The missing children of Syria: Hidden in orphanages under Assad, where are they now?

toggle caption Hani al-Farra

DAMASCUS, Syria — In the fall of 2018, Syrian security forces dragged a mother and her 2-year-old daughter, Hiba, from their home and detained them.

The mother, Sukayna Jebawi, says that they were taken hostage to pressure her husband’s brothers to surrender to government forces. The brothers were part of an unprecedented uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad that erupted in 2011.

But this strategy of detaining family members of rebels created a new problem for Syrian security forces: What to do with all the children they were detaining?

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Jebawi told NPR that she and her daughter were crammed in a dank, dark cell with other women and children. She said Hiba was losing weight for lack of food. Lice infested her hair. She developed a rash. “The conditions there were not conducive to keeping children alive,” she said.

Nearly a month after the two were detained, Jebawi recalls, prison guards banged on their cell and ordered the detained mothers to hand over their children. “It was chaos,” she said. “Some women held onto their children, so the guards took them by force.”

Jebawi says she held her daughter and told her: “You are going to a better place, and when this ends, I’ll hug you again.” She hoped that was true. And she prayed: Oh, God, protect my daughter with your watchful eye that never sleeps.”

The mother was released in March of 2019 — and the family began a search for the little girl.

Hiba is one of hundreds of Syrian children referred to as “security placement” kids — handed over to an orphanage while their mothers remained in detention.

toggle caption Diaa Hadid/NPR

An investigation by NPR suggests that by 2014, Syria’s most notorious intelligence agency had decided to move the children of women they were detaining to at least four orphanages across Damascus. After gathering data from orphanages NPR found that the Air Force Intelligence Directorate hid more than 300 children in these institutions. It was not possible to reach members of the Directorate: They have fled Syria or have been in hiding since rebels toppled the Assad regime in early November.

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The number may have been even higher. One person with knowledge of the largest orphanage in Damascus, where at least dozens of children may have been placed, told NPR that she suspected the orphanage took in many more. She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing loyalists of the former Assad regime would punish her for speaking out.

NPR extensively investigated what happened to the children of female detainees. Some information has also emerged in Syrian media and on their social networks as well as in a BBC article — triggering outrage among some Syrians, who have come to see the orphanages as complicit in the suffering wrought by the former Assad regime.

For this investigation, NPR viewed official documents and spoke to more than a dozen people with knowledge of the process, including orphanage workers and mothers of children who were taken into orphanages. They spoke to NPR weeks after rebels toppled the Assad regime in early December and established a new interim government.

No choice for the children – and the orphanage staff

Orphanage directors said they had no choice but to hide the children, who were handed over by a notoriously violent arm of the Assad regime: the Air Force Intelligence Directorate . “They would have put us through a mincer if we asked them anything,” said Rana al-Baba, director of an orphanage run by the Muslim Women’s Charitable Association. “They would have turned me into kebab. Or a hamburger. Do you really think we could challenge them?”

Orphanage directors told NPR that most of these children tended to be under 10 years old; some were born while the mother was in detention. Like Hiba, they often arrived malnourished, screaming for their mothers and sick with respiratory illnesses and skin conditions. Detained pregnant women had to hand over their babies just weeks after they gave birth. Those babies often arrived in poor shape, said Bara al-Ayoubi, director of the Dar al-Rahma orphanage.

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She said one baby girl died soon after she was handed over to her institution.

Directors of two orphanages said most of these children were Syrian but perhaps a dozen or so were Russian and French — likely children of foreign soldiers fighting for ISIS to oust Assad.

The orphanage directors said days, weeks and even years after the children were placed in their care, intelligence agents returned to pick them up. The directors told NPR they presumed that the children were returned to mothers who were eventually freed from detention.

But it is unclear what happened to many of the children.

toggle caption Diaa Hadid/NPR

Of the four orphanages NPR contacted, two said they tried to trace the children after they were returned to intelligence agents — they wanted to confirm they were returned to their families. As for the two other orphanages — the headquarters of one only recently began trying to determine how many children were secretly placed with them. The other does not acknowledge that any children were secretly placed there. That has complicated the search to trace those children now.

It’s also unclear what happened to children whose mothers died or were killed in detention.

A grieving brother raises the issue

The story began to emerge because of Hassan Alabbasi , a Syrian-Canadian whose sister, Rania , was detained by Assad’s forces in 2013 along with her husband and six children. Amnesty International reported at the time that their relatives believed Rania and her family may have been targeted because they were providing assistance to families in need.

Alabbasi’s brother-in-law was among those confirmed dead from the thousands of images of corpses taken out of the country by a Syrian army whistleblower who fled the country. Rania, who was a dentist and chess champion, and the six children are unaccounted for.

The role of the orphanages became widely known after Alabbasi saw a picture of a girl who resembled one of Rania’s children in a Facebook post of the SOS Children’s Village, an international charity headquartered in Austria, which offers alternative care to children who cannot live with their biological families. It has branches around the world, including in Damascus.

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Alabbasi went on social media demanding information about the child. Soon after, SOS Children’s Village released a statement acknowledging that intelligence agents secretly placed the children of female detainees in their Damascus branch. Other orphanage directors also went public, largely to defend their actions.

Alabbasi recognized that the child could not be his niece, who went missing as a little girl in 2013, which would make her a young adult today if she were still alive. But he was struck by the resemblance and wondered: What if Rania’s daughters were raped and impregnated by one of Assad’s forces?

Human rights groups have reported that Assad-loyal forces sexually assaulted and raped people in detention: men , women, boys and girls. “We are not searching anymore for Rania’s children. We may be searching for her grandchildren,” Alabbasi said.

A belated effort to uncover the truth

Tom Malvet, a regional director of SOS Children’s Village, told NPR that over four years, starting in 2014, security forces arrived at their Damascus branch, ordering them to take in dozens of children, providing only the child’s name and an order to keep the child’s existence secret.

He says the charity’s headquarters learned of what was happening in 2018 and ordered the branch to stop accepting such children.

