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Living with War

(Scroll to trace the journey)

Anna Dedova at the grave of her son, who died after opening a hand grenade he found near his home in Opytne, 2019.

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.

Olga and Nikolay Grinik with their son, Kirill, daughter, Miroslava, and horse, Lastochka (Swallow), at their home in Avdiivka, 2018.

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“Everything is okay, except our neighbors are a bit noisy.” This is how Olga and Nikolay Grinik used to describe their life 50 meters from a Ukrainian frontline military position on the edge of Avdiivka in 2018.

This young couple always tried to take life as it came. Both their kids were born during the war, and they joked about it. “In 2014, we were sitting without electricity for 3 months because of fighting. Nine months later, our daughter Miroslava was born. In 2016, we had no light for a month, and 9 months later, we got our son Kirill. How else are you gonna entertain yourself in the darkness? Now we pray there’s no electricity outage again,” Nikolay would say.

The family owned the only horse in frontline Avdiivka: 11-year-old Lastochka (Swallow). Lastochka contributed to the family budget: on weekends, the Griniks gave cart rides to kids in downtown Avdiivka. “This is where we stable Lastochka, and this is where soldiers live,” little Miroslava explained, pointing at the trenches and sandbag fortifications at the end of the street.

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.

Ukrainian soldiers building trenches in the countryside near Sloviansk, 2022.

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The landscape of Donbas is all plains. The roads here are usually lined with trees on both sides to protect them from snow in winter and dust in summer. Everyone who lives in the area is familiar with the visual experience of driving as pyramidal poplars, a popular landscaping species in eastern Ukraine, rush past the car windows.

Currently, driving in Donbas—if it’s possible at all—is a turbulent experience, riddled with checkpoints and bumpy detours, and marked by unsettling scenery: occasional ruins in the foreground and columns of smoke on the horizon.

In the summer of 2022, I rode a local bus in the frontline area and found myself on a partially blocked road, in anticipation of a possible attack. A military unit that had built the roadblocks used the local landscape creatively; the road was partly obstructed with heaps of dirt from nearby fields, and roadside poplars had been felled across it. As the driver carefully navigated these improvised obstacles, the passengers gasped in frustration. Seeing poplars that normally stood along the road now lying dead across it somehow felt like stumbling onto the corpses of your neighbors.

“They chopped down the poplars…” someone muttered.

“I guess it has to be this way,” another passenger said quietly, mostly to herself.

War and peace are two competing modes of society, and of both the natural and built environment. Infrastructures are built for peacetime but are taken over, relabeled, and repurposed during war. For us, it is our home, our corner store, our cherry tree planted by a grandfather. In military instructions, these are merely elements of terrain: a firing point, cover, camouflage, a roadblock.

The violence of war takes place on many levels, and the transformation of the environment—from lived to deadly, from familiar to hostile, from a landscape of childhood memories to a landscape of trauma—is deeply painful, yet rarely spoken of.

Anna Dedova at the grave of her son, who died after opening a hand grenade he found near his home in Opytne, 2019.

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This visit was a rare opportunity for Anna to tend to her son’s grave: the cemetery was mined, and civilians were not usually allowed to enter it.

From 2014 to 2022, Opytne was situated in the gray zone between the front lines. At the onset of the war in Donbas—8 years before the full-scale invasion—military violence had already become so intense that locals could not access the graveyard and had to bury family members who died or were killed by shelling in their backyards. Later, they began cooperating with soldiers to arrange a semblance of a proper funeral. A coffin would be placed in a military truck headed toward the cemetery. Relatives would say their goodbyes and stay behind, hoping they’d be able to find the graves later.

That summer, for the first time in 5 years, local activists managed to organize a visit to the Opytne cemetery for those whose relatives were buried there. They secured a relatively safe path to the graves, but the cemetery had become so overgrown that people struggled to find the crosses and gravestones marking the burials. Relatives hurried to cut the grass and restore basic order in the time they had, unsure of when they would have the chance to pay their respects again.

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

Irina Linnik with her husband and newborn baby in downtown Avdiivka, 2019.

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Giving birth is always a moment of challenge and vulnerability for a woman, even in a safe and peaceful environment. For the women of Avdiivka, things became even more complicated after 2014, when the frontline cut through the edge of their town. Those who had the courage and means to start a new life in a safer place gradually began to leave. Eventually, there was only one gynecologist left in the town of 25,000. This doctor was responsible for both the gynecological department and the maternity ward, and she had to work night shifts alone. Overloaded with responsibilities, she was unable to do her job properly. In March 2019, a mother and baby died during labor.

After that incident, the maternity department was closed. The only remaining option for women in labor was to travel 80 kilometers to a hospital in another town. All major roads in and out of Avdiivka were inaccessible due to the war, so locals had to use a dirt road through a field. This road was in such disrepair that people compared traveling on it to riding a washboard. Local authorities did not allow ambulances to use the road for transporting women in labor, so expectant mothers had to arrange their own transportation in advance.

Irina Linnik, pictured here in the summer of 2019, planned everything beforehand. The only thing Irina regretted was that her husband couldn’t accompany her. The family couldn’t afford the cost of the washboard ride for two people, so Irina had to give birth alone.

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.

“Granny, what was that sound?”

“It’s just a little cloud that exploded, sweetie.”

“Why did the little cloud explode?”

“Because it was an angry little cloud!”

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.

