Ukraine’s Everyday Resistance

Leading a Dignified Resistance

By Oleksandr Sushko, executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation 

While international media reporting on Ukraine largely focuses on geopolitics and defense, an unsung civilian army of millions provides a central pillar of the country’s endurance and security. Civil society in Ukraine plays a unique role in improving people’s capacity to operate under severe circumstances and motivating people to believe in a brighter future. They assist not just in simple survival, but inspiring and connecting others to strive for a post-war future.  

Despite U.S. vows to end the war and myriad rounds of peace negotiations, there has been no let-up in Russia’s assault. If anything, the cruelty is escalating. Last year was the deadliest for Ukrainian civilians since 2022. Drones and missile bombardments are a nightly terror. The deliberate targeting of energy infrastructure has cut off civilians’ power supplies in temperatures as low as negative four degrees Fahrenheit. By candlelight, families cocooned in sleeping bags huddle inside tents in their own living rooms for warmth.  

Faced with these dark days, we can only remain resilient and resist.

Our partners and grantees, despite suffering through the war themselves, are devoting their energy into preserving Ukraine’s democracy, institutions, and society. With over 1.3 million veterans in the country, we have supported initiatives advocating for a rights-centered approach toward serving and ex-military. We are proud to help artists harness Ukraine’s creative as well as preserving the memory of cultural loss. Cities synonymous with the most brutal atrocities are redefining themselves as symbols of recovery. Even rescued animals—equal victims of war—are inspiring humans to overcome their injuries and trauma.  

Last year, the International Renaissance Foundation, Open Society’s philanthropic arm in Ukraine, provided more than 400 grants toward an array of efforts ranging from online education, EU integration, anticorruption, rural development, and housing for displaced people. The recent energy crisis has demonstrated the indispensability of self-organized, horizontally-run groups who can mobilize resources rapidly to assist the most vulnerable. More than two-thirds of Ukrainians have also undertaken voluntary work since the full-scale invasion; connecting, building, and strengthening communities to be able to help themselves.  

When commemorating the first year’s anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the idea that there would still be more fighting and bloodshed even in the following year was unimaginable. But now in 2026, and with no visible end, the war has become routinized and now often struggles to command the world’s attention. We have no illusions that the war will end soon if the aggressor is unwilling, or unable, to stop it.  

There is no textbook on how to counter the forbidding circumstances in which Ukraine finds itself. But thanks to the investment made by the Open Society Foundations in Ukraine over the last 36 years, countless civil society organizations and movements are showing the world what a dignified resistance looks like.

A Refuge for Animals and Humans

Yevgeniia Molchanova, co-founder of Zeleniy Hai (Green Grove)  

Zelenyi Hai is in a tiny village with 32 residents around 50 miles away from the frontline in Zaporizhzhia. Throughout history the Soviets destroyed so many Ukrainian villages, especially during the famine of the 1930s. During excavation on the site we discovered the foundations of a farm dating back to World War I, and it inspires us to know that we are bringing back a tradition. Some of our visitors have gone on to open their own farms, businesses, or civil society organizations. The most important thing we can offer is inspiration to be proud of our people and our land.  

On the first day of the full-scale invasion, we hosted dozens of people who brought their animals. Soon every room was full; we even had a crocodile sleeping in the bathtub. Some of the animals found new homes in Ukraine, others went to families abroad, and now we house over 500 animals. We started introducing animal-assisted recovery programs after receiving a group of children evacuated from Mariupol, some who had lost their parents. When we heard them laughing, we started crying because we realized that the animals we helped are now helping others.  

One night in September 2022, a missile fell onto the farm. Miraculously, it didn’t detonate, but the impact caused a massive fire, and 10 animals sadly died. We thought it was the end as we didn’t have money for reconstruction, and winter was coming, but within days our supporters raised the money for repairs. Later, a film crew visited the farm and decided to name their documentary The Ark. It premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival last year.  

We aim not only to help people in their recovery, but to engage them with agricultural projects. It’s important to highlight the challenges faced in rural areas, where issues of addiction and mental health persist but without the NGOs and charities you find in cities. So we try to breathe life into rural communities by helping people to open eco-tourism businesses. This work can also help unite entire families because a village operates best when everyone is contributing.  

