Svitlana’s voice echoed through the classroom, lyrical, determined, and warm enough to shoulder aside the cold that crept from the baseboards. Her grandson slept next to her, unaware of Lviv outside, a city alert and on edge, shapeshifting through curtains of rain. Svitlana, 77, wrote the following poem days earlier, anger and hope bleeding through blue ink as she sat on an air bed, sinking ever closer to the checkered laminate floor.
"One day I want to wake up and see peace and silence all around.
And Putin drowned in the sick pile of his own shit.
And that he didn’t survive to see a courtroom.
And instead he died like Hitler in his bunker.
And Ukraine has fought it all.
And everything that was before is just a dream now."
Svitlana and her family had been living in a school-turned-shelter since March 7 after an explosion blew out the windows of their Kharkiv home seconds after they gathered in a hallway for protection. Immediately, they grabbed what they could and fled.
War Notes is a project of memories in the making, co-created with Ukrainian citizens during wartime. Over six weeks, I traveled across Ukraine collecting more than 50 portraits and interviews, making a single polaroid (actually Fuji FP-100c) per participant. Collaborators were then asked to write their memories, thoughts, and emotions on a separate unexposed blank polaroid.
This project breaks from the mold of photojournalism, the constraints of urgent deadlines, and the sensationalism often seen in war images. Instead it focuses on the individuals, raw with recent experiences, as co-creators, offering them time and an opportunity to express themselves. Additionally, I collected audio and digital images to help visualize the psychological impacts of what participants have witnessed and the memories seared into their minds, and in this way, document the collective and compounding trauma.
On June 23, 2022 this work was exhibited at Superchief Gallery in NYC and an NFT collection was launched via Vault by CNN, with profits directly diverted to fund humanitarian aid for Ukrainians.
To see sample multimedia work and NFTs from this project please click here.
(to view translations and captions: please click an image below to enter the slideshow, then click the three dots at the bottom left of the image)
War Notes
“This happened at 22:30. I am grateful to God that I am still alive, it is a miracle. I believe in the victory, thank you to all the people who help our country Ukraine.” Fedya, 73, holds a piece of the rocket that crashed through his living room wall as he sits amid debris on the couch in his 11th floor apartment. His wife Tamara had just laid down on that couch and covered herself with a blanket only a moment before the rocket struck. Her sole injury was a hematoma on her leg. Had she been standing, sitting, or uncovered, she believes she would have been seriously wounded. Fedya, asleep in the next room, gathered his wife from the rubble. They stayed awake the rest of that night, waiting for daylight. After 42 years of living in the same apartment, they are now staying in a neighbor’s flat three floors below their own. “We have nowhere else to go,” Fedya said.
“It’s 4 a.m. There is an explosion and it seems that there is only a minute left to live.” Yvhenii, 27, fled from Kyiv with his parents and three younger siblings, ages 16, 12 and 8. His family traveled on to Warsaw, but due to restrictions on fighting-age males, he was not allowed to leave and remains in a temporary shelter in Lviv, though he thinks he would have chosen to stay in the country regardless.
“We wish you never to go through what we went through. Peace to everyone! And we wish to have a peaceful sky over our heads.” A mother and daughter from Kharkiv who wished to remain anonymous embrace while sitting on a bed in a Lviv school-turned-shelter. The daughter, a mother herself, described trying to hide the war from her own young daughter during the 22 days they spent in Kharkiv. She covered the windows and refused to take her child outside. When a blast hit a building only 50 meters away, shattering their windows, they decided to leave. On the way to the train station, she saw what had happened to her beautiful city over three weeks, describing it as burned and broken. “All the people who have done this,” she said, “they need to be dead.”
"One day I want to wake up and see peace and silence all around. And Putin drowned in in the sick pile of his own shit. And that he didn’t survive to see a courtroom. And instead he died like Hitler in his bunker. And Ukraine has fought it all. And everything that was before is just a dream now. Thats because we are united, because we have the one destiny. Ukraine hasn’t died yet, neither it’s glory nor it’s freedom." - Svitlana, 77, from Kharkiv, has been living with her family in a Lviv school-turned-shelter since March 7. An explosion blew out the windows of their home seconds after she and her family gathered in a hallway for protection. Immediately after this, they grabbed what they could and left. Her deepest desire, she said, is to simply be able to return home.
“Our family is from Mariupol and our city no longer exists. We will never be able to return and to see our friends and family. We are praying for our city and for the whole Ukraine.” Lilia, 53, Misha, 8, Vira, 36, and Nelya, 27, wait in the central rail station in Lviv for a train bound to the Czech Republic after fleeing ravaged Mariupol.
