She witnessed the destruction of Mariupol, saw neighbors killed by a sniper, and heard the screams of people burned in their houses. After being wounded, Halyna Yevhenivna, on principle, did not want to receive help from the occupiers. Her wound has healed, but homesickness haunts the woman who left her hometown.

Valentyna Mykhailivna lived with her husband, daughter, and three grandchildren not far from the famous Chornobaivka. Together, they survived the occupation, the Kakhovka dam’s explosion, and celebrated Kherson’s liberation.

Viktoriia was born and lived all her life in Kharkiv. A full-scale war found her and her small child on the city's eastern outskirts, coming under attack in the first hours of the invasion. Viktoriia's father believed that the fighting would not affect the civilian population. After two weeks of living in a basement, they drove to the station through deserted Kharkiv to evacuate to Lviv.

After the invasion began, Viktor Marynchak continued to serve in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, although he blessed everyone who decided to leave Kharkiv to evacuate. Military funerals are often held in the church now, forcing Father Viktor to ask himself difficult questions.

Every day since the beginning of the war, a Ukrainian accordionist plays songs and publishes them on his channel to keep the spirits up. His work during the war became the basis of a new record-breaking album.

Viktoriia Nesterenko is a co-founder of the Wings of Victory Foundation, which helps civilians and military personnel. In particular, to Ukrainian Muslims who left to defend their homeland. Can religious rituals become a hindrance in war? How do people of different faiths get along at the front lines? Our interview is about the work and future of the fund.

Pavlo Ponomarenko is an engineer by profession and an artist by vocation. The Russian occupiers destroyed his district, went over with a tractor, and leveled it to the ground to hide the traces of their crimes. About life in besieged Mariupol in an interview with Pavlo Ponomarenko.

Ihor Ivanovych served in Murmansk in a special forces detachment and later as a border guard. He returned to Mariupol because he wanted to live in Ukraine: he was born in the Lviv Region and always considered himself a Ukrainian. After spending 35 days in the basement, the 70-year-old man ran away, fearing that he would be handed over to the occupiers for his pro-Ukrainian views.

A military medic from Mariupol showed phenomenal courage in Russian captivity, surpassing the plot of a famous feature film.

Since the beginning of the war, volunteer doctors of the FRIDA organization have been working free of charge in the frontline territories. For a year and a half, they managed to assist thousands of civilians. In this interview, doctors talk about their work in Bakhmut and other hot spots, the people they saved, and rethinking their inner values.

Paintings by the artist Matvii Vaisberg became illustrations for the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group’s new book about Mariupol. He says that the war was the most productive period for him, complains about the uglification of urban space, and believes we should do more to promote contemporary Ukrainian art worldwide.

Yurii Serohin is a resident of Dmytrivka in the Kyev Region. The beginning of the war found him at work in Kyiv. It took him two days to return to his native village on foot, and when he arrived, it was occupied. An artillery shell destroyed his house and all his property.

Leonid Remyha was in charge of one of the hospitals in Kherson at the beginning of the Russian invasion. The head physician ended up in a Russian torture chamber for refusing to cooperate with the invaders.

“Burned cars, murdered women and men...” — Ruslan Kosian, a resident of the village of Dmytrivka, talks about the consequences of the Russian occupation. The man did not want to leave his house and was under occupation. Despite the risk, he delivered aid to the long-suffering Bucha, Moschun, and Borodianka. Once, Ruslan had to drive the Russians out of his yard.

Maksym Vainer worked in an international team engaged in medical evacuation in the Bakhmut area. They were trying to evacuate a woman wounded after a shelling when a Russian missile hit their car. Maksym received numerous injuries, and his partner, an American medical volunteer, Pete Reed, died.

At the beginning of a full-scale war, the quiet life of the Stoianka village inhabitants in the Kyiv Region turned into hell. The Russians bombed the village from planes, tortured and killed people in their homes, and snipers shot people on the roads. A village resident, Olena, says they practically could not get out of the cellar due to heavy shelling.

Patrick Loveless came to Bucha immediately after its release: he helped to sort the corpses in the Bucha morgue and saw and felt the consequences of what the Russians did. What he saw shocked him so much that he could not forget about it.

Liudmyla Lomeiko, a resident of Moshun (village in Kyiv Region), used to transmit the coordinates of the enemy to her son, who is serving now in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, during the first days of the full-scale war. She prayed for the trees she had planted with her own hands to resist.

“Day and night merged into one. We were terrified of them, and I still fear them now,” says Vira Kaidan, a Zalissia resident who hid from the Russians in an unfamiliar basement for nine days. Seeing a man on the street, the Russians fired into the air, and when the family tried to evacuate, they assured them that the Ukrainians were shelling the village.

Denys Nozhaiskyi has relatives in Mariupol. He was in Kyiv when the war began, but fate brought him later to Bucha during the days of the heaviest shelling. The man says that now he has only one wish: to go to the war and take revenge on the enemy.