Elena Dyachkova and Aleksander Dokalenko gardening in Avdiivka, 2018.

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People in the rural areas of eastern Ukraine heavily rely on subsistence farming, especially in times of war, when jobs, access to goods, and the banking system are unstable. Everyone here knows you can’t depend on the government to survive the winter, but you can fill your cellar with potatoes, canned vegetable salads, pickles, and jams from your garden. Summer is the time to grow, harvest, and preserve.

After 2014, even people whose houses were uninhabitable due to damage returned almost every day to work in their gardens. They cleared debris, filled in shell holes, and continued cultivating the land. Often, they found bullets and shrapnel among their tomato and cucumber beds.

It’s too hot in the middle of the day, so people usually start gardening late in the afternoon. So did Elena and Aleksander when we visited them at their home near the militarized zone in July 2018. Afternoon was also when gunfire typically began at the front line, just a few hundred meters away, followed by shelling later in the evening. But the couple ignored the shooting and continued weeding and watering their plants. They believed it was relatively safe as long as they followed a few simple rules. One such rule: avoid climbing trees—because the higher you are, the greater the chance of being hit by one of the many stray bullets flying around.

Homegrown vegetables and pickles at the Grinik family’s picnic near Avdiivka, 2019.

How to Live in a War Zone:

The Grinik Family

Olga and Nikolay Grinik used to live at the edge of Avdiivka, on a street that was cut off by a military position only fifty meters away from their house. Nikolay worked at the Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant, the biggest employer in town, while Olga took care of their two children. Both kids, Miroslava and Kirill, were born after 2014, so they never saw peace.

The Griniks were well-known in Avdiivka because they owned the only horse in town and gave cart rides to local children on the weekends. They also had a large extended family, with numerous cousins always hanging out in each other’s courtyards. We were quickly accepted into this big family and spent time with them every summer since 2018.

During the full-scale invasion, the Griniks’ house was destroyed in combat, like most of Avdiivka. The family members helped each other relocate to a village in central Ukraine where they had relatives. Eventually, almost all the Grinik men joined the military. Women and children remained on their own, struggling with housing, money, and access to essential services.

Nikolay fishing with his son, Kirill, and daughter, Miroslava near Avdiivka, 2019.

Olga and Kirill chatting with neighbors in Avdiivka, 2018.

Alisa Mountyan, a member of the Grinik extended family, in the Poltava province, 2024.

Miroslava (center) with her extended family in the Poltava province, 2024.

Olga and the children at a picnic in Avdiivka, 2018.

Nikolay grilling meat at a picnic in Avdiivka, 2019.

Olga and her extended family in Avdiivka, 2018.

Valentina Mountyan, Olga’s sister, milking the goat in the Poltava province, 2022.

Miroslava, Kirill, and Olga outside their home in Avdiivka, 2020.

Miroslava in Avdiivka, 2020.

Olga with her daughter, Miroslava (left), and her niece, Angelina Drobysh (right), in the Poltava province, 2022.

Olga drawing water from the well in the Poltava province, 2023.

Miroslava playing at school in the Poltava province, 2024.

Miroslava reading her school book in the Poltava province, 2024.

Kirill (right) at school in the Poltava province, 2024.

Alisa Mountyan at kindergarten in the Poltava province, 2024.

Olga in the Poltava province, 2023.

Nikolay riding his horse, Lastochka (Swallow), in Avdiivka, 2018.

Tymofii Tsvetkov in the Poltava province after his family were displaced from Avdiivka, 2024.

Olga Grinik and her extended family in Avdiivka, 2021.

Preparations for Orthodox Epiphany celebration at the reservoir in Karlivka, 2021.

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In the Orthodox Christian tradition, the holiday of Epiphany commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River and is closely associated with water. On this day, priests bless water believed to acquire healing qualities. The most famous and widely observed Epiphany tradition is ablution in ponds and rivers—even in the depths of winter, sometimes through ice holes.

This celebration in the war-stricken eastern region of Donbas was organized by an unlikely alliance between the Church and the local water-supply company, Voda Donbasu. Before the full-scale invasion, water blessing and ablution took place at a large reservoir near the village of Karlivka. This reservoir supplied people on both sides of the conflict–government-controlled territories and the self-proclaimed “republics.” From there, water flowed into the breakaway territories and, through them, all the way down to Mariupol, which was under government control at the time.

The shared water flow forced the warring sides into cooperation to maintain infrastructure and repair facilities damaged by shelling. Voda Donbasu was the only enterprise operating on both sides of the front line. On Epiphany, the unifying power of the water supply took on even deeper meaning. The water blessed in the reservoir was believed to carry its healing qualities through the entire network of pipes–bringing blessings to everyone in the region, regardless of which side of the front line they lived on.

Following the full-scale invasion, the front line shifted dramatically. The Karlivka Reservoir and the infrastructure that sustained it were heavily damaged. The decades-long tradition of Epiphany water blessing at this site has now come to an end.

A warning sign beside the dirt track that runs through a minefield between Avdiivka and Opytne, 2021.

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For 8 years, this improvised road was the only way to reach the suburban village of Opytne. Residents relied on it for most of their essential needs: using the ATM, sending or receiving mail, buying bread, seeing a doctor, or finding a stable mobile signal to make a call. None of these basic services had been available in Opytne since the war began.