“28.02.2022: the war took from our family my wife whose name is Daria, mother of our kids, our lovely, our sun, she gifted us her love, comfort, care…my nearest friend, smart, incredibly beautiful, a flower, real woman. She will live in our hearts forever…” Stanislav, 34, sits with his sons Vladimir, 7, and Viktor, 3, in a Kharkiv hospital. Stanislav and Daria met 15 years ago when both were university students. An engineer, Stanislav was working in Uzbekistan when Russia invaded his country. He texted Daria every hour and called every three hours. Four days into the war, Daria told him she decided to move from Chuhuiv, a small town about 25 miles southeast of Kharkiv, to a safer location. The next time he called, a stranger answered. He told Stanislav his wife was dead, and identified the hospital where his children were. Just 500 yards from their home, their car came under fire—possibly friendly fire—and his wife was killed. Their youngest son escaped with only small cuts on his face, but a piece of metal from the car lodged in the head of their older son, who is in rehab now. When the doctor agrees, Stanislav plans to take them both to a safer area in the country. Neither remembered what had happened, and Stanislav waited four weeks to tell them their mother had died. Vladimir is not talking much and has built a toy gun from items found in the hospital. Viktor says he knows his mother is in the sky, and repeatedly asks how to get her back down.
“Ukraine is sure to stand and it will win, and very soon it will resurrect and become even more beautiful. Russian warship go fuck yourself.” “We will kill the Russians and get married.” On the war’s third day, artists/graphic designers Olia and Hlib were crouched in a dank basement room making Molotov cocktails when Olia proposed to Hlib. He accepted and they plan to marry once the war is over. For now, Hlib is fighting: on March 9, he joined Kharkiv’s Territorial Defense Forces, serving as an RPG operator. He no longer speaks to his pro-Russian family; his father, living in one of the most heavily shelled neighborhoods in northern Kharkiv, believes Ukraine is bombing its own country, and is waiting for the Russians to “free” him. Olia and her mother still feel daily fear, but are trying to build a routine in nights spent in the basement shelter, where she has hung up her art and and prepared with makeshift weapons.
“24.02.22. Life froze. All dreams and desires are gone. The sound of sirens flooded the cities of Ukraine. Misfortune.” Emma, 73, Tanya, 43, and Anya, 11, find shelter during an air raid in the basement of a Lviv school.
"On that evening I was at my aunt's place. We were sitting and chatting and then we heard a siren blaring all over the town. It was the air raid alarm. After that, we heard some shots in the center of the city. We closed the door and turned off the lights and we sat like that for the whole evening. Our aunty was worrying a lot, we moved outside the city and stayed there following day. Then the most terrifying thing happened that night - our aunty died, the doctors told us her heart couldn’t bear the grief of war." - Oleksandr, 25, a bus driver, transported refugees out of Ukraine, dropping them off in several European locations during the war’s first week. Two weeks later, he was still living in a hostel in Przemyśl, Poland, debating whether he should reenter the county. His entire family, including his wife and 2-year-old child, remained in Ukraine.
“Even in these difficult times which fell upon us with the obvious cruelty of the aggressor, we continue to help our pets. All our dreams are now connected only with our victory and returning to peaceful lives.” Olena, from Kharkiv, holds two of her six dogs while standing outside the Lviv shelter where she has lived for the past two weeks. She wanted to remain in her home city, but as infrastructure was destroyed, communications cut, her windows shattered and her apartment lost gas and electricity, she decided to flee with her dogs. She has to leave the shelter soon to make room for new residents and doesn’t know where she and her pets will go. “I am happy to go anywhere, with any people, to any country,” she said, “as long as there are no explosions.”
“Mykolaiv. Snihurivka. 4:14 am. The missile flew over our house and hit the neighbors. 9:40 a.m. The rocket fragment flew into the door of our house. 10:30 a.m. They destroyed our street by plane. I go into a shelter with flying missiles overhead, the shops are destroyed, the vegetable warehouse is crumbled. Snigirevka and the region have no food, water, light, gas for the month. We were under the occupation of fascists.” - Siblings Irina, 19, Artem, 11, and their mother Nadejda, 37, take cover in a bomb shelter below Odessa’s main railway station. Two days earlier, they made a harrowing escape under the cover of darkness in a caravan of 20 cars from Snihurivka, a small southern Ukranian town currently under Russia control. The caravan came under Russian fire on the main road so changed its route, driving through fields and farmland to reach Mycolaiv by morning. Now from the comparative safety of Odessa, the family contemplates their next steps. Though her husband remains in Mycolaiv and her sister and extended family in Snihurivka, Nadeja wants to flee to Romania. Her children disagree; they want to stay in Ukraine.
