Living with War
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5K from the Frontline is a visual storytelling project about the war in Ukraine. It is also about something more universal, attempting to show the world what it’s like to live amid military violence every day.
The human capacity to adapt to change extends much farther than we imagine from our comfortable, peaceful standpoint. People who live where wars are fought become accustomed to rocket strikes, air raid sirens, shortages, blackouts, and the buzzing of attack drones over their roofs as they put their children to sleep.
Becoming accustomed to these things doesn’t mean they enjoy them or consider them normal. Resilience is not something to be celebrated. Yet it is the only survival strategy left for those who have been failed by states, international institutions, humanist values, and other mechanisms that society has developed in an often-futile attempt to prevent violence in the name of political ambitions or twisted ideologies.
Ever since Ukraine was first invaded by Russia in 2014, millions of people in this country have been learning to inhabit war—to make it their living environment. In the process, they discovered that war looks very different from the inside than it does from the outside.
Most people think they know what war is. We’ve seen it thousands of times in movies and news coverage: tanks, soldiers, explosions, crying women, and pitiable refugees. These images are so familiar, they’ve become trite. But guess what? Most of the time, war does not look like this. Most of the time, it seems too normal, too much like peace, to catch the eye of journalists and filmmakers. Often, only a tiny detail, like a tape in the shape of an X across a window or an unusual emptiness in the street, reveals that something is off. Yet this seeming normality of the abnormal—this integration of horror and the mundane—is what tells the most poignant story of the human condition during war.
It also reminds us that war does not happen to some distant, constructed other—a group of people imagined as perpetually miserable or undignified. It happens to people just like us, who do all the normal things people do—cook, clean, text their relatives, drink coffee, go for walks—even under extreme circumstances. Indeed, it can happen to anyone. Our goal is to show this side of war in order to make the experience of those who live through it more relatable.
We are a team of two: a British-Swedish photojournalist, Anastasia Taylor-Lind, and a Ukrainian writer, Alisa Sopova, who have been reporting together on the war in Ukraine for a decade. Our work focuses primarily on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine because this is where the war started in 2014 and where it has been most violent and destructive ever since. Most of the places featured in 5K from the Frontline through the years—Avdiivka, Marinka, Krasnohorivka, Kurakhove, Toretsk—were destroyed after 2022. Whole towns were reduced to piles of rubble—wastelands of death and destruction in places where millions of people used to live, work, fall in love, raise children, dream, and host family dinners. We continue following these people and their communities through their experiences of loss, displacement, and the struggle to re-establish their shattered lives.
Key Events of Russia’s Invasion
Donbas, a historical region comprising Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (provinces), has been at the heart of Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014, when Kremlin-backed separatists seized control of parts of its territory. The conflict escalated into a full-scale war in 2022, with Russia attempting to take full control of Donbas. Fierce battles—including those in Mariupol, Siverskodonetsk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Pokrovsk—have turned the region into the most devastated frontline of the invasion.
In the spring and summer of 2014, Russian-backed separatists seized control of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, declaring them the "Donetsk People’s Republic" and the "Luhansk People’s Republic."
Two ceasefire agreements were implemented in an attempt to end the violence: the First Minsk Agreement (September 5, 2014) and the Second Minsk Agreement (February 12, 2015). They failed to stop the war and instead froze the conflict, leaving Donbas divided and its population in limbo for the next 8 years.
On February 21, 2022, Russia recognized the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people's republics” as independent states, using this as a pretext to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine 3 days later.
After failing to capture the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and carry out a regime change to occupy the entire country, Russian troops regrouped in Donbas in April 2022, making the region ground zero of the war once again. This marked the beginning of the second phase of the full-scale invasion, with the Battle of Donbas as its centerpiece.
- Over the following 3 years (2022-2025), the war in Donbas has been characterized by fierce battles, heavy Russian losses, and slow territorial gains. Through this grinding warfare, Russia gradually took control of many major cities and towns in the region, including Mariupol, Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Kurakhove.
As of 2025, Russia controls about 80% of Donbas and aspires to capture the rest, while Ukrainian forces continue to resist under increasingly difficult conditions.
The “June 2014” line of control represents June 18, 2014. Other depicted lines of control represent the first day of the given month. Content may not reflect National Geographic's map policy.
The Actual War Here and Now Always Seems Impossible—Until It Is Not
There are things you think would never happen to you, like an airplane crash, or a war. No matter how many historical or fictional accounts you might have read, actual war—here and now—always seems impossible, until it isn’t. Even as tension builds and preparations are made, we believe, until the very last moment, that it’s only a political game, a show of saber-rattling that will stop as soon as the point is made. Because who, in our age of enlightenment, would drop bombs on living people?
So, when the first bombs are indeed dropped, it always comes as an existential shock, no matter how many military experts predicted it was inevitable. There is shock, panic, and denial. Yes, it’s gone too far, but surely it can’t last longer than a couple of weeks, everyone thinks. In Donbas in 2014, and then in the rest of Ukraine in 2022—just like in numerous wars before and after—people were frantically packing suitcases, stocking up on groceries, queuing at gas stations and ATMs, bracing for the rough couple of weeks ahead until everything was settled.
But once violence is unleashed, it is never settled in 2 weeks. As time passes and things only worsen, a new reality emerges. You realize that, as long as you are alive, you must eat, sleep, brush your teeth, and care for your loved ones. Gradually, this list extends. If you used to run before the war, one day you decide you might as well go for a jog rather than stare at the wall in despair. If you enjoy reading, knitting, or baking, you return to your hobby to distract yourself—to the accompaniment of explosions outside. If you still have your job, you continue working, because money won’t earn itself, even during war. Eventually, explosions, along with tanks and armed soldiers on the streets of your city, become the backdrop to your life, rather than its center stage. Nobody can live in a state of emergency indefinitely. You have to move on.
In Ukraine, we have been observing this process for years. Here is just one example. Since February 24, 2022, Natalia, an IT specialist from Kyiv, has been uploading a photo a day of her life to social media. For the first month, these photos were almost identical: black-and-white images of her family and cats cuddled up on floor mattresses in a small room somewhere in western Ukraine, where they sought safety. On day 27, Natalia posted her first photo in color. Day 35, a photo from a park. Day 63, an apricot tree in blossom. Day 88, her kitchen table with prosecco and cheese. Now that the day count has passed the 1,000 mark, Natalia’s daily photos almost look like snapshots of middle-class life elsewhere in Europe–except they are not.
Social scientists who study war often describe civilians’ stubborn insistence on going about their daily lives—even under the most horrible, surreal circumstances—as peaceful resistance: the refusal to let violence define their lives, a concept we seek to capture and understand through our work in Ukraine.