Malvet says they are now combing through the branch’s archives to understand how many such children were hidden at the Damascus branch of SOS Children’s Village. In December, they found evidence of 35 children placed there by intelligence agencies. By early February, they’d found records for 139 children. “We will do everything to open the books and the records. We have nothing to hide and we want to contribute to tracing the children and families,” Malvet said.

Not every orphanage is combing through records.

It’s not clear what happened to the children of detained mothers who were handed over to the Life Melody Orphanage.

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Prominent board member Nada al-Ghabara says she was not aware of Syrian children being delivered to the orphanage by intelligence agents until the Assad regime collapsed. She says that’s when a panicked administrator informed her that the children of female detainees had been hidden at the orphanage. “I said, by God, we must tell the Ministry of Social Affairs,” she recalled in an interview with NPR.

toggle caption Diaa Hadid/NPR

But one person who has seen the Life Melody archives showed NPR two pages listed with the names of 45 children whom she said were placed by security forces in the orphanage. She said there was a file about an inch thick with the names of other children. She did not show NPR that file. She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing loyalists of the former Assad regime would hurt her for speaking out. “I am worth the price of a bullet,” she said.

A senior official in the Ministry of Social Affairs, which is trying to trace these children, also told NPR that the Life Melody Complex had at best kept chaotic and fragmented records. He said it suggested administrators were neglectful of their duty, under government rules, to closely track the movement of children in and out of the orphanage. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to media.

When we asked al-Ghabara about these specific allegations, she said she did not work as an administrator and wasn’t aware of how records were kept. Even so, she says she did authorize the adoptions of newborn babies who were found abandoned across Damascus. She says in the chaos of war, she wasn’t always able to follow the progress of those babies.

A glimmer of hope

Even as these revelations have triggered fury, they’ve also kindled anguished hope among families whose children went missing after being taken by the Assad regime during the war — an estimated 2,300 children, according to an estimate by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. That estimate is seen as credible by international organizations and the State Department.

toggle caption Hani al-Farra

The family members of these children include Hani al-Farra, whose pregnant wife and three children disappeared at a regime-run checkpoint in 2013 as they were leaving a rebel-held area. Al-Farra said his wife was about to give birth. She was trying to get to a hospital. Al-Farra believes his wife and children were taken to pressure him to give information about rebels in his area.

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After years of fruitless searching for his wife and children, al-Farra said, “I began to wish they were dead.” He said that was better than detention under the Assad regime. But after hearing that some children of detained women were hidden in orphanages, he began hoping his own had survived.

We bumped into al-Farra at the office of Rana al-Baba, the director of the orphanage run by the Muslim Women’s Charitable Association. While we were intervieiwng al-Baba, he had walked in to show her pictures of his missing children on his battered phone.

“May they be found, brother,” al-Baba responded, and handed over a list she kept of the 80 children deposited by intelligence agents in her orphanage over the years. “I don’t think your children were here, but you should check, to reassure your heart,” al-Baba said. Al-Farra nodded sadly. They were not on the list.

The orphanage director al-Baba said she looked out for these “security placement” children. She says the orphanage caregivers made the older children memorize the phone number of their house mother — so if security forces took them back to their families, the children could try to let the orphanage know where they were. Al-Baba says some of the children — and their parents — did call to let the orphanage know they’d been reunited.

But there were limits to what al-Baba could do.

She recalled turning away a woman looking for her granddaughter — a 2-year-old called Hiba. Al-Baba says she was under strict instructions from intelligence agents not to reveal information about the “security placement” children and turned the woman away.

Days later, al-Baba says intelligence agents shifted Hiba to Dar al-Rahma, an orphanage nestled in a Damascus alleyway, so she couldn’t be found. The director there, Bara al-Ayoubi, says they also tried to do their best by the “security placement” children — including by securing visits for older children to see their detained mothers. By 2019, those visits were routine, according to one former female detainee whose child was placed in Dar al-Rahma. The former detainee, who declined to be named, owing to social stigma, says Dar al-Rahma became known as a good place for children of detained mothers.

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When the Assad regime fell and rebels smashed open the prisons, freed mothers and fathers rushed to Dar al-Rahma, hoping to find their children. “On the morning of liberation day,” said al-Ayoubi, “the parents of 22 children came.” Her staff shared images of the reunions, including one father, tightly embracing his children. She said some parents later returned to thank the orphanage.

But not Hiba’s mother.

Weeks after the girl’s mother was released from prison, she says her brother finally found her daughter. They were reunited in mid-2019.

“Our reunion was sad and joyful at the same time,” Jebawi recalled. Her daughter called her “mama” — but she screamed whenever her mother tried to hug her, feed her or bathe her.

Hiba’s mother says the workers at the Dar al-Rahma orphanage still call her to check on her daughter. They invite them to visit. She has so far declined. “I don’t want to remember the past,” she said.

Al-Farra, whose wife and children went missing in 2013, also tried to move on.

toggle caption Diaa Hadid/NPR

He remarried a few years after his first family disappeared. He has three sons with his new wife: Samir, 8, Ibrahim, 6 and baby Mohammad, who sat on al-Farra’s lap in a working-class quarter on a recent day.

But al-Farra says he’s not the only one who can’t stop thinking that maybe the children of his first wife are alive in an orphanage somewhere. His sons keep asking him about their older missing siblings too, particularly their sister, Islam. She was 5 when she disappeared. If she’s still alive, Islam would be 17. Al-Farra’s young sons only know her as a little girl, from a photo al-Farra keeps on his phone: Islam is smiling. Her sandy hair touches her tanned shoulders. “My sons ask me: why don’t you get her, why don’t you find her? I tell them: I swear, I’m trying.”

CIA deputy director’s heartbreak as she discovers missing son died fighting for RUSSIA in Ukraine

Pictures show the CIA deputy director’s son who – unbeknownst to his mother and father – was fighting for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

Michael Gloss, 21, was killed in the war in April last year, but details of the story have only emerged now after an investigation by Russian independent news outlet iStories.

Photos showing him wearing camouflage and hanging out with soldiers have emerged.

His mother, Julianne Gallina Gloss, is the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for digital innovation.

His father, Larry Gloss, is a US Navy veteran who participated in Operation Desert Storm and the Iraq War.