“I dream to return home as soon as possible, and that our home remains unspoiled.” - Svetlana, 61. “I want the war to end very soon, I want to go back home to see my granddaughters and to work. We were living great until the Russians came to liberate us.” - Olga, 59. “Let the safety and peaceful lives return faster to my motherland.” Tatyana, 38. None of these women sitting in an Odesa train station had wanted to leave their home city of Mykolaiv. Svetlana and Olga are friends and coworkers at Black Sea Shipyard, a major city employer that was shelled and badly damaged. Tatyana, Olga’s friend and neighbor, had returned home from a planned surgery one day before the Russian invasion. Svetlana instigated their departure the day she looked out her bedroom window and and saw a destroyed government building in flames. She called Olga, who in turn called Tatyana, and all three women fled that day. The men of their families stayed behind in Mykolaiv to work or help care for others.
“04.03.2022 in Hostomel there were big fights between Ukrainians and Russians in which five young soldiers died. I will remember their faces for all my life. I could write a whole book but I will keep this long story short. I pray for all our children and elderly to not have to see this anymore. I want peace to come here. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes.” Alexey stands in front of the burned-out Ukrainian tank directly outside the gate of his home in Hostomel, a suburb of Kyiv. When the war began, he started helping Hostomel residents evacuate to Kyiv, going back and forth. On March 5, a tank pulled in front of his home and five Ukrainian soldiers hopped out. Hungry, they asked if he might have some food. Alexey’s father-in-law went into the house to prepare something for them while Alexey went down into their cellar-turned-bomb-shelter to check on his 17-year-old daughter. The blast was so strong the cellar shook. Dirt rained down and the plywood door shattered. He shot upstairs to see what happened. Three soldiers lay in front of the cellar, two others nearby, all dead. The tank was in flames. He found his father-in-law injured and took him to a nearby factory for safety and treatment. Then he moved all five bodies onto the street, and called a friend in the Ukrainian military to report what had happened. He recalls acting mechanically to do what needed doing, feeling nothing in the moment. Only a week later when reunited with his family and visiting his father-in-law in the hospital did he finally break down and cry.
“I think that Putin deserves to be punished for all these terrible things. Glory to Ukraine.” - Anna, 11, “Russia came to our land, destroyed our homes. We can rebuild everything but it cannot give us back to the traditions and memories of our last lives.” - Maria, 47, “The biggest pain is of our children and grandchildren.” - Julia, 60. Maria, her mom Julia and her two children Anna and Ivan are from Mariupol. In Mariupol, Maria and her family learned about the layers of hell. Two days before the Russian invasion, they decided they would leave their home, but they thought they had more time. One day into the invasion, they vowed to go, but couldn’t get past the Russian checkpoints. On March 2, they lost electricity, water and gas. They ate canned food and began to memorize the sounds each type of weapon makes. On March 9, they lost cellular service. On March 15, a bomb destroyed their home, but their car was spared. Out of desperation, they decided they had to brave the constant explosions and Russian checkpoints. It took them four days to travel 140 miles from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia, passing the bodies of war victims as they fled. Approaching Ukrainian-held territory, they heard incoming shelling and Maria’s ex-husband hit the gas. Thirty seconds later, a shell hit the spot where their car had been. Now with her family in Odesa, Maria says: “Hell is not a strong enough word to describe what we went through.”
“I am a volunteer. I do my part with great love to people and to my country. Humanity and the warmth of their hearts will save Ukraine. But not only Ukraine, the whole world. Life stories of people who have lived through this terror of war get into your heart as if it is a missile. Although, after the explosion there are some flowers. Like the flower that was given to me as a gift from a family from Marioupol. It is a symbol of life.” Katerina, 40, was a yoga instructor in Zaporizhia until the war began; now she is the de facto director of a shelter in the city that primarily serves women and children. At a table where she sits in the shelter, next to paperwork, schedules, lists of shelter occupants, and an ever-buzzing phone, she keeps a seedling that was gifted to her by a family from Mariupol who stayed for several days. The family said taking boxes of young plants with them from their city was even more important to them than most personal belongings. She will plant it one day, hopefully in more peaceful times.
Vera, 63, sits on a couch in the front yard of her home in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, describing how her normally quiet neighborhood was transformed by unrelenting sounds of shelling, gunfire, drones, planes and helicopters. During the war’s first month, she huddled in the basement of her neighbor’s home with her 81-year-old mother, her daughter and her grandson. As the war intensified, they decided to try to escape Irpin. They sought refuge in a nearby military base for two nights before Ukrainian soldiers escorted them to Kyiv. A few days later, her neighbor told her the home where she’d lived for the past 44 years had been hit in shelling. Her neighbor’s message contained a photo, but Vera could not bear to open it. Two weeks later, when Russian troops withdrew from Irpin, she immediately returned. She wept to see her destroyed home in person. Vera now lives with her mom in the still-standing garage next to what remains of her home. Her daughter and grandson are in western Ukraine.
