Choosing life on Ukraine’s front lines

When Liza Andreeva fled her eastern hometown of Kharkiv in March 2022, the evacuation train she took with her mother and 3-year-old brother was so full, people sat and slept in the aisles. The refugees leaned against the walls, their luggage, and each other. Those with children or pets did their best to keep them quiet, to avoid disturbing fellow passengers already stressed to the breaking point.

Andereeva spent the next 18 months as a displaced person in Poland, then Germany. After that, she decided to come home to study in Kharkiv—even as the war continued nearby and even though Kharkiv lies just 20 miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia.

“We can’t leave [behind] everything that we have in Kharkiv,” Andreeva, now 19, told me as we sat in a downtown Kharkiv coffeeshop in April with her school friend Zheniya Komissarova. For Andreeva, who is majoring in foreign languages, the city is “native” and “familiar.” She cited “houses, families, our pets” as reasons enough to keep living here. Komissarova, also 19, nodded her agreement as her friend talked.

When I asked Andreeva if she would consider leaving Kharkiv again, she shook her head.

“I want to stay, really,” she said, adding that her mother made the decision to leave in 2022, not her. Now enrolled at one of Kharkiv’s three dozen universities, Andreeva has asserted her adulthood as much through her wish to live and study here as through the self-expression of her green eyes, all-black outfit, purple fingernails, and bright blue hair.

As expressive as her friend, Komissarova has found her own creative ways to handle her war anxiety. The young medical student spends her spare time redecorating old rocket-propelled grenade launchers and selling the weapons-turned-artwork online. It’s her way of turning something violent into an instrument of peace, and earning a little money, too.

In their way, both young women represent a generation of Ukrainians who are choosing to live in Kharkiv and other, especially dangerous parts of their country—no matter how long the war continues.

According to data from the United Nations, about 10.6 million Ukrainians have taken refuge either outside the country (6.9 million) or in other places within Ukraine (3.7 million), a category called internally displaced persons (IDPs). Another 570,000 count as “returned IDPs,” or those who moved somewhere else inside Ukraine and later came back to their prewar homes.

Another half-million are labeled “others of concern,” locals who have stayed put in high-risk areas. These include Ukrainians close to either side of the front lines: those in Ukraine and those living under Russian occupation, according to the UN.

In short, Ukrainians who returned home, or never left, make up a slim minority. But young people like Andreeva are among them. They have chosen to take their stand, living their lives in the places they call home. They would rather risk death in Ukraine than find sure survival elsewhere.

Their resolve remains, even as peace efforts falter. On May 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to attend a top-level negotiation in Istanbul that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President Donald Trump both supported publicly—and said they would attend themselves, if Putin did, too.

Andreeva and other Kharkiv residents I talked to shrug off the day-to-day hopes, and disappointments, of diplomacy happening in foreign cities. They have enough to worry about at home.

“There is no guarantee [that] living in Kharkiv will be safe in another one, two, three years,” Andreeva said. “But it doesn’t stop us. We’re still here.”

Zheniya Komissarova Photo by William Fleeson

Mark Agarkov seems to personify the word overachiever. At 25, he is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology, one of the pastors at Kharkiv Presbyterian Church, and president of the church’s wartime humanitarian foundation. His glasses, messy mop of brown hair, and slight build underscore his A-student aspect. A married man, he became a father to twin boys last year.

In other words, he’s never had more to lose.

Being a new dad is “much more scary” than his two years of life in wartime before having children, he admitted. His fear has only grown in recent months, amid Russia’s increased air attacks on Ukraine. In March, several strikes hit the Agarkovs’ neighborhood, some missiles landing just 500 feet from their house, he told me.

Yet Agarkov’s faith led him to keep his family in Kharkiv, where they can continue to live together, despite the risks. Under the country’s martial law, men aged 18-60 are forbidden to leave the country, should they be needed to fight or serve the war effort. Some Ukrainian families opted to send the mother and children abroad, away from danger. But for Agarkov, voluntary separation was never a serious choice.

“We understand that we’re responsible for the children, for ourselves, but we also share the idea that children have to be with their parents, and families have to be united, and to be together,” he said. “It’s important for family health, and healthy relationships, to stay together.”

Separations between fathers and families, combined with financial strain and the daily risk of death in Ukraine, have created a perfect storm in otherwise stable homes.

For some households, the pressures of war and distance have broken their marriages and families altogether. According to numbers compiled by Data Pandas, a public policy statistics organization, Ukraine ranked ninth in the world for divorce rates last year, just ahead of the United States. Former Soviet republics stand out among high-divorce countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Russia also figure in the Top 10 of highest divorce rates globally, the data showed.