In the wake of his son’s death, Larry described him to the Washington Post as a ‘peacenik’ who ‘wouldn’t hurt a flea.’

‘With his noble heart and warrior spirit, Michael forged his own hero’s path when he tragically died in Eastern Europe on April 4, 2024,’ his family wrote in an obituary that did not mention he was in the Russian army.

They found out their son died in June and held a funeral for him in December, according to The Washington Post. However, his involvement in the Russian military was not revealed until Friday when iStories published a story.

The CIA said Gallina and her family ‘suffered an unimaginable personal tragedy in the spring of 2024 when her son Michael Gloss, who struggled with mental health issues, died while fighting in the conflict in Ukraine.’

Michael Gloss, 21, was killed in the war in April last year, but details of the story have only emerged now after an investigation by Russian independent news outlet iStories

Photos showing him wearing camouflage (right) and hanging out with soldiers have emerged

His mother, Julianne Gallina Gloss, is the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for digital innovation. The intelligence agency ‘considers Michael’s passing to be a private family matter for the Gloss family – not a national security issue’

Michael had reportedly stopped taking his medication years ago and had started going ‘off the grid.’

The intelligence agency ‘considers Michael’s passing to be a private family matter for the Gloss family – not a national security issue.’

It was with ‘disbelief and devastation’ that his parents discovered from the State Department that their son had been killed from a ‘massive blood loss’ in an artillery barrage in Donetsk region fighting for Putin’s forces.

‘It was absolutely news to us that he was involved in any military relationship with Russia,’ his father told The Washington Post.

His father said: ‘He died running to aid a wounded comrade, trying to protect him. That was classic Michael.’

He had gone to Russia after visiting ex-Soviet republic Georgia.

Michael had left his Virginia home in January 2023 to travel to Italy to work on farms and Turkey to help with earthquake restoration. He then went to Georgia, where he attended the Rainbow Family counterculture movement.

He then went to Russia, where he told his parents he was meeting friend, his father said.

He had previously denied to his parents – who found out about his death in June – that he had not joined the military when they discovered his location was in a military training town in Russia

The CIA said Gallina and her family ‘suffered an unimaginable personal tragedy in the spring of 2024 when her son Michael Gloss, who struggled with mental health issues, died while fighting in the conflict in Ukraine’

Michael in an undated photo wearing a cape

His parents were ‘on guard, skeptical, suspicious’ but ‘at no point did he suggest or did we suspect he would join the military. Never,’ Larry told The Washington Post.

Michael told his parents he wanted to stay in Russia in September 2023 and by December 2023, he had been shipped off to Ukraine to fight in the war, iStories found.

When his parents tracked his phone after his arrival in the totalitarian country, they discovered he was in Avangard, which does military training. He denied he had joined, The Post said.

Michael had said that he wanted to get Russian citizenship but his parents believe that his ‘mental illness’ was a factor in his decisions about fighting for Putin’s forces.

They were worried that the Russians would twig who his mother was.

‘Our biggest fear while we were waiting for him to be repatriated was that someone over there [in Moscow] would put two and two together and figure out who his mother was, and use him as a prop,’ Larry told The Washington Post.

Michael apparently believed that Russia would let him fulfil his dream of building a water purifier to help people who had no access to clean water.

‘I can only attribute it to his mental illness,’ Larry told the newspaper. ‘It clearly defies logic.

‘If you knew our son, he was the ultimate antiestablishment, anti-authority young man the minute he came into the world.’

DailyMail.com has reached out to Gallina for comment.

This audio is created with AI assistance

A Russian woman, Olga Dorokhina, took a 4-year-old girl from the occupied part of Kherson Oblast and plans to adopt her, according to an investigation by Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne published on March 10.

Dorokhina’s son was previously killed while fighting against Ukraine, according to the investigation.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, at least 19,500 Ukrainian children have been abducted from occupied territories and transferred to other Russian-controlled areas, Belarus, or Russia itself, according to Ukraine’s national database, Children of War.

Dorokhina spoke about her trip and the girl’s abduction from Ukraine during a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin at an event, claiming she had “found her daughter” in Kherson Oblast. The child is now under her guardianship.

Suspilne’s investigative team identified Dorokhina as a native of Yelets, Lipetsk Oblast, Russia, who moved to occupied Simferopol in Crimea in 2016.

Her husband, Oleksandr Dorokhin, is a former employee of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service and a veteran of the Chechen war. Her eldest son, Vladislav Dorokhin, served in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet before joining the 810th Marine Brigade to fight in Ukraine, Suspilne reported.

Ukraine has so far managed to return 1,240 abducted children, according to the Children of War database.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Putin and Children’s Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over their involvement in the unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children.

Human rights groups have said that Russia’s mass abductions of Ukrainian civilians, including children, may constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity.

“My son’s crying – I heard his voice and that give me the strength to fight for us, for my husband, for my self, for my son, and fight against him.”

Those were the words of an unsuspecting mother who was ambushed by sexual predator John Whitfield in a popular park in Warrington, Cheshire, in front of her little boy.

The screams of her primary school-aged son did nothing to deter Whitfield, 37, from trying to rape his victim in secluded woodland.

She told the BBC that when she set out for a jog with her little boy riding happily alongside her on his scooter she had no inkling of the terrifying ordeal they were about to endure.

“I had no way out if I didn’t fight back,” she said.

As Russian forces continue to pound Ukraine’s cities with airstrikes and make creeping frontline gains, President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that “an agreement to end the war is very, very far away.” But with the new U.S. administration heaping pressure on Kyiv to make peace with Moscow, ending the war has become a key issue on the international stage. Ahead of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, journalist Irina Olegova traveled throughout Ukraine to report for Meduza on how Russia’s full-scale invasion has transformed the country and how Ukrainians think the war will end. The following translation of her reporting has been edited and abridged for length and clarity.

Editor’s note: The reporting for this story was done in December 2024 and January 2025, just weeks before Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his administration’s subsequent pursuit of rapprochement with Russia.

Chapter 1

The East

Sloviansk, Donetsk region

Artillery salvos from the front line can be heard clearly in Sloviansk, but the passersby don’t react. “I was in this very spot two years ago,” says Volodymyr, a pensioner walking his dog in Shovkovychnyi Park. “The weather was great, everything was great, and then the rockets started flying.”