“We left and I couldn't stop crying at every Ukrainian checkpoint when I saw Ukrainian soldiers. Then I saw bread at the store and it was fresh and I could buy it - I could not stop the tears. I pray for the world!.” Valaria, 40, worked with her husband in a ceramic factory in Polohy, a small town in southeast Ukraine. When the Russians occupied the town, her husband continued to join a group of workers who alternated 24-hour shifts maintaining the factory. She stayed home, afraid to venture out even as their food supplies dwindled. Finally, she and her husband went together to a grocery store, but the shelves were largely bare. One day Russian soldiers arrived at the factory while her husband was there. Claiming to be looking for weapons, they forced him to his knees, placed a gun to his head, and threatened to throw him from the factory roof. “I thought I would never see you again,” he told Valaria later. The next day, the couple departed with their cat. When they crossed into the Zaporizhzhia region, they stopped to buy cat food. Entering the store, Valaria saw a shelf full of loaves of bread and broke into tears – out of a sense of both relief and loss. “I always wanted to travel and now I don’t want to go anywhere,” se said. “I just want to go home.”
“I am from Ukraine the city of Kharkiv. Never in my life I could imagine that my country will be in hell. On the 24th February at 4:30 am I heard a massive explosion which changed my life forever. You know, I am from orphanage and I have never known a parent’s love, but now I understand that all my family is Ukraine!” When the war began, Vitaliy, 30, moved into an underground metro, trying to come to terms with his country’s new reality. Emerging after five days, he was headed home when a rocket struck a nearby building. The attack shocked him and propelled him to flee to Lviv, without knowing anyone and with no money. He is staying in a flat with other displaced Ukrainians, and finally beginning to feel safe enough to go outside without constantly searching the sky.
“On the 24th of February at 5am the war started. On the 15th of March my house was destroyed. On the 23rd of March it was the last time that I saw my daughter and my grandchildren. Tiolkima, Elena, Yaroslav and Nikita. Lenochka I have tried to call you but the phone is offline. I will try to get to the western part of Ukraine.” Nadezhda, 63, of Mariupol, was caring for her two grandsons, 10 years old and 6 years old, when the war erupted. Projectiles struck her home, blowing off her door and collapsing parts of her roof, as she was cooking dinner while her grandsons sheltered in the basement. At first stunned by the fire and smoke, she sank to the ground before quickly returning to the task of preparing the meal for her grandsons. On March 23, her daughter who had been out of the city when the war began returned to Mariupol to get her sons. The three of them left as Mariupol was being shelled, running to catch a bus. Because of ill health, Nadezhda couldn’t run, so she stayed behind, escaping six days later by bus with a neighbor. She traveled for two days through multiple checkpoints before reaching Zaporizhia, about 170 miles away. She has repeatedly tried to reach her daughter, son-in-law, and grandsons by cellphone, but no one answers, leaving her fearful about their fate. She is haunted by the memory of her last sight of her daughter disappearing around the corner with her two grandsons. “I’ve lost everything,” she says. “Nobody needs me. I have nothing and no one.”
“I am impressed by the courage of our Ukrainian people who managed to get out of the hell, that they did not submit. I will forever remember one girl, who was four years old who was injured in her leg but she gave me a hug and said I am kind like a fairy. She did have an injury to her leg but she was smiling. Glory to Ukraine.”
“Basement: fear, tears… praying.”
“Don’t ever stop smiling.The sun still shines, life goes on. Even those who died continue to live inside our hearts and thoughts. P.S. I thought that after the things I went through in Kharkiv, I would never be able to smile again, but I am.” Pavlo, a professional lucid dreaming teacher, huddled in an underground train station for 15 days after the war began, cold and hungry. With heavy bombing, he feared going outside even to buy bread. Eventually determined to flee, he headed home to gather a few belongings, but as he arrived, bombs fell on the building next door. He ran to the street and returned to the tain station, not daring to emerge for five days straight. Finally he heard of a seat in a car departing Kharkiv. Leaving everything behind, he escaped. At first he was couch-surfing in Lviv, but was evicted from a home after its owner accused Pavlo, who speaks Russian better than Ukrainian, of being a saboteur. For the moment, he is staying in a music studio-turned-shelter.