It took about ten minutes by car to get to the town. There was only one car in the village, Rodion Lebedev’s yellow van, and he generously gave rides to his neighbors. Still, in many cases, people had no choice but to travel by bicycle or on foot. Walking through the field took about 40 minutes. Regardless of the mode of transportation, the road was accessible only when the ground was dry. During rainfall, or in early spring when the snow melted, people in Opytne often found themselves cut off from the rest of the world.

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.

Radiologist Zinaida Slyshaieva (left) and her colleague examining X-rays at Toretsk Central City Hospital, 2018.

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When we think of war-related damage to civilian infrastructure, the first thing that comes to mind is the physical impact of shelling and bombing. While targeting civilian buildings is no doubt a problem, there were many less obvious but no less harmful consequences of the war in Donbas before 2022 that often went underreported. One such issue was the disruption of the region’s healthcare network, which caused much trouble for people in frontline towns but went largely unnoticed by outside observers.

All the best hospitals, research centers, equipment, and specialists remained in Donetsk, outside of government control and inaccessible to civilians on the Ukrainian side of the frontline. While they could get primary and medium-level medical help in small towns, cases like brain surgery or oncology treatment that would have normally been sent to Donetsk were now transferred to other parts of the country, causing many bureaucratic obstacles, extra expenses, and lost time for patients.

This was not the only gap that disconnected doctors and patients in the war zone from the rest of the country. When we visited the Central City Hospital in Toretsk in the summer of 2018, the X-ray lab was operating in emergency mode: one of the radiography machines had broken, and nobody in the town could repair it. The only technician qualified to do it was in Kyiv, but he was too afraid to travel to Toretsk, where the sounds of shooting and shelling could be heard daily. At the same time, about 800 people continued to work in the hospital, most of them women.

Alina and Igor Leschina’s wedding at the community center in Avdiivka, 2018.

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At the edge of Avdiivka, there used to be a community center, and next to it, a minefield. The minefield separated the town from Donetsk International Airport, a major battlefield during the first phase of the war.

Despite being so close to the frontline, the community center was actively used for sports and creative activities. Wedding ceremonies were also held there because the registry office was housed in two small and dark rooms in a shelled building down the street, a far cry from a festive setting.

On July 27, 2018, we witnessed the wedding of Alina and Igor at the community center. The hall was decorated with an arch of artificial flowers and a red carpet for the occasion. The ceremony was conducted by a state registrar, a charming lady. After signing their marriage certificate, the bride and groom, according to tradition, bowed to their parents. “Now that you have a family of your own, don’t forget to call your parents and visit them,” the registrar said.

In frontline Avdiivka, the registrar's words were especially timely, as many young people tended to leave for safer places in search of opportunities while their parents and grandparents stayed behind. Earlier that day, doctors at the local hospital told us they often dealt with older people who died alone while no one could get in touch with their relatives.

As the wedding procession was leaving the parking lot, two armed soldiers entered the minefield on their way to their positions.

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.

Tatiana Batskalyova caring for her 90-year-old mother-in-law, Lira, in Avdiivka, 2019.

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Before the first outbreak of the war in 2014, both women lived in a family house in the suburban village of Opytne, between Donetsk and Avdiivka. They had to flee after their street became the frontline, and a powerful explosion almost buried Lira alive under the wreckage. Altogether, the house sustained three direct artillery hits.

They moved to an apartment in Avdiivka that belonged to Tatiana’s daughter. This apartment was also damaged by shelling and repaired by the women on their own. “My daughter has a real talent! She fixed it so nicely, you could never tell there was a huge hole in this wall,” Tatiana would say proudly.

Her husband, Aleksander, chose to rebel against the war’s indignity in his own way. Like many people in eastern Ukraine, he refused to leave their demolished house. He continued living in the basement—the only surviving part of the building—and cultivating the garden. Every day, Aleksander rode a bike through the minefield separating Opytne from Avdiivka to visit his wife. Tatiana packed him a meal, as the house no longer had a kitchen.

In 2022, Avdiivka itself turned into a fierce battlefield. Tatiana evacuated Lira, already immobile, who was nestled among bottles filled with hot water to keep her warm. Soon, Lira died in their new refuge, a rental in Western Ukraine. Aleksander remained in Opytne, and the family ended up permanently separated by the frontline, with no clear prospects of reunification.

People seeking humanitarian aid and compensation gather near a government office in downtown Marinka, 2019.

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At the time, over 1,000 apartment buildings and 12,000 private houses were damaged or destroyed on the government-controlled side of the frontline. About half of them remained unrepaired. Very few people bothered requesting compensation for their housing from the state because the process was restrictively complicated. It involved multiple court hearings, and the chances of a positive outcome were nearly impossible. Ukraine’s official position was that, since Russia was to blame for the war, all claims should be addressed across the border.

To a greater degree, people relied on international humanitarian organizations, some of which ran programs aimed at reconstructing damaged housing. However, multiple restrictions also applied here. Those whose windows were blown out by explosions were likely to get new ones, but people whose houses were severely damaged or located close to the frontline usually had their claims rejected.

A polling station during the parliamentary elections in Marinka, 2019.

Maria Horpynych (or Baba Masha, as she referred to herself) outside her heavily damaged home in Opytne, 2018.

—

Baba Masha was beloved by everyone—her neighbors in the village of Opytne, as well as the journalists and aid workers who frequented this place, stranded in the gray zone between the frontlines for years. Only a muddy road through a minefield connected the village to the rest of the world. There was no electricity, water, or gas for heating and cooking; no grocery store, post office, or police department. People were afraid to light candles in front of their windows at night because the light could attract sniper fire.