Sloviansk first became a flashpoint in Russia’s war against Ukraine nearly 11 years ago. On April 12, 2014, an armed group led by former Russian FSB officer Igor Girkin seized the city, prompting Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, to announce the start of an “anti-terrorist operation.” In the weeks that followed, Girkin’s militia arrested, tortured, and killed Sloviansk residents. It took Ukrainian forces three months to recapture the city.

Volodymyr blames Kremlin propaganda for the emergence of “pro-Russian separatists” in Sloviansk. He himself doesn’t follow the news. Though he believes the future is uncertain, he doesn’t see any “bright prospects” — and he doesn’t trust politicians. “The entire nation is in low spirits right now,” he says.

Volodymyr’s family doesn’t have enough money to move to a safer place, and he has to care for his father and wife, both of whom have disabilities. “The fear of death doesn’t go away. Not for myself, but for my loved ones,” he says. “Everyone here has it. Some even lose their minds.”

Ukrainian military vehicles near Sloviansk

‘Let me die with my home’

Nearly 80 percent of Sloviansk residents were evacuated from the city after Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. But some have since returned, and around 56,000 people live here today. For Natalya (name changed), the city has been a safe haven. “I’m from Kostiantynivka,” she explains. “It’s worse there. Here there are [incoming strikes] sometimes, and there it’s every day.”

The front line is currently seven kilometers (about four miles) from Kostiantynivka, but Natalya goes back regularly. “I’m here for ten days, and then I’m taken back to hell,” she says. “My husband, our property, dogs, and cats are there. We don’t know what awaits us. If there’s [a strike], then let me [die] with my home. I don’t want to live without arms or legs.”

Natalya “doesn’t even think” about moving farther away from the front; her salary from the grocery store is barely enough to live on, so she can’t afford to leave. And she doesn’t want to “end up in Russia” either. Natalya’s mother is Russian, and she has relatives in Moscow, but she stopped speaking to them because they support the war. Nevertheless, she believes “everyone” is waiting for peace.

“In principle, I’m in favor of peace in any situation,” Natalya says. “But Putin won’t agree.”

A couple in Sloviansk’s Shovkovychnyi Park

A monument to the Soviet-made Yak-40 passenger jet

‘There are many zhduny here’

“I don’t want the Russians to come to my home. That’s what I’m fighting for,” says Oleksandr, a 25-year-old company commander in the Ukrainian army.

Oleksandr is from Shakhtarske, a city in the Dnipropetrovsk region some 140 kilometers (86 miles) away. He lives in Sloviansk with his girlfriend, a 19-year-old local named Lera. “This is a separatist city; there are many zhduny here,” he says of Sloviansk, using a Ukrainian term for people who are “waiting for Russia.” “Even the local grandmas look at me like they want me to drop dead.”

According to Oleksandr, Sloviansk residents with pro-Russian views no longer speak openly “because they understand it will cause them grief.” But Lera says that in some local Telegram groups, they refer to the Russians as “ours,” and local taxi drivers and shopkeepers often use the word “ruble” instead of “hryvnia.”

Oleksandr and Lera

Oleksandr has already suffered three combat injuries, one of which was severe. “It tore me in half,” he says. Taking out his phone, he shows a photo of himself lying in a hospital bed, with a seam of stitches running from his shoulder to his hip. “They thought I was done for, but I spent four months in bed and recovered,” he says. “If I were [in the politicians’ place], I’d have come to an agreement already, to be honest. I just want the war to end.”

Oleksandr spent the previous day transporting the bodies of fallen soldiers from the area around “Our guys fight well, very well. But there’s fewer of us than there are of them. There are few of us left,” he says wearily. “Officially, my company has 110 men. Only five or six of us who stood in the ranks from the very beginning are left alive.”

Nevertheless, Oleksandr believes Ukraine needs to fight until it achieves a total victory. “It would be psychologically difficult for me to agree to Putin’s conditions,” he says. “We’ll be here until the end anyway. We have to fight. What else can we do?”

Lera suggests that if negotiations result in Russia retaining control over Ukrainian territories, there could be a “new Maidan” in Ukraine. “So many people were killed! Mothers will ask, ‘What did my son fight for?’”

A destroyed multi-story residential building in Izyum

‘Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone’

“I’ll say it in Biblical words: ‘Cursed is anyone who moves his neighbor’s boundary stone,’” says Oleh Tkachenko, a Protestant chaplain of the Orthodox Church of God whose family owns a bakery in the industrial zone on the outskirts of Sloviansk.

Oleh has been involved in volunteer work since 2014, delivering humanitarian aid all along the contact line and evacuating people under shelling. Starting in 2016, his family ran a bakery in Marinka that distributed some of its bread for free as humanitarian aid. At the time, Marinka was roughly 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the combat zone in eastern Ukraine. But after Russia began its full-scale invasion, the city ended up less than a kilometer from the front line.

Meduza has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from the very start, and we are committed to reporting objectively on a war we firmly oppose. Join Meduza in its mission to challenge the Kremlin’s censorship with the truth. Donate today.

The Tkachenkos moved their bakery to Pokrovsk, where they continued distributing free bread to nearby cities and Ukrainian soldiers at the front. But in the fall of 2024, Pokrovsk became too dangerous and the family fled to Sloviansk. Three months later, their bakery began supplying bread to frontline soldiers once again.

Oleh says Ukraine has already endured too much to conclude a ceasefire on Russia’s terms, but he doesn’t think victory will come easily. Rattling off the problems Ukrainians face, he lists corruption, difficulties supplying the army, gaps in the country’s defense, red tape, and media bias.

In Oleh’s opinion, controversy over the use of the Russian language is “in tenth place” but there are other conflicts creating divisions. Whereas before, people in the east used to say that Donbas “feeds the country,” now western residents believe only they “defend Ukraine,” he says. In this context, Oleh sees national reconciliation as the key to uniting the country — but he doesn’t know how to achieve this yet.

