Cultural Resilience: Ukraine's Arts Amidst Warfare

Sat Dec 20 2025 15:49:08 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

Despite enduring hardships from ongoing conflict, Ukrainian artists are creating profound cultural works defined by war, drawing attention to both the struggle and resilience of their society.

As the war in Ukraine continues, the country's cultural landscape has shifted to reflect its grim reality. Artists, filmmakers, and performers are integrating themes of conflict into their works, showing the impact of war on their lives and society. While there is a longing for lighter content, such as comedies, the prevailing narratives are rooted in the ongoing struggle for independence and identity. This new phase of Ukrainian art serves both as a coping mechanism and a means of honoring those affected by the conflict.

I've never heard an audience so silent.

When the credits rolled on a screening of 2000 metres to Andriivka, no-one in the Kyiv cinema moved. Their popcorn and beer were mostly untouched.

The documentary by Mstyslav Chernov is a frontline film so intense you feel like you're trapped in the terrifying trenches alongside the soldiers.

Watching that in Ukraine, a country under fire, the intensity is multiplied.

At the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, as society mobilised to defend itself, Ukraine had little capacity for culture. Venues were closed or repurposed, some were attacked, and artists became refugees or soldiers.

Almost four years on, the arts are back - but everything is now permeated by the war.

The change struck me on a recent trip to Kyiv.

I realised that city walls were plastered with two kinds of poster: fundraisers for forces on the frontline - or films, plays and exhibitions about the war.

Andriivka wasn't the only hard hitting film on offer: there were also ads for Cuba and Alyaska, another powerful documentary that follows two female combat medics in a way that manages to be funny, frightening and tragic at the same time.

There was unflinching photography, too.

The old Lenin Museum, now Ukrainian House, was hosting a giant retrospective of the work of documentary photographer Oleksandr Glyadelov.

In the section devoted to 2022 and beyond, he'd displayed his photos of victims' bodies on the ground to look like graves.

Some I talked to in Kyiv shy away from all of this. War is their reality: it's what keeps them up at night, with the air defence guns and missile warnings. It's all over their social media feeds and it's in their fears for friends and family who are fighting.

But others are clearly drawn to it.

It's not only the serious arts tackling the war these days. Musicals, the ultimate form of escapism, are in on the act too.

Just over the road from the cinema, I spotted a banner for the latest offering from the Kyiv Opera: Patriot, a rock opera in two acts.

It's the story of any one of us, the director explains, one that takes the hero on a journey through Ukraine's recent history - from revolution to war.

All the songs are hugely popular anthems of Ukrainian independence so the audience on premiere night whooped along, swept to their feet at times.

His team had pressured him to give the show a happy ending for a public exhausted by four years of open war, but he refused.

This play is a tribute to those who died in this war, he told me. And we cannot think about our own comfort when the best sons of Ukraine are dying.

Ultimately, the films they are producing today are heroic tales: the enemy and the cause are clear. But they also expose the harshest of realities of this war and its true cost.

For now, while audiences in Ukraine express a desire for comedies and light-hearted dramas, the current tone of culture overwhelmingly reflects the harsh realities of life in wartime.