Baba Masha’s house and garden were hit by artillery six times, and her son was killed by shelling right in front of her. But when we first visited her in the summer of 2018, she insisted we take a bunch of cucumbers and plums when we left.

“Girls, I’m OK, I have plenty of everything here,” she said. “I just want them to leave us alone, and also the electricity back.”

People in the war zone always tried to treat us—from soldiers inviting us to join them for lunch, to civilians handing us fruit from their gardens. We saw these gestures not only as acts of hospitality, but also as acts of dignity. Despite all their hardship, most people we met in Donbas didn’t want to be viewed as pitiful victims. They wanted to be seen as people who could still contribute to society in one way or another.

In December 2019, we received terrible news: Baba Masha had burned to death in her home. With no electricity, everyone in Opytne used candles and gas lamps. Most likely, it was a gas lamp that caused the fire. Because of the war, there was no centralized water supply to put it out. Firefighters didn’t come to Opytne—they considered it too dangerous. Her neighbors—most of them elderly as well—were unable to save her on their own.

In a bitter irony of war, this terrible death spared Baba Masha from witnessing the full-scale invasion that began 3 years later and wiped Opytne and its community off the face of the earth, killing or displacing the few remaining residents.

A memorial plaque for Baba Masha on the ruins of her home, 2021.

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.

Ukrainian soldiers helping villagers collect sawdust briquettes delivered by the Red Cross in Opytne, 2019.

—

In the summer of 2019, residents of Opytne, a suburb in the gray zone between Avdiivka and Donetsk, were preparing for winter by stocking up on sawdust briquettes. The electrical, water, and gas infrastructure in Opytne had been destroyed over the course of the war, so this fuel would be used to heat their homes.

Long before the full-scale invasion, not a single building in the village remained intact. Both roads connecting Opytne to the outside world were inaccessible due to landmines and military positions scattered throughout the area. Instead, residents had to use an improvised mud road through a minefield, which became impassable when it rained, or when snow melted.

Despite such inhumane conditions, 38 people remained in the village. Each lived in whatever room was still relatively intact: a barn, basement, or even a bathroom. Their lifestyle could best be described as camping in the remains of their houses. Most of those who stayed in Opytne were elderly and had nowhere else to go. The state never offered them compensation or alternative housing that would have allowed them to relocate.

In 2022, Opytne was occupied. The remaining residents either died or were scattered across temporary housing for the internally displaced.

Staying to help others:

The Lebedev Family

Rodion and Elena Lebedev are from Opytne, a suburban village that once was home to about 1,500 people and sits between Avdiivka and Donetsk. After 2014, it ended up in the gray zone — a space between frontlines which no side controlled but both used as a battlefield — effectively cut off from the rest of the world. For eight years, residents lived without electricity, water, gas, heat, groceries, or access to health care and other essential services. The only way to get in and out was by a mud road through the minefield.

Most inhabitants fled the area early on, but Elena and Rodion stayed behind, even as their house and car repair shop were damaged by shelling. They felt obligated not to abandon their roughly 30 remaining neighbors, most of whom were more vulnerable than themselves — elderly people with nowhere to go. The couple shared their food and medicine and assisted their neighbors in every way possible, becoming informal community leaders. Their persistent effort to keep the village alive would become a form of peaceful resistance to violence for this family between 2014 and 2022.

Lebedevs remained in Opytne until the summer of 2022 — even as the fighting in the area intensified — until Elena was injured by artillery shrapnel in the couple's backyard. Eventually, Opytne was occupied, and they had to relocate to Kryvii Rih, a town farther West that often suffers from Russian missile strikes yet is considered calm and peaceful compared to where they used to live. Elena and Rodion, currently in their fifties, both suffer from severe health issues caused by injuries, chronic stress, and extreme living and working conditions they’ve endured over the ten years of war.

Rodion and Elena in Kryvyi Rih after they fled Donbas, 2023.

Rodion and his yellow minivan in Avdiivka, 2019.

Rodion at the graveyard in Opytne, 2019.

Onions harvested from Rodion and Elena’s garden in Opytne, 2019.

Elena with her mother-in-law (left) and a neighbour (right) in Opytne, 2019.

Aleksander, a neighbour of Elena and Rodion’s, in Opytne, 2019.

A residential street in Opytne, 2021.

Rodion and Elena with Rodion’s mother (center) in the summer kitchen of their home in Opytne, 2019.

Rodion and Elena conducting house visits to elderly neighbours in Opytne, 2021.

Rodion Lebedev driving through the gray zone between Avdiivka and Opytne, 2021.

Borscht cooking over an open fire outside an apartment block in Lyman, a town occupied by Russian forces and liberated in late 2022, when this photo was taken.

Residents of Lyman waiting outside the hospital for the daily distribution of hot food by World Central Kitchen, 2022.

“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.”

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 man collecting firewood from abandoned apartments in Krasnohorivka, 2021.

—

In January 2021, temperatures in eastern Ukraine dropped as low as -22°C, or -7.6°F. For the town of Krasnohorivka, it was the seventh winter without heating.