“Inside of me I found faith in people. And love is the ruler of this world.” Dimon, 48, woke up one day a year ago unable to move or feel his legs or feet. Doctors attributed this to a spinal cord injury caused by his previous work as a bouncer and security guard. Though he and his mother had been estranged for most of their lives, Dimon moved in with her. She is suffering from early-stage dementia, and now they help take care of each other. Her apartment is on the eighth floor of a building less than five miles from Russian-held territory; the elevator is broken and all nearby shops are closed and Dima has not been able to go outside since the start of the invasion, 53 days earlier. One of the scariest moments was when they had only a single piece of bread left between them. Thankfully, a volunteer showed up bearing supplies. The war has given Dimon renewed motivation to try to recover his health, and he works out using makeshift weights constructed from taped-together water bottles. He feels he is regaining some movement in his feet and legs.
“I will never forget the morning when my best friend phoned me in fear and asked if I was alright. All these horrible things help us to value those who are close to us no matter what. It will be Ukraine!” Daryna, 20, fled with her ill mother from their small village of Koryst in northwest Ukraine as nearby villages were being bombed during the war’s third week. They are staying with friends in Lviv, where Daryna volunteers daily at a local church to help transport humanitarian aid to Ukraine’s most ravaged regions.
“When you spend some time inside the occupation and live under the constant sounds of shots once you get away from it for one day, you start to see the difference between people who were lucky enough to only hear about these terrors and people who saw it with their own eyes and lived under the occupation. The difference is in how they react to the sounds of explosions. How much it changes the person mentally.” After the Russian invasion, Andriy, 33, found he was unable to get the medicine he needs to treat Fabry disease, an inherited disorder that mainly affects the heart, nervous system and kidneys. He left his home in Snihurivka, a Russian-occupied village 60 kilometers from Mykolaiv, on a church-organized evacuation bus that escaped using backroads. At first, the sounds of artillery day and night shocked him. He has become accustomed and even indifferent, but he doesn’t think this is necessarily a good development. “I’m not sure if we are still normal, because we don’t react when people are trying to kill us,” he says.
“There were many moments that brought not only joy, but also fear. Te emotion of fear is the easiest to remember. For example, how shells fly overhead, exploding somewhere nearby.” - Nastia “I want to live, not survive.” - Natasha. Nastia, 24, met Natasha, 16, in a train station 52 days ago when both were fleeing shelling. Both separated from their families, they have become close friends. Nastia is originally from Kupyansk, 70 miles to the east, where her parents still live. Occupied by Russian troops on Feb. 27, that city has been the site of pro-Ukrainian protests organized by local residents since then. Nastia has been unable to contact her parents for two weeks and is very worried. “It is difficult to be happy here,” she says.
“The damned war is still going on, And the orcs are standing at our doors. When will it end already? They all should go to hell! I want to go home finally, To plant some flowers in the soil, Because it’s spring already here. No forgiveness to them all!” Liudmila, 59, spends almost every hour of every day sheltered in her building’s basement. She has been largely rooted there since March 17, when heavy shelling flattened a nearby market, blew out her home’s windows, and sent a piece of shrapnel barreling into her home. “Okay, this is the end,” she thought that day. Now she walks up six flights to her apartment only occasionally to shower. Her five children live in a nearby metro station. Above is a poem she composed during one of those basement nights.
“The biggest horror is to hear how the bombs are exploding and to see awful roads which have this ruined equipment and vehicles. And it seems that this is not iron but plastic or even paper.”
“I no longer have a house. We were hiding in the corridor without light and cell service in the complete darkness to the sounds of explosions. There is an explosion I will remember forever - the one that hit my building. Trembling walls, smell of the sweat and smoke, I felt fear. We walked outside of the building and saw that the half of it was destroyed. We will win!” Kostya, 27, was sleeping on the floor in his apartment on the war’s second day when an explosion rocked the entire building. He moved to the building’s basement and then left Kharkiv a couple days later. The day after he left, a friend called to tell him another rocket struck his building, leaving his apartment in flames. His mother bought an apartment a year ago and is reluctant to leave, so she and his younger sister remain in Kharkiv, a constant worry.
Anna, 35, sits on a bench in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, in front of her mom’s destroyed building where 20 people died in a rocket attack. On March 1, Anna was on the street when she heard a loud explosion, walked toward the sound, and saw a Russian tank firing at civilian apartment buildings. She immediately ran back home, grabbed her rifle and hid in the basement. Soon after, Anna, her mother and other family members escaped to Lviv. She returned to Borodyanka on April 4, two days after the Russians retreated. Upon seeing the ruins of her hometown, “I fell into hysteria,” she said. She cried the whole day, struggling even to speak. She plans to stay in Borodyanka, and prays the government will swiftly rebuild.
