Firsthand reports and reflections from wartime Ukraine documenting everyday life, resistance, displacement, and survival amid Russia’s invasion. Through personal testimonies and frontline correspondence, the series captures the human realities of war.
Firsthand reports and reflections from wartime Ukraine documenting everyday life, resistance, displacement, and survival amid Russia’s invasion. Through personal testimonies and frontline correspondence, the series captures the human realities of war.
MAJA HORELKINA, 39 years old, IT specialist, Przemyśl (Poland) If the war ended today, I would go to Kyiv. My family and friends are there. I would hug them all. I wouldn’t be afraid to let my daughter, Yevheniya, go there either, who, despite the war, has not given up her dream of opening a café in Kyiv. A backpack has been accompanying Maja since 2014. That’s when …
War seen in person looks less terrible than on television. However, when I notice that I am becoming less sensitive and danger stops arousing fear in me, I know that it is time to go home and decompress. MAREK KĘSKRAWIEC: In your texts about the war in Ukraine, you rarely share your own thoughts, you don’t make yourself the star, you give voice to the protagonists. This …
In Bakhmut, medics’ vehicles wait hidden under thick layers of earth and concrete. Artillery fire almost never ceases and every bit of the city is within its reach. They come by minibus. A piece of paper with the number “300” stuck to the window means that they are transporting the wounded. They stop. The two medics do not get out. Fear and confusion are painted on their …
After months of fighting for the city, the few inhabitants of Bakhmut are struggling to survive—without water, electricity or gas, and with winter temperatures. The street is dead. Its landscape is made up of concrete apartment blocks, rubble from hit buildings, broken glass and remnants of rockets. And the corpse of a dog covered with frozen snow, from under which you can see a dead eye, a …
Military medics rescue wounded soldiers at the front every day. The lives of the wounded depend on how quickly it is possible to provide first aid and transport them to a hospital in the rear. The light from the country house does not break through to the street, which is plunged into darkness of night. Tightly covered windows do not allow sight of what is inside the …
The writer, a supporter of Gandhi and his idea of “nonviolent resistance”, volunteered for the army in February 2022. This is one of many such checkpoints where you stop, show your documents, and then hope that you will pass quickly and without unnecessary formalities or problems. Holding such a rather thankless post is one of the tasks of Artyom Chapeye, a writer, translator, journalist, and, since the end …
The inhabitants of Kherson do not want to think about the problems they will face. Today they want to enjoy their regained freedom. First, there were problems with electricity in the city–more and more frequently, until there was a complete lack of supply. It was the same with water and communication. Ukrainian telephone networks have not reached here for a long time, and now Russian ones have …
The wide and mighty Dnieper river separates the two warring armies, which fire missiles and rockets at each other. On the right bank is positioned the Ukrainian army, which had recently recaptured the city of Kherson and a large part of the Kherson oblast. On the left bank–the Russians are on the defensive. It was the sound of the Dnieper’s water that Roman heard when, during the Russian …
You don’t need to read the news in a field hospital. The wounds of the patients show what is happening at the front. One of the doctors perched on a stretcher. A group of medics was also waiting at the entrance. This hospital, formerly civilian, was first abandoned due to the ongoing war, and then occupied by medical units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They had earlier …
In places regained by the Ukrainian army, police units look for saboteurs and collaborators, search for abandoned weapons and clear roads. The man has a winter hat pulled over his head. At eye level, it is wrapped in duct tape advertising a logistics company and cafes selling croissants. Policemen in military uniforms walk around the man. One of them pulls Russian license plates from Crimea from the …