The Grinik family preparing a barbecue at a weekend picnic near Avdiivka, 2019.

Elena Dyachkova (center) and Aleksander Dokalenko having dinner with their neighbor Valentina at home in Avdiivka, 2018.

Vladimir watering his kitchen garden in the suburbs of Lyman, 2023.
“Don’t photograph us drinking wine! What will people say?”
“Oh no, Anastasia, don’t photograph us drinking wine! What will people say? It’ll look like we’re having fun during wartime.” We’ve had exchanges like this countless times while in Ukraine.
Since 2018, we’ve returned to Donbas every year, meeting the same families who gradually became our friends—much more than subjects of reporting. Often, these reunions took the form of garden parties, barbecues, and picnics. How else are you supposed to spend time with friends in rural Ukraine during the summer?
This is reality, plain and simple. Yet it doesn’t fit the stereotype. As audiences, we expect war victims to always exhibit distress, suffering, and a somber demeanor. But the war in Ukraine has lasted for more than a decade. Is it possible for a human being to experience only negative emotions for that long? This expectation becomes a kind of moral prescription, denying people who live through war the right to make the best of their hard lives or to experience genuine emotions at all.
Ukrainians affected by the war are well aware of this unspoken rule. They often hesitate to be photographed in moments of joy or celebration, fearing they’ll be judged as immoral or inappropriate. But contrary to this convention, we see such moments as manifestations of strength and resilience.

A destroyed bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River in Bohorodychne, 2023.