“I Maksym Kozhemyak, I am a traumatologist - volunteer in the military hospital. We are saving not only our injured soldiers but also the Russian captives. And it was scary and absolutely unclear how their young 18- or 20-year-old people are destroying and killing our people, our cities and even when they are imprisoned they do not feel any remorse. It is scary as if you are fighting a zombie. I hope they will open their eyes one day.” Maksym, a traumatologist treating civilians since 2003, was asked to volunteer at the military hospital in Zaporizhzhia on the invasion’s first day, and quickly realized how badly his skills were needed. He has been working every day since then and living in the hospital. His wife and daughter have left and are currently in Greece. He treats Ukrainian and Russian soldiers alike. He described the incredible motivation of the Ukrainian soldiers he has treated, even those severely injured who nevertheless are eager to return to the battlefield. He has asked some of the Russians: “Why have you come here? Why are you doing this? They have said nothing. They do not feel remorse,” he says.
Igor and Angelina are educators from occupied Melitopol in southeastern Ukraine. Angelina, a high school principal, was kidnapped by the Russians, carried deeper into Russian territory and held in an unheated garage with other kidnapped victims. Russian troops told Angelina she was sabotaging the education process by being outspoken in her dissent against the occupation. After two days, she and other kidnap victims were blindfolded and pushed into a car. She feared she would be shot, but instead the soldiers left her and a colleague thirty miles from the city with one expired MRE each. They walked back to Melitpol. Her husband Igor taught history at the same school, including about Russian aggression in Ukraine dating back to World War II. “Of course I can’t stay there and teach history now,” he says. The couple was in Zaporizhzhia enroute to Kyiv where they planned to stay with their daughter.
“I really want to end this war. I am very worried about the young men from both sides. At their age they should be hugging girls, not automatic guns.” Galina, 90, sits in with her cat in her living room hours before leaving behind the apartment she has lived in for the past 62 years. Galina feels “divided into pieces” by this war: her mother was Ukrainian, her father Russian and she loves both countries. Born in Leningrad, Russia (now known at St. Petersburg), she attended a university there before getting a job teaching engineering at a school in Kharkiv. She lived through World War II, which she describes as even more brutal, recalling wandering her neighborhood as a child to search for her mother amongst bodies lynched from trees. However, Galina says, at least she knew who the enemy was. Now she doesn’t understand why Russians are shelling civilian buildings. She did not want to leave the home she has lived in since 1961, but her family insisted and finally persuaded her by saying they needed her help taking care of the grandkids.
“Everything will be Ukraine.” Igor, 36, lost his left leg as a result of diabetes two years ago. After a tram stop outside his home was bombed in the heavily shelled Saltivka district in eastern Kharkiv on March 6, a neighbor helped him and his father move into a crowded metro station. While many able-bodied people return to their homes for the occasional shower, Igor fears he cannot move fast enough through this active warzone, so he has been washing himself with wet paper towels. There is only one handicap-accessible toilet, and lying on the floor all day every day is causing chronic back pain. Due to his disability, he is eligible to leave Ukraine, but his father, who is his primary caregiver, is not. Regardless, he says he has no desire to go. “This is my home,” he says. “If I could join the army, I would.”
“Pain because of rejection. The territory of Ukraine cannot be a happy life. Geography is a verdict.” “They robbed my cosmetics. They robbed my work and my plan for my future. The 17th of march is full of pain and disappointment. I have lost my soul and my business and I cannot have a job for now. They took my life, exactly the same people with whom I live. To somebody it’s a war, to somebody it’s a mother.”
"Life in the basement is breaking your psychological health of every person with explosions, problems with communications and so on. But the scariest thing were the arguments with people who are next to you. You can stay absolutely alone. We had a lot of arguments with the people living there and we all felt really bad. I don't want anyone to experience the same.” Oleh, 20, was going to university in Kharkiv when the war broke out. Though from Zaporizhia, he didn’t even try to return home immediately, instead deciding to stay to help organize other students who moved into the dorm’s basement. They cleaned up the space, brought in beds, set up Wifi, erected a wood-burning stove for heat, and organized schedules for guarding and cleaning. They scavenged for food, and at night they removed street signs to make it harder for Russian troops to locate themselves. Describing the paranoia of watching and waiting, Oleh said he began to fear he and the other students were going mad. After a month, he managed to return home to Zaporizhia by train. Now, though still in a warzone, he feels much more free and safe.
“This happened on the 6th of March. I really love my family, my mom, dad and grandma.” Diana, an 18-year-old from Kharkiv, is a trained guitarist and pianist and a competitive boxer. She stayed in Kharkiv with her parents to help care for her disabled grandfather, even though her mother urged her to leave. On March 6, as she was helping prepare dinner in the kitchen of her family’s 9th-floor apartment, the building next door was hit by a bomb dropped from an airplane. The shockwaves blew the balcony door off its hinges. The door hit her in the head, and her head then struck the kitchen counter. She was rushed into emergency surgery, performed as the hospital was under heavy shelling with the lights flickering on and off. She was in a coma for two and a half weeks. Her mom has been living at the hospital since the injury, and Diana’s first words after the coma were, “Is Mom here?” Diana will need to undergo two more surgeries to implant steel plates in her head and a replacement eye socket, so the family expects to have to remain in Kharkiv for another three months. She’s lost parts of her memory and even has trouble recalling with specificity what has happened in the days since she emerged from the coma.