Oleh Tkachenko at his bakery

The road leading from Sloviansk

Izyum, Kharkiv region

The road leading from Sloviansk to Izyum is freshly paved, but it’s flanked by charred trees, scorched ruins, and the skeletons of homes. Izyum spent six months under Russian occupation in 2022, and a significant portion of the city lies in ruins, too.

Russian shelling put a hole through the five-story building opposite Larysa and Halyna’s home. They were a little luckier: the two pensioners only had to replace their window panes (which the local authorities paid for) and change their radiators (on their own dime).

The two women think that one of the main conditions for ending the war should be the liberation of all occupied territories, including Crimea. “Otherwise, why were so many young guys left without arms, without eyes? Why were so many people buried there, in the forest [near Izyum]?! The war needs to end, but not by giving away lands. [The people] in Donbas are our people, too,” they exclaim, practically in unison.

Larysa, who evacuated to Zhovtantsi in the Lviv region at the start of the full-scale invasion, says reports of polarization in Ukrainian society “are being overblown by those who benefit from them.” “There were lots of people there from Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson, and everyone was treated normally,” she says of her time in western Ukraine. “The people there are very nice. It’s even a shame we’re not like that here. They’re friendlier.”

Sisters Olesya and Svitlana (names changed) evacuated to central Ukraine at the start of the full-scale invasion. Like Larysa, they returned to Izyum after the “deoccupation.” And while their home wasn’t damaged, their flower shop had burned down. “We live in fear,” Svitlana says about the future. “It will probably be more difficult: the economy will suffer greatly. But we believe that Ukraine will get back on its feet.”

The murals on the ceiling of Izyum’s Holy Transfiguration Cathedral Ruins in Izyum

Half of Izyum’s residents have left the city. Olesya and Svitlana still sell flowers, only now, their main customers are soldiers. “The boys say they’ll win back everything…” Olesya says. “Yes, we’d like the 1991 borders to be ours, but not [if we have to fight] to the last Ukrainian. If so, let everything remain as it is. Not at this price.”

“Give up territories? How?!” asks Olha, a local selling dried fish and homemade pickles on the outskirts of the city. “We survived the occupation and know what that’s like. It’s when you forget what bread smells like.”

Kharkiv

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, almost 80 percent of Kharkiv residents said they used Russian in their daily lives. Varvara Sidina, 32, attended a Russian-language school and university. She started reading books and watching movies in Ukrainian after February 24, 2022. But she was still taken aback by the local attitude towards the Russian language during a recent trip to the western city of Lviv.

“We enter a gorgeous opera house and there’s a [sign] at the entrance [that says]: ‘Territory free from the language of the occupier.’ Is this a bit harsh? Yes. Do I agree with this? No. We’re trying very hard [to learn Ukrainian], believe me. But why force it?”

Sidina is a director at Kharkiv’s Timur Children’s Theater, which has staged all of its productions in Ukrainian since 2014. “Our children in Kharkiv have earned not only respect but also the right to speak in the language they deem necessary. They continue to live in [dangerous] conditions and, by doing so, they have already demonstrated their patriotism,” she says.

A business center damaged by shelling on Kharkiv’s Vulytsia Svobody (“Freedom Street”) Children going to school in a Kharkiv subway station

Varvara Sidina, a director at the Timur Children’s Theater

Kharkiv has several schools that operate underground, including five in subway stations and one in a bunker. But due to a lack of space, most local children study online. Rehearsals at the Timur Theater, which take place in a basement shelter, offer a cherished opportunity for them to see each other in person. “There are drones over the city, the threat of [guided bombs], and children arrive saying: ‘Sorry I’m late,’” says Anton Zhilyakov, the theater’s artistic director.

The theater’s staff believe “only the army has the right” to discuss options for ending the war. “Ukraine is fighting to ensure that there’s never a repeat of the Soviet Union — when we said one thing, thought another, and did a third. Our children should grow up in an atmosphere of freedom, not hypocrisy,” says the theater’s co-founder, Olena Sidina.

Varvara agrees with her mother: “We need to cut this umbilical cord and break away [from Russia], even if we bleed.”

Anton Zhilyakov, the artistic director of the Timur Children’s Theater

Backstage at the Timur Children’s Theater

During the war, the Timur Theater staged its first production for adults. The play, titled “Look at the Sky,” was dedicated to Mykhailo Demyanov, a 22-year-old friend of the theater who died at the front.

‘Anything except injustice’

Olha Kleitman, the owner of the Kharkiv-based architectural bureau SBM Studio, cut all business ties with Russia back in 2014. “I took part in the Orange Revolution and the Maidan. I don’t like injustice,” she says. “This unites all Ukrainians: We can stand anything except injustice.”

After her husband went to the front at the start of the full-scale invasion, Olha founded an aid organization for soldiers and opened a shelter that now houses 50 elderly people who lost their homes due to the war. She believes Ukraine can win if all citizens take it upon themselves to help their country: “We need to resist and remember that nothing is impossible.”

Olha also believes that Ukraine must retake all of the occupied territories — but only once they’ve “found new gunpowder,” she says, paraphrasing former army commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. “There’s no need to kill our guys for no reason.”

Olha’s office is a five-minute walk from Kharkiv’s famous Slovo Building, which was damaged in a Russian strike in March 2022 but has since been restored. Olha herself started studying architectural reconstruction and restoration last year, so she can take part in rebuilding the city. “They destroy us, we’re reborn; they destroy us again, and we’re reborn again,” she says, pointing to the Slovo Building’s memorial plaque honoring the Ukrainian writers imprisoned and killed during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. “I don’t want to lose yet another chance to be reborn. Otherwise, they’ll just devour us like they did many times before.”

The Kharkiv City Council building on Constitution Square

Olha Kleitman A destroyed residential building in Saltivka, Kharkiv’s most damaged residential neighborhood

* * *

The Annunciation Cathedral in central Kharkiv has come under Russian shelling multiple times. Many sections of its stained glass windows are broken or boarded up. Nevertheless, priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) continue to hold services here. Though it declared independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in 2022, the UOC now faces an impending ban under a 2024 law forbidding religious groups from maintaining links to Russia.