A medic from the Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital, whose nom de guerre is Van Damme, at a base in Sloviansk, 2023.
We overheard this conversation between Liudmila, a retired nurse from Toretsk, and her three-year-old granddaughter in the summer of 2018. At the time, many parents and grandparents in Donbas tried to conceal the true nature of the sounds of shelling that could often be heard in frontline towns, telling children little white lies instead. They always hoped the war would end soon; in the meantime, they tried to shield their kids’ childhoods from its shadow.
Those hopes never came true. After 2022, the violence reached such a high intensity that it has become nearly impossible to hide it from children. Yet Ukrainians still do their best to create space for childhood. Underground schools have been built, puppet theaters perform even during blackouts, and kids’ birthday parties are booked weeks in advance.
Some might say it’s wrong to have children during a war. But you can’t postpone your life forever, especially when the war has lasted 10 years with no end in sight. Is it immoral to stay in Ukraine with children? People’s circumstances vary greatly, and not everyone has the option to leave. In any case, many of the parents we’ve met agree that in a situation of deep insecurity and unpredictability—as war is—caring for little ones brings hope and meaning to life.

Homegrown vegetables and pickles at the Grinik family’s picnic near Avdiivka, 2019.
A walk through a minefield
According to the UN, Ukraine is currently the most heavily mined country in the world. About a quarter of its territory is potentially contaminated with unexploded ordnance. So, what do the people who inhabit this land do? They often continue using it—walking through the minefields, planting in them, hiking, and foraging in the mined forests.
In our experience, this choice is one of the hardest to explain to those who haven’t lived through a war themselves. As soon as we mention walking through the minefields, someone always jumps in with a comment that such people are suicidal or have lost their mind from trauma.
Everything we’ve seen and heard over the years in Ukraine suggests a very different explanation. By using mined lands, Ukrainians reclaim their intimate connection with their native landscape that has been violently taken away from them for military use. When you desperately need to reconstruct your world, shattered by the war, the ability to use the familiar path to the post office or the in-laws’ house—the path you’ve been using all your life—is worth the risk.
Often, this takes place in several stages. Initially, locals are afraid to even approach the militarized area. But if the active fighting in the area is over and the place remains unpoliced for long enough, they get closer and closer until someone dares to walk and make a path through it, which marks the symbolic reappropriation of the space and its physical return to everyday use.

A teacher moderating an end-of-year exam at Toretsk Musical College, 2018.
Why Do People Stay So Close to the Front Line?
Why Don’t They Leave?
Stories about everyday life in the war zone must be begging this question, because we are always asked it. Sometimes, we respond with a counter-question: “Are you sure you’re happy where you are? Why don’t you leave?”
Indeed, the reasons people stay are as diverse as the circumstances of human life can be.
Some have family members who are elderly, disabled, immobile, or simply too stubborn to leave, whom they cannot abandon.
Some have what, under normal circumstances, we would admirably call a life’s work—a family store or a dog shelter they own; a house they’ve built with their own hands or a garden they tend; a school, a hospital, or a museum they’ve managed for decades. Often, such people bear responsibility not only for their own devotion to the cause but also for others who depend on it–employees, people, animals, or artworks in their care.
Some cannot afford to pay rent. Both inside and outside Ukraine, people displaced by war can expect to be housed for free in the short term. Afterward, they must face the real estate market—an impossible task for many low-income Ukrainians, especially retirees whose only income is the state pension.
Some are more afraid of leaving than of staying. War is scary, but so is displacement. In the face of horrible events, it’s only natural to feel safer at home than in a strange place. Indeed, some people are too attached to their home, land, or community to abandon it. “If everyone leaves, what will remain of our town?” In Donbas, we heard this sentiment countless times.
Most people have not one but several such reasons. Anyone reading this could likely relate to some combination of these circumstances in their own life.
But isn’t war an extreme enough event to make one forget about work, financial troubles, or sentimental attachments? The thing is, as a first-hand experience, war is not really an event. Rather, it’s a series of events, of varying degrees of extremity, intermingled with periods of relative calm, hope, and uncertainty. It’s not a spot on a timeline but a factor that eventually becomes a backdrop to one’s life. Unlike a single episode of violence, such as a terrorist act, war is stretched out in time, allowing people and communities to adjust. As the initial shock subsides, all the other, more mundane and recognizable factors of human life return into play, gradually outweighing fear and the need for safety.