Since the outbreak of hostilities, the gas distribution station had been stranded in no man’s land. Authorities were reluctant to build a new station or otherwise solve the problem because they didn’t want to invest in frontline towns like Krasnohorivka that might be attacked again or change hands. People in such areas were, for the most part, left to their own devices.

To survive the harsh Ukrainian winters, many residents of Krasnohorivka installed temporary wood-burning stoves in their apartments. Those who could afford it bought firewood or pellet fuel. Those who couldn’t had to rely on brushwood from parks, or salvage furniture, doors, windows, and beams from the many abandoned apartments.

Despite all the labor put into them, makeshift heating devices never truly warmed the spaces. We spent several days working in Krasnohorivka that winter, and we never really got warm. The dull, suffocating cold of unheated rooms was almost worse than the frost outside. The knowledge that there wasn’t a single warm place in the entire town was the hardest part. Failing to thaw our frozen feet, we sometimes dreamed of returning to a world where heating existed. Luckily for us, we had that option. For the roughly 10,000 people in Krasnohorivka, three more winters without heat still lay ahead. In 2024, whatever remained of the town was demolished in battle and then occupied.

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.

Without the factories,

it won’t be Donbas anymore

–it will be The Wild Field

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 21^st 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.

Chemist Anna Baranova, from the Siverskyi Donets River Basin Department of Water Resources, collects samples from a pontoon bridge outside Izium. The samples were later analyzed for contamination at a laboratory in Slovyansk, 2023.

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.

Residents in Sloviansk collecting water from tanks installed by the People in Need NGO, 2022.

—

The Siverskyi Donets River is one of the main battle lines in Donbas. It is also the primary water source for the entire region, distributed through a complex infrastructure of canals and pipelines that have been heavily damaged by the fighting. As a result, millions of people have been left without access to running water.

The situation is especially dire because Donbas is a heavily urbanized region, where many people live in apartment buildings without access to, or knowledge of, alternative water sources. At the time this photo was taken, some neighborhoods in Sloviansk were receiving their entire water supply from tanks installed by the People in Need NGO, which were refilled by municipal water trucks.

The man-made drought in Donbas varies in severity across the region. In the summer of 2022, women in Russian-occupied Donetsk reported bringing bottled water to hair salons just to have their hair dyed. Residents had also learned to operate washing machines without running water—they simply needed to know the right moment to pour it in manually with a bucket. But even they were not in the worst position. In Mariupol—a city under Russian occupation that had endured extraordinarily brutal bombing earlier that year—people were reportedly washing their laundry in puddles.

Since then, the overall water supply situation in Donbas has only worsened, as the region’s hydro-technical infrastructure continues to be destroyed by ongoing combat.

Serhii Lymanskyi, director of the Kreydova Flora (Chalk Flora) Nature Reserve near Lyman, visiting his destroyed home on the edge of the reserve, 2023

—

“I know every tree, every patch of grass here,” says Serhii about Kreydova Flora, which currently sits next to the frontline, on the edge of the small part of Donbas still controlled by Ukrainian forces. Watching him walk through the reserve, it becomes clear that to him, this is more than a piece of land—it’s a living, feeling being.

Kreydova Flora has the highest level of environmental protection in Ukraine. It is home to over 500 rare plant species that grow only in chalk soil. Serhii has been in charge of the reserve since its founding in 1988. He lived in a small house outside the protected area, and his son Yevhen, who had helped him since childhood, eventually became a professional park ranger himself.

Everything changed after 2022. Yevhen was conscripted and severely wounded. Despite more than 30 surgeries to save his leg, the family still doesn’t know whether the young man, now in his 30s, will ever walk again. A direct hit destroyed their house. When Anastasia visited in the summer of 2023 and took this photo, she witnessed Serhii picking his wife’s knitting kit out of the rubble.

The reserve itself has suffered what Serhii calls an ecological catastrophe. Tragically, this catastrophe was caused not by the Russian invasion directly, but by the Ukraine’s response to it. As significant state funding was redirected toward constructing frontline fortifications, some were built within Kreydova Flora, first in 2014 and again in 2022. Initially, these were small dugouts, limited in size and relatively unintrusive.

However, as the wartime order settled in, local authorities decided that more extensive fortifications were needed. They brought in industrial diggers and excavated kilometers-long trenches, causing irreparable damage to nearly half of the reserve. Ironically, these new fortifications are unusable—they’re exposed, built in white chalk soil, making them visible from satellites and enemy reconnaissance. Serhii suspects the construction was done superficially, merely to report that state funds had been spent, and that Kreydova Flora was chosen not for its location (which is far from strategic) but because it was considered less commercially valuable than other plots.

“These days, whenever I come to Kreydova Flora, I see it shedding tears—there is a little train drizzling every time,” Serhii says. “All my labor, all the labor of nature to create this beautiful place—all is gone.”

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.

Shell craters in the Kreydova Flora (Chalk Flora) Nature Reserve near Lyman, 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.

A bus departing from the frontline town of Kurakhove to the entry checkpoint into occupied Donetsk, 2019.

—

After reaching the checkpoint, passengers would queue for hours in the middle of a minefield, waiting for their turn to cross into non-government-controlled territory. At the time this photo was taken, more than 1 million people crossed the contact line every month. One of the primary reasons for their journey was to visit family members on the other side.