According to parishioner Lidiya, the church regularly leads prayers “for the Ukrainian army [and] peace in our country,” and worshipers come to services even when there’s a risk of shelling. “Sometimes you hear shelling during a service and your legs go numb with horror,” Lidiya says.

The Annunciation Cathedral during a missile attack on January 23, 2024 Sergei Rud

Lidiya doesn’t know how she feels about the issue of regaining the occupied territories. “It’s already scorched earth,” she says, wondering who will rebuild these cities when so many Ukrainians have fled abroad or died at the front. “Recently, a guy in his early twenties came to pray with us. He was almost in tears and didn’t know what to do,” Lidiya recalls. “His wife has gone to Moldova with their child and says she’ll never return to Kharkiv.”

Chapter 2

The Southeast

Dnipro

As of late February, only four to seven kilometers (two-and-a-half to four miles) remained between the front line and the city of Dnipro. Borys, 19, is in town visiting friends. He comes from Pavlohrad, a city east of Dnipro but roughly 110 kilometers (68 miles) from the front.

Dnipro

“I’ve been to more than a hundred funerals since 2022: my older brother is at the front; these were his comrades-in-arms. And then there’s friends and colleagues,” he says. “I’ve seen people who were blown up by mines, who survived torture. I’ve seen closed-casket funerals.”

Borys says he wishes “Zelensky would stop this.” He thinks that Ukraine’s occupied territories should receive neutral status or become part of Russia, so long as the majority of Ukrainians are left alive; joining NATO isn’t worth such losses, he says. “But Russia needs to understand that new attempts to invade will end badly for it,” he adds.

“I think we should start negotiations [with Russia] and then decide the fate of [the Donetsk and Luhansk] regions through an honest poll. So people can decide for themselves which country they want to be in,” chimes in his friend Ihor, 18.

Borys and Ihor were still minors when Ukraine declared martial law because of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Unlike men ages 18 to 60, they could have left the country. Instead, they decided to stay and study tactical medicine. Now, Ihor is studying to be a psychologist, and Borys dreams of opening a rehabilitation center for injured soldiers. “Anyone who calls themselves a Ukrainian today invests a part of themselves into the common [good],” Ihor explains.“My friend, for example, listened to Russian rock and spoke Russian before the war. But when needed, he dove in, and now he’s in a trench, kneedeep in shit.”

The city of Dnipro

The Dnipro River

Fields near Dnipro

‘Putin isn’t the only one to blame’

Since 2014, Dnipro has been a hub for soldiers, volunteers, and Ukrainians evacuated from frontline areas. Here, ambulances and helicopters bringing severely wounded soldiers to hospitals are part of everyday life, fiction writer Yan Valetov says.

A Dnipro native, Valetov believes his city and country have changed permanently. He thinks Ukraine should militarize, like Israel, and that every Ukrainian should own a weapon and have clear mobilization instructions in the event of another invasion. “We must prepare to be a nation that will always fight. We have a 140-million-strong country next door, and Putin isn’t [the only one] to blame,” he says. “The rockets that fly at us are made in factories by ordinary people who get paid for this. Mothers pour tea for their boys who come here to kill.”

At the start of the war, Yan and his friends started a foundation that sent medicine and pickup trucks to the front. Then they decided to supply combat drones, as well. “I didn’t experience any moral suffering, because right now killing is necessary. I haven’t reached the next stage yet — pulling the trigger myself — but I realize I can’t rule this out,” he says.

Yan Valetov

The Menorah Center in Dnipro

Valetov writes in Russian, but he doesn’t think language should be a stumbling block for Ukrainians — and he’s come to terms with the fact that Russian-language books won’t be printed in Ukraine in the coming years. He sees the “process of Ukrainization” as a natural outcome of the war. “What matters is what you do for your country,” he says. “I have the blood of seven ethnic groups, but I was born and raised here, this is my land.”

The writer has mixed feelings about Zelensky. Though “he played the hero superbly,” Valetov disapproves of the president’s “boorish rhetoric” towards Western partners and insistence on Ukraine joining NATO. “We won’t be accepted into NATO in the next 10 to 20 years,” he says. “We’re being erased; there’s physically fewer of us than the Russians. And this isn’t a lack of courage, it’s math.”

“Are we going to sacrifice a million [people] for Crimea? And then what will we get?” Valetov continues. “I’m going to say something [that sounds] bad, but the people in Donetsk and Luhansk are no longer ours — with the help of television and Telegram, you can flush everything [Ukrainian] out of people’s minds in 11 years.”

If Ukraine holds on to 80 percent of its territory and strengthens it democratic institutions, this would be a “great success,” Valetov says. The way he sees it, victory for Ukraine means surviving this war.

A bridge over the Dnipro River

Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk region

“There’s war in the air,” says Oleksiy (name changed). “Yes, the front seems far from here, a whole hundred kilometers [away]. But people are still afraid.”

A musician and father of two living in the industrial city of Kamianske, Oleksiy started a blog in February 2022 to help cope with the stress. Now, he broadcasts weekly discussions with his subscribers about classic films. He’s also part of a Christian community group that helps wounded soldiers.

Oleksiy believes that internal divisions have always been part of Ukraine’s history. And he already sees new fault lines emerging because of the war: “‘You left, but I stayed,’ ‘You have three children and aren’t going to the front, but I am,’ ‘My son is fighting, but yours isn’t.’”

“There are many who call themselves patriots but their language is propaganda and hate,” he says. “An emphasis on ideologies only leads to more division, and I see from my own family history that these points of conflict are difficult to heal, even with time. We [Ukrainians] only have one path: to accept each other as we are.”

Asked how the war should end, Oleksiy says politicians should take the value of human life into account in their decisionmaking. But he’s skeptical about negotiating with Russia. “Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils,” he says. “If we think sensibly, the one who started it should stop. But there are things we can’t influence, like a tsunami. Is it possible to reach an agreement with a maniac?”

The Monument to Prometheus in Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk region

A MiG-19 fighter jet monument erected in 1976 to mark the 15th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s first successful crewed spaceflight. Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk region.