A polling station during the parliamentary elections in Marinka, 2019.
What it’s like to run a hospital in a besieged city
We don’t have a single photo of Vitalii Sytnik, the chief physician of Avdiivka Central City Hospital. He always hesitated to be photographed when we stopped by his office during our reporting trips to check on the town's healthcare situation. But he didn’t hesitate to remain at his post throughout the fierce battle for Avdiivka, which lasted 4 months. He finally evacuated, along with whatever was left of the hospital’s equipment, just a couple of weeks before the town fell under the complete control of Russian occupying forces in February 2024.
Eight staff members, including Vitalii, stayed in Avdiivka until the very end. They lived in the hospital building and did everything together—chopped wood, carried water, cooked on an improvised stove, and slept in the basement. During the day, they worked in the hospital wards, even though it was extremely dangerous—the building sustained several direct hits, and it was a miracle no one was injured.
Over those months, the hospital employees became like a family, Vitalii told us later in his office at a Kyiv clinic, where he found work after Avdiivka was occupied. He also recalled what his job looked like at the time:
“A car arrives from a neighboring village. People step out carrying a girl, about 7 years old, who is obviously already dead. We cannot even try to resuscitate her because her rib cage is smashed. We tell the family, and they say, ‘Wait, there’s another one.’
They take us to the car, and inside is another little girl in a puddle of blood—also dead.”
The doctor paused for a moment, looked at us with anger in his eyes, and added:
“This girl’s face will be in front of my eyes for the rest of my life.”

Parishioners participating in a procession at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Avdiivka, 2018.

Viktor Lebedev and his mother, Elena, at their house in Opytne, 2019.

Residents of Lyman waiting outside the hospital for the daily distribution of hot food by World Central Kitchen, 2022.
People whose land is being fought over perceive it differently than we do. For most of their lives, it was just an ordinary place, not a war zone, and that’s how they still know it. Since 2014, the frontline has arbitrarily divided Donbas, cutting communities to the quick. Until the full-scale invasion, this imposed boundary remained somewhat porous, and people found ways to travel across it and stitch their divided lives back together.
In 2019, we met Victoria, a young woman from the occupied city of Donetsk. Her employer required her to move to a small town on the Ukrainian side of the frontline, but she regularly traveled back to visit her family. To describe her situation, she used the metaphor of a home that one is suddenly no longer in control of:
“Imagine you wake up one morning to find that someone has randomly divided your apartment into two separate zones. Suddenly, you must go through a checkpoint just to use your own bathroom. A gunman is sitting on your carpet in dirty boots, and you’re required to show him your ID and explain why you need to poop in your own toilet. Moreover, your husband happened to be in the kitchen when it all happened. So now, you’re technically enemies, and reconnecting as a family becomes a whole problem.”

A Ukrainian soldier at a checkpoint beneath a highway overpass in Pisky, 2018.

A woman in Pokrovsk inspecting a coal delivery to her home, 2022.
Where most of us see just another picture of destruction, they still see home
Conventional wisdom says it’s petty to care about material possessions during wartime, because the only thing that truly matters is human life. However, the lived experience of war reveals that things are far more complex. It’s always heartbreaking to follow people as they show you what used to be their homes. For most of us, it’s just another image of destruction. For them, it’s a desecrated space that was once safe and private. Where we see only broken walls, collapsed ceilings, and a mess of mutilated furniture and wallpaper, they still see their homes:
“We bought this carpet on our trip to Egypt…”
“They were extinguishing cigarette butts on my favorite chair…”
“The artillery launcher was parked right on my wife’s flowerbed…”
Many Ukrainians who can no longer live in their destroyed houses near the frontlines keep coming back whenever they can. They tidy up what remains of their homes and tend to their gardens—even if it doesn’t make practical sense.
“Personally, I think we should have abandoned this house long ago, but I don’t prevent my husband from visiting it,” one woman explained. “I feel like it would deprive him of the last hope he has of returning to our normal life.”