In most war zones, movement across the frontline is impossible: people who live on one side typically never travel to the other. For several years, Ukraine remained a striking exception to this rule. Even though travel was restricted and fraught with hardships, civilians continued to move back and forth. Through these small, everyday acts, people rejected the legitimacy of the frontline that arbitrarily divided them. At the time, observers noted that such behavior indicated great potential for reconciliation and peacebuilding in eastern Ukraine.

Sadly, that potential was never realized. The checkpoints were shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, making cross-frontline travel much more difficult. Then, in 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and any movement between the warring sides became impossible.

Elena Lebedeva has her shrapnel wounds dressed at a hospital in Pokrovsk after being injured by shelling while gardening at her home in Opytne, 2022.

—

Elena Lebedeva and her husband, Rodion, remained in their native Opytne—a suburb of Donetsk stranded between the frontlines—throughout the first phase of the war. They became de facto guardians for about 30 of their elderly neighbors, bringing them food, medicine, and offering assistance in any way they could.

When the full-scale Russian invasion began, Opytne was once again caught in the crossfire. On June 8, 2022, Elena was in her backyard when she heard shelling nearby. As she turned to run for shelter, a hot blast knocked her to the ground. A piece of shrapnel struck her in the back, just millimeters from her spinal cord. Another piece pierced her buttock. With all the roads cut off by the frontline, Opytne was completely isolated, and Rodion struggled to find a way to get his injured wife out for medical help. The journey to the nearest hospital took several hours. While driving through the neighboring town of Avdiivka, they passed burning apartment blocks.

Fortunately, Elena received surgery in time to survive. Opytne’s remaining residents pooled money from their meager pensions to help with her recovery. But by the time her treatment was complete, the situation in Opytne had deteriorated so badly that the Lebedevs were unable to return and had to relocate to the city of Kryvyi Rih, farther west. Eventually, Opytne was captured by Russian forces, and the remaining residents either fled or died.

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.

Pharmacist Marina Korneeva on her daily commute from her hometown of Marinka, where she worked at a drugstore, to Kurakhove, where she lived as an internally displaced person, 2019.

—

The last time Marina heard about her home, it was being used by the army as an improvised morgue. Corpses were stored inside without refrigeration.

When we met Marina in 2019, she was 37 and working as a pharmacist. She had a husband and a 10-year-old son. Shortly before the war began in 2014, they had just finished building a beautiful family home in Marinka, a suburb of the provincial capital, Donetsk. When Donetsk was taken over by separatist forces, Marina’s neighborhood became the frontline. Since then, the family had never had the chance to access their house, not even to take a look. Soldiers stationed at the checkpoint in the middle of their street wouldn’t let them through.

This situation also left Marina without any chance of compensation. Both the Ukrainian state and the international humanitarian organizations operating in the area relied on the same procedure: to determine eligibility for compensation, the damaged home had to be inspected by a special commission. No access to the site meant no aid. Ironically, this approach excluded exactly those who suffered the most—those who had lost all possibility of returning home.

At the time, more than 1,000 apartment buildings and 12,000 private homes had been damaged or destroyed in the government-controlled part of Donetsk province. Half of them remained unrepaired. Their former residents were, at best, displaced like Marina—or at worst, homeless.

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.

Evacuation of patients from Kramatorsk by the Ukrainian Red Cross, 2022.

—

When survival depends on one’s ability to run quickly or walk several kilometers to an evacuation bus, elderly and disabled people become incredibly vulnerable. Over the years in Donbas, we’ve heard countless heartbreaking stories about people who stayed behind to live through the worst periods of fighting, near-death experiences, and moments when people around them were killed. Almost all of these stories had one detail in common: disability.

Many people stayed simply because someone they loved couldn’t leave. “Only one family was remaining here. She stayed because her husband was in a wheelchair.”

Others described the impossible choices they had to make during shelling. “My mother is paralyzed, so we couldn’t go to the basement. When the shelling was close, she just remained in her bed, and I would hide under the bed.” One family told us, “We managed to get Grandma into the cellar, but couldn’t get her out.”

Those who live through the worst often do so because they have no choice—and neither do the loved ones who refuse to leave them behind.

In the summer of 2022, the Ukrainian Red Cross, in cooperation with Médecins Sans Frontières, was evacuating vulnerable people from Donbas. Every day, a convoy of medical workers in specially equipped ambulances picked up patients from hospitals and transported them to the only functioning train station in the area at the time, Pokrovsk, so they could continue their journey west by rail.

This photo was taken during one such evacuation from Kramatorsk, a city increasingly targeted by Russian forces. Even there, some people were more afraid to leave than to stay. If it is harder for people with disabilities to evacuate, it is also more challenging for them to ever return or reunite with their loved ones. In one courtyard, we witnessed a heartbreaking farewell between a blind man in need of surgery, who was being evacuated, and his wife in a wheelchair, who was staying behind. It was clear to everyone, including the couple themselves, that they might never see each other again.

Olga Grinik with her son, Kirill, and daughter, Miroslava, in the kitchen of their new home in the Poltava province, where they fled after Avdiivka was attacked by Russian forces. 2022.

—

Until the spring of 2022, Olga and Nikolay Grinik, along with their children, Miroslava and Kirill, lived in Avdiivka. Visiting them every summer, we got to know their large extended family, all of whom lived nearby. They took us fishing, picnicking, and mushroom-picking at their favorite spots. The beautiful forests and lakes surrounding Avdiivka were covered in land mines, but the family had familiarized themselves with safe routes.