Agarkov knows these realities as well as anyone. In spite or perhaps because of those pressures, Agarkov makes his home in Kharkiv—and brings a sense of Christian mission to making his stand in a dangerous place.

“The short answer [for staying] is, because there is a great need here,” he said. Agarkov added that the Ukrainians now living in Kharkiv include locals as well as displaced peoples from across Ukraine’s east and south, parts of which are now under Russian occupation. Agarkov emphasized that hope, or a lack of it, can make all the difference in whether people leave, or decide to keep hanging on.

“My mission, the mission of my family, why we are staying here, is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ—and to give people hope through this gospel,” Agarkov said. “This is the scariest moment [for Ukrainians], when people lose hope.”

Photo by William Fleeson

As I walked around Kharkiv during two days in April, a seeming tranquility jarred with my awareness of the constant threat that lay over the city. Spring flowers bloomed under a cool, cloudless afternoon sky. Teenagers, just out of classes, hung around in the central Shevchenko Park, chatting in circles or practicing dance moves to post on TikTok. But air raid sirens rang out every hour or so. Many of the downtown buildings showed shattered facades and burned-out interiors, thanks to Russian rockets and other projectiles fired in three-plus years of war.

Unlike Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, Kharkiv lacks a comprehensive anti-missile defense system. Across the city, including in places like pedestrian-filled Shevchenko Park, starburst patterns pocked the pavement, showing where Russian shells have fallen, without warning and sometimes in broad daylight. Despite talks of peace, Russian attacks on Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities continued in May, killing and wounding civilians.

Arsen Kulikov assured me that the coffeeshop where we chose to meet would be safe enough, given its basement location. Tall, physically fit, with a serious demeanor, the 29-year-old might make an ideal soldier in the Ukrainian army. Yet Kulikov, who works as a software developer, has a military service exemption. He is the sole caretaker for his mother, who suffers from dementia and occasional epileptic seizures.

Kulikov spent the first year of the war near Cherkasy, in central Ukraine, before returning to his hometown. That year was terrible for him, he said, as he worked remotely and suffered from the isolation of displacement. He grappled with vices he didn’t know he had. He binged on unhealthy foods, gaining more than 30 pounds. He began drinking too much—a habit he sometimes continues to indulge even now, he admitted.

Once the war reached a steady state, Kulikov chose to move with his mother back to Kharkiv. Living at home, and with access to her Kharkiv doctors, was less disruptive for her, Kulikov explained.

On the drive back home, he burst into tears when he saw the highway sign announcing “KHARKIV” at the city limits. “It was so emotional,” he said.

But a year of war had changed his old home. “The city was so empty,” he remembered, as if the feeling of home itself had changed. “It wasn’t the city I remembered.”

But that slowly changed as Kulikov’s friends and other residents returned, making it feel more like it did in peacetime.

For his own sake, Kulikov has taken steps to manage the long-burning stress of nearby conflict, and the heavy, often depressing duty of caring for a senior parent. He is taking lessons to learn rock ’n’ roll drums as well as vocals. Musical expression, in a style known for loud, testosterone-charged riffs and rhythms, does a lot to relieve his anxiety, he told me.

For the future, Kulikov expressed a mix of hope for a fair peace and sadness for his mother’s inevitable passing.

“I hope that this war ends with justice—for us, and justice for them,” he said, meaning Russia. But planning ahead feels all but impossible. “Now, I can’t even think about one week later.”

Kulikov’s mother’s epilepsy is worsening. Her most recent attack came in March. Each episode leaves lasting damage to her health and memory, he said.

Even after she’s gone, he doesn’t plan to leave Kharkiv.

“My friends, all of the people around me, are really important for me,” he said. “I don’t want to miss them, somehow.”

Liza Andreeva and Zheniya Komissarova Photo by William Fleeson

For young people in Kharkiv as for so many across Ukraine, sanity comes in preparing for the future, no matter how unclear the outlook appears now. Mark Agarkov, like the scores of Kharkiv’s other university students, pursues his Ph.D. as he cares for his church and family.

He approaches the days ahead with a simple, clear attitude of hope in things unseen.

“If Christians don’t stay, who will stay?” he said.

And for Komissarova and Andreeva, their highest priority is to simply keep going—to live as if fighting wasn’t taking place 20 miles away.

“If one person starts to panic, everyone near them starts to panic,” Komissarova explained. Russia took their youth, she said, but she refuses to let the war claim the days to come.