A shelled house in Opytne, a suburban village in the gray zone between Avdiivka and Donetsk, 2019.
Donbas, as we know it, is a product of the Industrial Revolution. Its name is a blend word meaning Donetsk Coal Basin, a toponym that reflects how this region has been defined for centuries by extractive industries. Before industrialization, until the late 17th century, Donbas was known as The Wild Field—a steppe borderland between several empires, sparsely inhabited by nomadic tribes and, later, Cossacks. Its arid climate and harsh winds made it ill-suited for permanent, large-scale settlement.
With the rise of industrial production and coal mining, a complex infrastructure gradually emerged to support numerous factories, metallurgical plants, and the influx of people who came to work in them. Dozens of large and small dams were built along the Siverskyi Donets River to provide a steady water supply to the growing industrial region. Forests were planted to shield cities from the relentless steppe winds. But this intensive industrial development came at a steep cost to the natural environment. Even before the outbreak of war, Donbas was considered an ecological disaster zone due to persistent air, soil, and water pollution.
The environmental degradation was so severe that it helped shape the identity of the region’s roughly 7 million residents in the early 21st century. Most notably, locals developed a cultural attachment to slag heaps—piles of mining waste dumped across the landscape. Affectionately nicknamed the Donbas mountains or even the Donbas pyramids, these formations were at once symbols of environmental ruin and landmarks rich with cultural meaning.
This paradox must be considered when evaluating the environmental impact of war in Donbas. That impact is twofold: on one hand, a decade of warfare has turned vast areas into scorched earth; on the other, war has disrupted the extractive industries that caused decades of ecological harm. With coal mines, factories, and cities destroyed—many with no hope of being rebuilt—some of these areas may slowly revert to their natural environmental state, similar to the process that unfolded in the Chornobyl exclusion zone.
All wars eventually end, and in the long term, the collapse of dams and the cessation of industrial emissions may prove beneficial for the environment. But what would this transformation mean for the millions of people who call this region home? With the global decline of coal-based industries, there is little economic justification to rebuild Donbas in its previous form. Without cities, industry, and the infrastructure that sustains them, it won’t be Donbas anymore—it will be The Wild Field. The steppe may heal from the wounds of war, but in its natural state, it won’t be able to accommodate the population that has been living here for centuries.
Rivers flow across frontlines, carrying in their waters the consequences of the war
The Siverskyi Donets River and its tributaries flow through the Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk provinces—parts of Ukraine most heavily affected by the war. These waters carry high concentrations of lead, cadmium, nickel, ammonia nitrogen, and nitrites. Some of this contamination originates from diesel and other petroleum products spilled from sunken military vehicles and bombed-out oil reservoirs. Additional pollution comes from sewage and industrial treatment facilities that have been damaged or destroyed and are no longer functioning. Burning forests, farms, and factories add further to the grim mix in the water.
The statistics would be even worse if water samples could be collected closer to the front lines. The Siverskyi Donets Basin Department of Water Resources, the public agency responsible for managing and monitoring water use in the region, can access rivers only about 10 to 15 kilometers from zones of active fighting. Roughly half of the water bodies the department is tasked with monitoring are under occupation, making them inaccessible.
In September 2024, while we were speaking with the head of the department, Sergii Trofanchuk, a Russian rocket struck 3 kilometers from his office in Sloviansk, igniting a supermarket. Despite the danger, his staff continues to collect water samples and analyze them in the lab. Like many organizations in frontline areas, the department must maintain a delicate balance between continuing its operations and ensuring the safety of its employees. As is the case for many public officials in the Donetsk province, Sergii knows all too well that every store closure and every state agency withdrawal is another step toward the abandonment of the city and its residents.

Low water levels in the Oskol River Reservoir near the village of Yatskivka, after Russian forces partially destroyed the dam, 2023.

Tape marking a path through a wheat field near Lyman, cleared of unexploded ordnance by Emergency Services deminers, 2023.