That’s all in the past now. With the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, Nikolay enlisted in the armed forces, while Olga and the children fled to a village in central Ukraine, where they had relatives. This is how Olga described the final days in Avdiivka that led to their evacuation:

“In mid-March, several shells landed in our garden but didn’t explode. We were sheltering at home, but we needed bread, and the next day, I ventured out to a grocery store. As I was on my way, a Russian fighter jet flew very low; then it was shot down a little farther away. I began running, but a soldier stopped me and asked whether I’d seen a parachutist. I was so scared I couldn’t see a meter ahead of myself!

‘Well,’ the soldier said, if you see him, hit him with a spade’.

As soon as I got home, I packed up the kids, and we took an evacuation bus.”

The family pooled all their savings to buy a rundown, abandoned house, and now Olga struggles to make it livable while operating, essentially, as a single mother. Soon after relocating, she learned that their family home in Avdiivka had been destroyed.

In Ukraine, housing for people displaced by the war is scarce and inadequate. Many are temporarily housed in public facilities like schools or kindergartens. Families like Olga’s are often left to deal with their problems alone. As Ukraine struggles to fight a grueling war of attrition against Russia, civilians displaced by the fighting feel they are low on the country’s list of priorities. Internally displaced people have told aid workers and journalists that, when approaching authorities for help, they are often turned away and told not to be selfish—and to remember that soldiers on the front lines have it even worse.

Anna Negoda (center), a volunteer and herself an internally displaced person from Avdiivka, overseeing humanitarian aid distribution to residents in Pokrovsk, 2022.

—

Anna Negoda has two occupations.

First, she’s a Zumba instructor, a perfect fit for her bubbly, energetic personality. Anna’s classes had been a local favorite in Pokrovsk for several years. For many women, they offered a cherished escape into joyful movement and upbeat Latin pop rhythms—brief relief from the grim reality of life in a frontline town. The same was true for Anna herself. She first got into Zumba after fleeing Avdiivka with her two young daughters in 2015, escaping the never-ending artillery shelling of her hometown.

Second, Anna is a humanitarian activist. When she first experienced the hardships of forced displacement, she realized that other refugees might be struggling even more. In response, she founded an NGO to crowdsource and distribute humanitarian aid to displaced people in Pokrovsk. Her organization is called Hidnist Donbasu (“The Dignity of Donbas”). The name reflects a truth known to many war survivors: relying on aid for basic needs is rarely a choice—it’s a necessity that can feel deeply humiliating to people who, until recently, were full-fledged members of society, before war took away their homes, jobs, loved ones, and everything else that constitutes their social selves.

When Anastasia took this photo in the summer of 2022, Hidnist Donbasu was the most prominent organization helping refugees in Pokrovsk. Anna’s daughters were always by her side, helping distribute boxes of cereal and laundry detergent, before following her to a Zumba class.

By 2024, the frontline in Donbas had moved rapidly toward Pokrovsk. With street battles and the possibility of occupation looming, residents began to evacuate the city, which had only recently had a population of 60,000. Anna evacuated her daughters first, and joined them a few months later in the city of Kropyvnytskyi, in central Ukraine.

“It’s tough to start from scratch again… But I plan to keep volunteering, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be doing fitness training again,” she wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of herself and her daughters in a car.

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

Aleksander Dokalenko at a temporary center for internally displaced people in the Dnipro province, where he lived while his wife, Elena Dyachkova, was in Poland, 2022.

—

“I can describe it all with one word: painful,” said Aleksander as he greeted us in his room at a shelter for displaced people in the Dnipro province, about 200 hundred kilometers from his home, in the summer of 2022.

We’ve known Aleksander, his wife Elena, and their German Shepherd, Lord, since 2018. Until the spring of 2022, they lived in Avdiivka. As their neighborhood turned into an active battlefield in the months following the full-scale Russian invasion, Elena fled to Poland, where she joined her daughter and young grandson as refugees. Aleksander stayed behind. In his last weeks in Avdiivka, he lived in a basement and worked for a municipal company distributing water to residents after the town’s water system was destroyed.

“I lived only 500 meters from work, but it took me forever to get there every morning,” he recalled. “You begin walking, then hear a whistle in the air and run for cover into the nearest building. You stand there and wait to hear an explosion—that means it landed elsewhere. So you continue walking, but only until the next whistle.”

The water facility where Aleksander worked was targeted nearly every day. As a result of constant stress, he began experiencing heart issues and eventually decided to leave. He ended up in relative safety but deeply missed his home and family. He showed us a video on his smartphone, playing on repeat, from his birthday party filmed shortly before the invasion—the last record of the family being happy and together.

Several months after this photo was taken, Elena returned from Poland to join Aleksander, choosing family reunification over safety.

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.

Endless Displacement:

Elena and Aleksander

For years, Elena Diachkova and her husband, Alexander Dokalenko, were  the stubborn people who refused to leave their home next to the frontline. The house had sustained multiple damages, but they continued covering the broken roof with plastic and the dents from artillery shrapnel on the walls with flowerpots. But as soon as the full-scale invasion started, their neighborhood in Avdiivka became entirely uninhabitable, and they had to flee.

Elena left for Poland, together with her daughter Yulia and grandson Nikita who was two at the time. Alexander was not allowed to leave the country and stayed behind in a center for displaced people. He was only a few years short of 60 and had multiple disabilities.

