was already set for me.”

“I drew death and war. And the future—because I’m scared of what’s coming.” Seventeen-year-old Valeriia lived through the Russian occupation and lost her father. Now she’s one of hundreds of children finding a way forward at Gen.Camp, where games and therapy help war-traumatized kids begin to heal.

“I’m more than half Ukrainian now,” says Ram Dange with a smile. As a student, he came to Ukraine from India in the early ’90s and never left. India is his birthplace, but it is Ukraine where he built everything.

Eight Russian rockets have landed inside Mykolaiv Zoo since the full-scale war in Ukraine began. One—just meters from the enclosure of two tiger sisters.

Help doesn’t always begin with a slogan. Sometimes, it starts with a quiet question: “How are you today?” At Gen.Camp, a therapeutic retreat for Ukrainian children affected by Russia’s war, the response is often silence—shoulders hunched, eyes lowered. From that silence, the healing begins.