New recruits from the 80th Airborne Brigade during training drills in the Bakhmut area, a few days before deployment to frontline positions, 2023.
Torn from Their Families and Homes, Refugees Face an Uneasy Choice Between Safety and Everything They Love
Until the full-scale invasion, when Russian aggression in Ukraine was largely limited to Donbas, the war was often referred to as invisible or forgotten. The people displaced by it did not qualify as refugees and were not welcome anywhere.
Much changed after February 24, 2022. In the early days of the invasion, images of exhausted, fearful women queuing at Ukraine’s western borders, clutching children, waiting to cross to safety, became iconic in media coverage of the war. Many Western countries offered an unusual degree of support and hospitality. To outside observers, it might have seemed like a happy ending. But for the refugees, it was only the beginning of a cycle of displacement—a chronic condition of uncertainty and precarity.
Many Ukrainians abroad struggle financially and find it difficult to integrate into host societies. They report being consumed by harrowing news from home and overwhelmed by survivor’s guilt for those left behind. Most significantly, they suffer from separation from their loved ones. From the outset of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine restricted male citizens aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country. Intended to preserve the nation’s mobilization potential, the policy has also created painful and often irreparable divisions in millions of Ukrainian families. Displaced women and children are left on their own, facing the prospect of indefinite separation from their husbands, fathers, and sons.
Torn from their families and homes, refugees face an uneasy choice between safety, on the one hand, and everything they love, on the other. Many choose the latter or vacillate, setting themselves up for repeated displacement. A report by The UN Refugee Agency describes border-crossing patterns in and out of Ukraine as “pendular,” noting that people tend to move back and forth rather than leave the country permanently. The hesitations of Ukrainians who try to navigate the precarious dynamics of displacement and family separation mirror this.
Some women describe the choice between leaving, staying, or returning as a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. Natalia, from Kyiv, who spent 2 years in Germany with her young daughter, put it this way: “If you leave, you feel like a coward, abandoning the nation in times of hardship. If you stay, they say you’re a bad mother who exposes her child to danger.” Eventually, Natalia returned home to reunite with her husband—despite nightly bombardments and constant fear for her daughter’s life.
Like so many Ukrainians, Natalia found herself in a situation where no choice felt right—and whatever decision you make, you’re likely to face harsh judgment. In a society living through the trauma of war, public debate often becomes heated, and it is easy to be labeled a “bad” citizen. Those who leave face moral scrutiny and are often perceived as cowards seeking comfort abroad. Those who remain in front-line towns—or especially those who have lived under Russian occupation—are frequently stigmatized as possible collaborators or enemy sympathizers.

A heavily damaged apartment building in Lyman, 2022.
What does a refugee look like?
Can they be well-dressed? Can they own an SUV? Can they have a gel manicure? Can they practice yoga? Can they go out for brunch? Can they talk back?
It feels good to help someone who looks pitiful and subdued—someone who has nothing we have and who will be grateful for any crumbs from our table. But if a refugee looks too much like a regular person, we may start to wonder: what kind of refugee is this?
The answer is that a refugee is a person just like us—someone who may have had a normal life just a few weeks ago and then lost their home due to violence. Losing a home is bad enough; it doesn’t mean losing every attribute of one’s prewar life. Spending limited money on manicures or eating out is often not a sign of inappropriate luxury but an attempt to cope, preserve dignity, and remind oneself that they’re still the same person they were before everything changed for the worse.
When we overlook this and expect refugees to look and behave the way they do in movies or mass media representations, we contribute to a harmful form of othering—a mindset that makes war and killing more acceptable. After all, it’s easier to justify violence against people who seem fundamentally different from us.
Many displaced Ukrainians, both abroad and in the relatively peaceful western provinces of Ukraine, face pressure to conform to these stereotypes. Often, that pressure builds to the point where they feel unwelcome and choose to return to places where missiles fall from the sky, but they are not looked down upon.

A patient preparing for medical evacuation by the Ukrainian Red Cross from a hospital in Sloviansk. To keep track of evacuees and their belongings, each person was issued a numbered tag that matched their luggage, 2022.

Kirill Grinik (left) playing with relatives in a car parked in the yard of his new home in the Poltava province, 2024.

The road through Dolyna, a village that was razed to the ground after months on the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, 2022.

Elena Dyachkova and her grandson Nikita in an apartment in Slupsk, Poland, where they fled to escape the full-scale Russian invasion, 2022.
“My Life”—that’s what Svetlana from Donetsk calls a plastic shopping bag in which she keeps her documents, photographs, cash, family memorabilia, and other small items she wants to preserve amid wartime insecurity. If she ever has to flee her home, she can grab it quickly, everything important is in one place.
We don’t look at our family photo albums very often. In the age of smartphones, they might even seem obsolete. Yet they preserve memories of childhood and family life that can’t be recovered if the albums are lost. Refugees who manage to save their photo albums, often at the expense of leaving behind more practical items, consider themselves lucky. After 10 years of war in Ukraine, this has become a piece of shared wisdom about how to survive, passed down by word of mouth.
In the summer of 2022, we called Alisa’s aunt, Elena, to check if she was okay after a series of missile strikes hit her neighborhood in Donetsk that morning. Elena was unharmed, but she mentioned that she had started packing photographs and her son’s sports diplomas in case they needed to flee.
“I heard of so many people regretting not taking family photos with them,” she said. “And I thought that, indeed, when those old photos are gone, it makes you feel like there’s no evidence of your life before the war. Like your past has been erased.”