Kamianske

Chapter 3

The South

Mykolaiv

Located opposite the regional administration building, which a Russian missile strike destroyed in March 2022, Mykolaiv’s Alley of Glory has pictures of 600 fallen soldiers. Their relatives pay tribute to them here, leaving behind flowers, flags, and glowing lamps.

Russian attacks left Mykolaiv without drinking water for the first six months of the full-scale invasion. According to locals, however, there’s much less shelling these days.

“Many of my friends have died,” says Vadym, a student at the local shipbuilding college (whose name has been changed). “My friend Nadiya died, she was 20. She had a fight with her boyfriend, moved to a new apartment, and a missile hit the building that same evening.”

“My uncle, [who was] in the army, went missing,” he continues. “He was found dead a year later — his head was cut off.”

Vadym says he wants “Putin to die and for Ukraine to be fully liberated.”

The regional administration building in Mykolaiv, which was destroyed by a Russian missile strike on March 29, 2022 A dog tag belonging to a fallen Ukrainian soldier at the memorial in Mykolaiv

The Alley of Glory in Mykolaiv

‘I can’t look at the mothers in tears’

Tetyana, who runs a stall in Mykolaiv’s central market, says sales have fallen since the beginning of the war. She tried adding funeral goods to her range of products but ultimately couldn’t bear it. “I can’t look at the mothers in tears. I just can’t,” she explains.

Tetyana’s considering going to work in a supermarket, where at least she’d have a guaranteed paycheck. She could have gone to live with her children in Poland, but she didn’t want to leave her dog and four cats behind.

Though she tries to be optimistic, Tetyana says it doesn’t work. She worries that politicians have gradually turned the war “into a business,” and she doesn’t understand how the money sent to help Ukraine is spent. “I have a lot of friends at the front whose [relatives] equipped them,” she says. “[It’s like,] You want normal body armor and a good helmet? Get it yourself.”

Tetyana at the market in Mykolaiv A traditional Ukrainian Motanka doll made by Tetyana

A road sign pointing to Maryanivka, the geographical center of Ukraine

Chapter 4

The Center

Maryanivka, Cherkasy region

The village of Maryanivka is the geographical center of Ukraine, but only about 1,000 people live here today. Many residents have gone to the front. Olena, who works at the local general store, says you can count the men who remain in Maryanivka on one hand.

The store’s owner, Halyna, has a son in the military. “I don’t understand why our boys are at the front, but guys from Donetsk come here in their big flashy cars and live it up,” she cries (Maryanivka is about 500 kilometers, or 310 miles, from the front line in Donbas). “Why don’t they go there and defend their territory?!”

According to Olena, Ukrainians are tired of the war for many reasons, including because many of them donate money to support the army only to hear about constant shortages of weapons and equipment. She’d like the war to end with Ukraine getting back its occupied territories, but “if it were going to happen, it would have happened long ago,” Olena says.

The granary in Maryanivka Halyna, the owner of the general store in Maryanivka

The Heart of Ukraine art installation in Maryanivka

Cherkasy

The regional capital, Cherkasy, looks like an ordinary peaceful city. Located in central Ukraine, the Cherkasy region comes under fire less often than other parts of the country and has taken in more than 100,000 displaced people from the hardest-hit areas. “Compared to what happened in Cherihiv, people here haven’t seen war,” says Vladyslava, a journalism student who lived through Russia’s occupation of the northern border region in 2022.

Serhiy, 71, fought in Afghanistan, served in the army for 18 years, and was discharged after the nuclear accident in Chornobyl in 1986. Today, he’s retired and makes folding stoves for frontline soldiers. “Do you know what a Pyrrhic victory is? I don’t want such a victory,” he says. “But if our territories are given to Russia, this would be a capitulation, which isn’t right either. Therefore, just freeze the conflict. But on one condition: our country introduces the death penalty for embezzlement today. I’m no supporter of the death penalty, but I think it’s time.”

Serhiy A park in Cherkasy

Serhiy sees the fight against corruption and “saving our boys’ lives” as foundational to Ukraine’s victory. However, he rejects the notion that the country is battling domestic divisions. “People are being wound up,” including when it comes to the language issue, Serhiy says. “If we all started speaking Ukrainian and Putin surrendered tomorrow because of it, I’d sing our folk songs around the clock. But this isn’t a factor in [our] victory,” he argues. “Telling the truth — that’s what it means to be Ukrainian.”

Pereiaslav, Kyiv region

The wall of the school in Pereiaslav has three new memorial plaques honoring locals who died at the front. In the background, an air raid siren sounds.

“We shouldn’t freeze the conflict; we can’t show our weakness. When we do that, we’ll be defeated,” says Natalya Shkyra, who works at Pereiaslav’s Museum of Folk Life and Architecture of Middle Naddnipryanshyna with her mother, Lyudmyla. (Pereiaslav is known as the “city of museums” — it has more than 20.)

Lyudmyla and Natalya Shkyra, researchers at the Museum of Folk Life and Architecture of Middle Naddnipryanshyna in Pereiaslav

Scythian sculptures

Natalya thinks Russia’s propagandistic claims about nationalism prevailing in Ukraine are unfounded. She sees populism as dangerous, but believes “healthy nationalism based on folk culture” only makes a country stronger. And she’s glad people abroad are learning more about Ukrainian culture. “We’re different, but that’s what makes us special,” agrees Lyudmyla. “If we preserve these differences, develop the strengths of each region, and, at the same time, get along and find something in common, then we’ll preserve ourselves as a nation.”

At the Taras Shevchenko’s Testament Museum, there’s a charity exhibition of Ukrainian art to raise money for the military. “Many of our staff have relatives at the front,” says Kateryna Nahaiko, a history PhD student and one of the exhibition’s organizers. “The war has touched everyone, and our lives revolve around it.”

Nahaiko believes that victory is only possible on Ukraine’s terms, which means Russia must relinquish the occupied territories. To support her argument, she quotes a Shevchenko poem: “Fight on — you shall prevail! God is helping you!”

Chapter 5

The Northwest

Zhytomyr

Borys’s shoe repair shop in Zhytomyr is just blocks away from a lyceum that was destroyed by a Russian missile in March 2022. With the front some 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) away, such strikes are rare, so locals remember the exact dates of the attacks.