“I really want to have peace on this planet, not dying children. I want all nations to live in peace and to create it everywhere. Peace, peace, peace!” Mykola and Galyna, both 75, fled from the village of Krasnogorivka in Donesk eight years ago with their documents and some clothes after Russian bombs hit a nearby school and house. They rented a flat in Kyiv, waiting for the day they could return to Donesk. Thant day never came and now they they have had to flee again. They still have family in Donesk, and earlier that day they received news that a relative there was killed in a rocket attack.
“I heard her say ‘I really want to live.’ I could never have imagined the cruel aggression of Russia. Ukraine is a friendly country. The victory will be ours. Glory to Ukraine!”
“Hell. They bombed every day.” Afonia, a retired toolmaker, sits in front of his building in the heavily bombarded Saltivka region of Kharkiv on the 60th day of the Russian invasion. Due to cataracts, he has been progressively losing his vision over the past two years. He groans often during the interview because of back pain caused by a fall he took when an explosion went off five yards from him. “I am old…my body doesn’t heal very well,” he says. His building has been hit three times and is without power or water. Humanitarian aid is not reaching him regularly; the last aid he received was four days ago: a can of tomatoes and a roll of toilet paper. But, he says, “I don’t want anything,” adding, “Maybe just to jump from my window of the 16th floor… To live here in this place, it is not a life. It is survival.”
“First in this world and to the citizens of Ukraine and of the world. Peace and good to them. Everything we can rebuild and reinstall but those who are in the skys now are always with us in our hearts and I will always remember them and I wish them well in the kingdom of the sky.” In his completely incinerated apartment, Alexander sits in what was once the living room. The son of a Russian father and a Ukrainian mother, he is one of two tenants who remain in the building with no electricity, water or gas in the heavily bombarded region of Sativka in Kharkiv. He stays to protect his and his neighbors' apartments from looters. He was sheltering in the basement when the bombs hit, and was left with only the clothes he was wearing. The biggest loss was his cat Bim. He recovered some of her remains from the burnt wreckage, put them in a small bowl and made a shrine to her. Daily, he lights candles at this shrine in memory of his cat and everyone he knows and does not know who has died so far in this war. Next to the bowl of bones, he has placed some bread and vodka in a cup in keeping with tradition.
“I would never think that such awful things could happen and could happen to me. If you are going to eat in your own kitchen, Russians just kill you. Our neighbors just went for water and the Russians just killed them. Our house got hit by a grad system. It was awful. Russians are killers they can fight only with civilians who have no weapons.” Alesia, a university economics professor, with her son Sasha and husband Iosher outside their Bucha home where they remained during the entire Russian occupation. The home was purchased by Alesia’s grandparents in 1948 and she has lived here all her life, but because of traumatic experiences since the invasion, they are not sure they will stay. Twenty-five neighbors were killed and another ten are missing. Just down the street, Russian troops took over a strategically located home, killing the whole family who lived there: Two grandparents, mother father, and two children. Russian troops dragged the bodies to the street and set them afire, but the fire only burned their clothes, leaving the bodies nude. The bodies lay on the street for 30 days during the occupation. Alesia and her family could not reach them because of heavy military presence, and Alesia saw desperate dogs picking at their flesh. “We saw them, but we could not do anything,” she says. Another neighbor was killed while gathering water from a street pump. Iosher helped bury this neighbor in his front yard, covering the shallow grave with wooden pallets to prevent dogs from digging up the body, and adorning it with a handmade cross bearing his neighbor’s name. This man left behind a wife and 2-month-old son, who are now in Germany. Alesia describes the occupation’s start: a nearby explosion on March 7 at 10 p.m., that blew debris into the basement room where she was with her son. She huddled over her son as they were both covered in blankets. “After the explosions, there was only only fear and silence,” she recalls, “and then the tanks came.” The family survived with only stored food, which they rationed. They collected rainwater from the roof and boiled it three times to make it drinkable, They made a fire outside their home to boil water and cook food, but did not do this often because they feared the smoke might attract Russian soldiers. Without communications or internet access, the family did not know when the occupation was over, so they waited four days without hearing sounds of fighting before they ventured from their home. Iosher’s family from eastern Ukraine is pro-Russian, and do not believe him when he has described their Bucha experiences. They are now estranged.