New recruits from the 80th Airborne Brigade take a break from training drills in the Bakhmut area, 2023.
Gender stereotype: Are all men soldiers and all women victims?
The gendered dimension of war might seem rather obvious: a highly masculine realm where women’s roles are reduced to that of victims. Yet when it comes to war, the obvious is often deceptive; and deception is often harmful when human lives are at stake.
In political, humanitarian, and mass media discourse about war, the phrase women and children has become synonymous with civilians. We are accustomed to seeing images of suffering women and children in conflict zones. The question we fail to ask is: where are the men? The answer is that, often, civilian men are either dead or in hiding to avoid conscription or summary execution. The women, victimized though they may be, are alive and posing for the photographer. Anyone with firsthand experience of war will tell you that women have a much better chance of survival than men.
The implicit assumption that all men are soldiers and all women are civilian victims underlies their treatment. Women are viewed as deserving of protection (whether that protection is always genuine or effective is another question). Men are rounded up, shot by the enemy, or conscripted and sent to the front lines either by their governments or by occupying forces, regardless of consent. Boys who look too mature for their age, elderly people, individuals with disabilities, and transgender women—all are swept up as men in the fog of war. Although many men are willing to confront the enemy, the rigid gendered framework affords them little choice in this life or death matter.
In the end, a seemingly innocuous stereotype intended to safeguard women and children ends up depriving civilian men of protection—and women of the agency to choose active resistance or to fight in the war.

Olga Grinik (center) with extended family at her new home in the Poltava province after being displaced from Avdiivka, 2024.

Kirill Grinik at home in Avdiivka, 2019.

Kirill Grinik sleeping in his new home in the Poltava province, 2023.

The Griniks and their extended family at a lakeside picnic in the Poltava province, 2023.
Pacifism is a Privilege
Russia’s war against Ukraine has tested not only Ukraine’s will to live and resist but also some of the assumptions about war and peace that we often take for granted.
One of these assumptions is resilience. As Ukrainians’ resilience has become a media trope in recent years, it might be time to ask, as some social scholars do, whether resilience is truly something to be celebrated. The problem with resilience is that it’s not a choice. People are forced to practice it when they have no other option but to survive under impossible conditions. Perhaps, instead of admiring the resilience of Ukrainians or other suffering communities, we should ask why they are suffering and how we can help end that suffering, rather than praising their ability to endure it with increasing stoicism.
Another such assumption is peace. Nearly all of us—with a few deplorable exceptions—agree that peace is preferable to war. But not everyone is in a position to choose peace. Pacifism is not only an admirable moral stance—it is also a privilege. To advocate for peace over war, you must be in the position of the aggressor, because only the aggressor has the option to choose between the two. When you are the victim, your choices are reduced to surrendering, living under occupation, or being murdered. Another option is resistance, which is what Ukraine has chosen. But where does resistance fit in the war/peace binary? And when we urge Ukrainians to choose peace, what exactly are we suggesting they choose instead of resistance? Surrender? Occupation? Death?
These are some of the implicit assumptions that lead us into the realm of moral compromise. This compromise allows us to believe we are good, decent people while simultaneously assuming, perhaps unconsciously, that it’s acceptable for some people to be victimized. Why? The reasons, when stated plainly, are absurd: because they are far away and we don’t see them; because they must be somehow different from us; because violence seems normal where they live; because their safety is their own government’s responsibility and if that government fails to protect them, it’s none of our concern.
It is through such assumptions about peace, war, and resilience that global inequality is reproduced, allowing us to comfortably ignore human suffering as long as it remains distant enough—both geographically and through mass media representations that reinforce the othering of those living in and through war.

Olga Grinik with her nephew, Tymofii Tsvetkov, in the Poltava province. Tymofii’s T-shirt reads, “My father serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Since the full-scale Russian invasion, Olga’s husband, Nikolay, has been conscripted into the Ukrainian army, along with all the men in their extended family. 2024.
When it comes to war, the obvious is often deceptive; and deceptive is often deadly when human lives are at stake
Miroslava Grinik (center) with her cousins in the Poltava province, 2023.