Life in the city “seems to have come to standstill” over the last three years, the cobbler says. “Nothing new is being built, businesses are closing, and I also have fewer clients. Though maybe there are more cars outside because a lot of displaced people moved to the city.”

The destroyed lyceum in Zhytomyr

Borys, the cobbler

Borys is 71 and has run his shop for 39 years. He says war affects older people in particular; living in fear destroys your health.

Vasyl, a lollipop vendor on the city’s main street, says he finds the notifications from the air raid alert app on his phone especially distressing. But he believes the war must end with a total victory for Ukraine: “We need to get back our territories — otherwise, what did we fight for?”

Lutsk, Volyn region

The Moroshki vocal ensemble performs a folk song outside of the Zavokzalnyi Market in Lutsk. The ensemble used to sing in community centers and nursing homes, but now they perform on the streets to raise money for the Ukrainian army.

Asked why they decided to collect donations, the singers start talking over each other. One says she has a son at the front; another has nephews, one of whom is missing in action. “We buy the guys what they ask for,” one woman explains. “Give [the Russians] a finger and they’ll take the whole arm!” exclaims another. “If there’s [any Ukrainians] who don’t want to live in Ukraine, then let them pack their suitcases and go to Russia, if it’s better there. We’re in favor of not giving up territories [and] what’s ours returning to us.”

Natalya, a cosmetics saleswoman, agrees: “It would be great if the occupiers withdrew from all of our territories, including those captured in 2014. Many of my friends went to the front and some didn’t come back. Some of my husband’s relatives were killed, too. So many have died already! Giving up territory after that [would be] a bit strange.”

Natalya sells homemade cosmetics in Lutsk A Soviet mosaic from the 1970s on the side of the Driving School of the Civil Defense Organization in Lutsk

The Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral in Lutsk

“They’re stealing our boys!” cries Yevhenia (name changed). Her draft-age son “was taken right from the bus stop” to basic training, even though he should have received an exemption as his grandmother’s caregiver. Yevhenia says her son failed to submit his documents to the military enlistment office in time. “If I’d known that would happen I never would’ve let him go out!” she says, practically in tears.

“I joined the [territorial defense forces] to protect my family,” says Stanislav (name changed). Now a soldier in the Ukrainian army, Stanislav has fought on the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv fronts over the last three years, as well as in Russia’s Kursk region. The Ukrainian army began an incursion into western Russia in August 2024 and, as of this writing, still occupies territory there. But Stanislav is dissatisfied with the Kursk operation. “The goal of showing the world that Russia is vulnerable was not achieved,” he says.

Stanislav says he’s lost some of his enthusiasm since the first months of the full-scale war. “It feels like they just want to destroy us,” he explains. “Not just the Russians, but our command, as well. We’ve been sitting at the front endlessly. It’s as if they’re saying, ‘There’s no one to replace you, [so] you have to die here.’”

According to Stanislav, morale is low and soldiers are just trying to survive. “Anyone who talks about peremoha should grab a Kalashnikov and go for it,” he says, using the Ukrainian word for “victory.” “On the Zaporizhzhia front, the Russians are making concrete and fortifying their positions with it. How are we going to break through? I’m horrified at the thought of going on the attack there. We’ll just drown in blood.”

Asked what to do about the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics,” Stanislav argues that the easiest solution is to “amputate” the Donbas region. Mentioning the fact that Ukrainians live there makes him roll his eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he says with a sigh.

The Lutsk train station

On the train from Lutsk to Lviv

The Lviv train station

Chapter 6

The West

Lviv

The sign that says “Territory free from the language of the occupier” is still posted on the doors of the Lviv Opera House. “It doesn’t bother me,” says Yaryna, a lawyer who goes to the opera regularly. “My right to use the Ukrainian language was restricted until 2022.” In her opinion, language has a “border function,” and if Ukrainians want to live in an independent country, they should communicate in Ukrainian.

“Lviv was always tolerant,” says Oleksandra Dyabina, a local tour guide and Lviv native who graduated from a Russian-language school. “To say that Lviv burns Russian speakers at the stake is prejudiced. But since [Russia’s 2014 annexation of] Crimea, it has been a bit uncomfortable to speak Russian in public,” she explains. “The poster at the theater is just a sign of the time we live in and what’s happening in general.”

Oleksandra Dyabina, a tour guide in Lviv

Oleksandra fled to Italy with her children in 2022 but returned to Ukraine eight months later. The way she sees it, “Lviv and Luhansk are two different Ukraines” when it comes to culture, architecture, cuisine, and attitudes towards religion. However, she believes Lviv residents worry about the occupied eastern regions just as much as other Ukrainians.

Though she’d like to see the occupied territories come back under Ukraine’s control, Oleksandra thinks the most realistic option would be to freeze the conflict along the current front line, deploy peacekeepers to the area, exchange prisoners, and allow Ukrainians who want to move to Russia the opportunity to do so. Russian leaders and soldiers, she adds, should be tried for war crimes.

The corner where Lviv’s Rynok Square meets Katedralna Square

A kiosk in Lviv

* * *

Lviv’s cemetery for fallen soldiers is known as the Field of Mars. Lamps, candles, and string lights illuminate the headstones, which are adorned with flags, flowers, and Christmas decorations. Mourners can be seen at many of the graves: some sit in silence while others cry or say prayers out loud.

“Sometimes widows come here with their children, because the children refuse to eat without their father[s],” says Mykhailo Kozak. He and his wife Natalya are decorating the grave of their 18-year-old son, Bohdan, who went to the front as a volunteer. Barely an adult, he died in the Donetsk region on February 9, 2024. “I don’t want anyone else to die,” Natalya says, crying. “Our little trooper is the youngest of all those who lie here.”

Natalya stands by her son’s grave for a little while longer and then moves down the row of headstones, changing the batteries in the Christmas lights. “We keep an eye on the [other] boys, whose relatives can’t visit them that often,” Mykhailo explains. “There’s one whose parents went to Russia, and he lies here. Another’s relatives live far away — in the Donetsk region.”

The grave of 18-year-old Ukrainian soldier Bohdan Kozak

The military cemetery in Lviv