Vayla, 67, sits in the communal area between buildings where she and her neighbors cooked and washed their clothes during the Russian occupation of Bucha. She continued going to her factory job during the occupation, but the day she saw two dead civilian men on her way home – one with his bicycle and another in his car – she insisted that her daughter, son-in-law and grandson leave. They escaped to Kyiv and then on to Spain. She, on the other hand, decided to stay. “I am old and I want to be home,” she said. She also didn’t think the war would get so bad, and after it did, she hoped it wouldn’t last. One day her way to work was blocked by a column of Russian tanks. She began to yell. A Russian soldier emerged from a tank and asked what she was doing. “What are you doing?” she said. “Why are you here? You should be giving life to new children.” He let her pass.
“24th is the day of misery for me - the war began. It’s horrible to see your city being destroyed. We were riding in the fear, we saw the moment the Antonov airport exploded with our own eyes. You now understand that there is a war, you see rockets, you lose close people and you worry about your friends. I hope and trust that Ukraine will win. Glory to Ukraine!” Nadiya, 16, fled Kyiv on the invasion’s first day. She and her family stayed two weeks in a small village before moving into a gym-turned-shelter in Lviv. They hope to leave the country.
“I love Ukraine.”
“March 30th at 6:30 am. An explosion rang out. After that, life changed. My husband Silevit Dimitry died. Eternal memory to you.” Oksana and her family sit around the kitchen table in a donated Kyiv apartment. They are from Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine, where in 2014 they survived four days of fighting and occupation. They decided to stay this time, betting that the war would again be short-lived. On March 29, Oksana went to sleep in the basement with her son Mark. Her husband Dima and mother-in-law Natasha, weary of cold and uncomfortable basement nights and feeling relatively secure after several quiet days, decided to sleep upstairs in the apartment. At 6:30 a.m. on March 30, Oksana and Mark were awakened by an explosion. Immediately Mark began to cry. Oksana ran upstairs and tried to pry open the apartment’s front door but could not. In this moment, she knew - without fully knowing - that her husband was dead. The family had been leaving this door unlocked in case a quick evacuation was needed. Emergency workers were able to rescue Natasha unharmed. Recovering Dima’s body took more than 24 hours, he had been crushed by rubble. Oksana, determined to flee Lysychansk as fast as possible to save her son’s life, was by then already with Mark aboard a bus headed to western Ukraine.
"Smile no matter the hardships. Victory will be upon us." - Victoria, 22, a Ukrainian soldier, waits outside the Lviv train station for a night train to Odessa where she will be reunited with her family. Her leg was injured a week earlier in Luhansk after the vehicle she was in rolled over a landmine.
“Horror and hatred to the Russian peace.” Antony says the war is creating chaos and anarchy for Ukrainians throughout the country. Originally from Lebanon, he was living and working in the coastal tourist town of Berdyansk, operating a cafe and renting out rooms, when the Russian soldiers took over. Antony took in a Ukrainian tenant fleeing the fighting in Mariupol, about 45 miles to the northeast. While he was at work, the tenant tied up Antony’s son Misha and mother-in-law Olena, held them at gunpoint and then locked them in the bathroom. When Antony returned from work, the man beat him, and eventually found and stole their life savings – the equivalent of $10,000 in cash. There was no way, in the wartime disarray, to achieve justice. Antony and his family left for Zaporizhzhia.
“When I go here to this place, I feel in my soul sadness and upset about my school, that’s why I want this war to end. We will win.” Stepan, an eighth grader, sits on a playground swing behind his school, which he describes as “almost like a home to me.” Most of his friends have departed Kharkiv, but he has no desire to leave. He says he has become accustomed to the sound of shelling and can now distinguish incoming from outgoing. This makes him feel safer. He is looking forward to once again playing football with his friends and attending school dances.
Marina visits the grave of her father Mykola in an Irpin cemetery. Mykola was an ambulance driver who, during the first week of the war, tirelessly picked up victims from Hostomel, another suburb northwest of Kyiv where the fighting was especially heavy at the time. On March 4th, Mykola, with his wife and two other family members decided to leave Irpin for their dacha on Irpin’s outskirts. Marina was on the phone with her father as they were evacuating. Only one kilometer from their home, their car came under fire, apparently from Chechen paramilitary fighters known as Kadyrovites. A bullet stuck her father’s head, passing through his skull and then wounding Marina’s mother. Marina knew immediately that her dad had died. The surviving family were allowed to leave, but not to take the car or Mykola’s body. Marina’s cousin, also in the car at the time, died two weeks later because he could not get insulin in occupied Irpin. Marina recovered her father’s body one month later by identifying the car’s license plate. Mykola’s burnt body inside car was unrecognizable, but DNA tests verified his identity.