In Poland, the women soon ran into financial hardship. Before the invasion, Yulia worked as an auditor, but as a refugee, she could only find a job planting trees in a local forestry. Elena tried her luck at a fish processing factory. The jobs were physically demanding, but they were not enough to meet ends.

So, Yulia returned to her old job in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, which allowed her to send money to Poland for Elena and Nikita. She was separated from her little son, while Elena's relationship with Alexander grew increasingly strained, with no prospect of reunification in sight. After many deliberations, Elena and her grandson returned to Ukraine after a year abroad. Elena continues babysitting Nikita while Yulia is at work because his daycare is not well-equipped for the daily air raids.

Elena and Aleksander at a temporary center for internally displaced people in the Dnipro province, after Elena returned from Poland and they were reunited, 2023.

Elena and Aleksander with their neighbor Valentina and their dog, Lord, at home in Avdiivka, 2018.

Elena and Aleksander at a temporary center for internally displaced people in the Dnipro province, 2023.

Elena, Aleksander, and a neighbor gardening in their backyard in Avdiivka, 2018.

A watermelon on Elena and Aleksander’s table in a semi-permanent housing facility in the Kyiv province for people displaced by the war, 2024.

Elena feeds borscht to her grandson Nikita in Slupsk, Poland, where they fled to escape the full-scale Russian invasion, 2022.

Elena and a neighbor outside their apartment in the Kyiv province, 2024.

The kitchen window shattered by incoming shelling in Avdiivka, 2018.

Elena and her grandson Nikita in the Kyiv province, 2024.

Aleksander at a temporary center for internally displaced people in the Dnipro province, where he lived alone after escaping from Avdiivka, 2022.

Elena Dyachkova looking at one of the few family photo albums she was able to take with her from Avdiivka. The family now lives in a semi-permanent housing facility in the Kyiv province for people displaced from Russian-occupied territories. 2024.

An internally displaced family from Donbas at a shelter in Lviv, 2023.

Svitlana smoking out the window of her home in Sloviansk, 2022.

—

For Svitlana, as for many people from Donbas, the war began long before 2022. Back in 2014, her city of Horlivka was taken over by separatist forces backed by Russia, and prolonged fighting between them and the Ukrainian army ensued. Svitlana’s husband was killed by artillery shelling, and she fled the town with her young son, Danil, leaving behind a family business and their home.

Since then, Svitlana and Danil have faced constant hardship. The 2022 invasion found them living in a dilapidated Soviet-era dormitory in the city of Sloviansk, on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the frontline, the only housing they could afford. As if that weren’t difficult enough, as summer arrived, the shelling grew dangerously close once again. The family evacuated to the nearby city of Dnipro, where they were immediately faced with the threat of homelessness, as the shelter for displaced people could only accommodate them for a few nights. Unable to find housing or work in a city overwhelmed by others displaced by war, Svitlana and Danil had to return to Sloviansk. But soon after, the fighting intensified again, forcing them to flee for their lives once more.

The last time we spoke with Svitlana, in late summer 2022, she and her son were in Zaporizhzhia, another major city in eastern Ukraine. They had become caught in a cycle of repeated displacement and return—a typical situation for many Ukrainians forced to make impossible choices between safety and home, safety and income, or safety and staying with their loved ones.

“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.”

“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.

about the authors:

who we are and

how we made this project

Alisa Sopova (left) and Anastasia Taylor-Lind (right).

Alisa Sopova is a journalist and anthropologist whose work focuses on civilian experiences of the war in Ukraine and the specifics of day-to-day life in the context of military violence. Born and raised in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Alisa faced the challenge of reporting on violence in her hometown when the war broke out in 2014. Since then, she has devoted her career to using storytelling to convey the real-life experiences of war survivors and to challenge the aesthetic clichés, political biases, and stereotypes that often distort such narratives. She was the first Ukrainian Nieman Fellow at Harvard and went on to pursue an MA in Regional Studies at Harvard and a PhD in Anthropology at Princeton University.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind is a British-Swedish photojournalist and poet reporting on issues related to women, war, and violence. She is a National Geographic Society Explorer, a TED Fellow, and a 2016 Harvard Nieman Fellow. Anastasia has been covering conflict for 20 years and working in Ukraine since the war began in 2014. Her first book, Maidan – Portraits from the Black Square, documented the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv and was published by GOST Books. Her debut poetry collection, One Language, was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. In 2023, she received the Canon Female Photojournalist Award for her long-term reporting from eastern Ukraine. Anastasia holds Master’s degrees in photojournalism and poetry.

Anastasia and Alisa have been collaborating for over a decade and have worked together on the 5K from the Frontline project since 2018. Their reporting has been published in TIME, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Humanitarian, and NPR. Their work has also been exhibited at the Imperial War Museum (UK), Harvard University (USA), and the Verdun War Memorial (France), among others.

Anastasia Social Links:

Alisa
Social Links:

Text by Alisa Sopova
Photographs and videos by Anastasia Taylor-Lind
Field production by Dmytro Pashchenko
Creative direction by Beatriz Patarata
Brand and website design by Petar Pirizovic
Video editing by Paolina Stefani
Translation to Ukrainian by Hanna Leliv

5K from the Frontline has been made with support from National Geographic Society, Catchlight Global Fellowship and the Canon Female Photojournalist Grant.

Map animation by staff of the National Geographic Society.
Map sources: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty); Institute for the Study of War, and AEI’s Critical Threats Project