In 2023, the military brought us a donkey whose leg was injured by a landmine near Bakhmut. She had also lost her calf, so we named her Mamulya (“Mom”). We changed Mamulya’s bandages every day and together with a team from the U.S. and Australia fitted her with a prosthetic hoof. And now Mamulya is doing an amazing job working with veterans who also have prosthetics. The peer-to-peer principle works here, including with the animals. We accepted another rescued donkey soon after, a male, and Mamulya became a mother once again. No matter how much the enemy tries to wound us we still live our lives, even the donkeys do, too. 

Saving Lives, Preserving Memories

Olena Herasymiuk, poet and paramedic 

In 2014 during the Euromaidan protests, my friends and I went to Instytutska Street in Kyiv, as we didn’t want to live in a country under Russian occupation. I was a philology student and had never heard gunshots before, then I saw blood on the ground and people wounded and killed. That was the first day of my journey into war.  

I started fundraising, traveling to the Donbas to deliver supplies, and taking paramedic courses. I soon found my team in the form of the Hospitallers Volunteer Medical Battalion and through the specially equipped “Avstriyka” medical bus, we have evacuated over 16,000 people since the full-scale invasion. In the space of 10 years, I went from a girl in Kyiv panicking at the sight of blood, to working as a paramedic and evacuating people from the frontline.  

I am a poet with a fragile soul so it’s easy to let my emotions run free, but you can’t do that when you are helping someone wounded in the battlefield. Sometimes you might have to work on a soldier with a gunshot wound to the head or an amputated limb, but you can't show emotion. I might write something after an evacuation, but it might be weeks or months later, you need time to process. 

Most of my topics are war-related because that’s my own experience. And it’s a matter of honor—they are killing my readers, taking them into captivity, destroying their lives. They are depriving us of an opportunity to connect, to meet one another, which is for me the essence of poetry. So, this is my payback. Every time I recite my poems, I always leave one empty chair in the first row for those people who will never be able to attend, as an act of justice for the people who we lost. I am trying to convey the message that Russia cannot take them away from me. At the 2025 World Poetry Slam Championship, I performed my poem “In Memory of Mariupol,” dedicated to my fallen readers.  

On the frontline, the only resistance is with a weapon. But culture is important and as a poet I try to use my words as a weapon. I try not to glorify war; veterans will tell you that they hate the war the most and are all looking for it to end as soon as possible. 

Unwritten is a project with fellow veteran and writer Yevhen Lir where we started identifying all the people from our literary circles who were killed in the war, and not just poets, but writers, bloggers, editors, librarians, public relations agents, typesetters. We have around 290 names so far, documenting a huge cultural loss but also preserving memories and holding Russia accountable. 

Society was more divided before the war but now we have found a common language, and Ukraine matured. Through all the loss and bloodshed, we became much stronger and discovered an inner power that was always there. Before, everybody was an ordinary person; now they seem like superheroes. More than resilient, I would say we are proactive. We refused to be a whipping post and instead fought the huge empire next to us and stood our ground. 

Fighting for Human Rights in the Military

Liubov Halan, co-founder of Pryncyp

Pryncyp (Ukrainian for “principal”) came from the experience of our co-founder Masi Nayyem who was wounded in battle in 2022, encountered first-hand the bureaucracy faced by veterans and understood that the system needed to change. We now help form national strategy by developing human capital and human rights within the military, providing legal aid, advocating for policy reform, and supporting veterans with additional needs such as internally displaced people or those with disabilities.  

Being resilient is both about living a normal life and being productive when your enemy wants you to do nothing. It is the ability to fight back. Communities are one of the most important levels on which veteran policy operates. After war, a soldier returns to a home, not to a ministry, so we advocate for families to be included in veteran policy, with targeted support for people in different situations like the family of a prisoner of war, or someone killed in action, or a caregiver to an injured veteran.  

Ukraine is fighting against the biggest country in the world, one with enormous human resources and an unwillingness to save their people on the battlefield. We cannot rely on our professional army alone. In other countries, soldiers may join the army at a very young age as their first job, serve for a few years then reintegrate into civilian life for good. In Ukraine, the veterans we work with are over 30 years old, with a professional background before they served, and may be called up to fight once again in case of a new aggression. 

In the future we may need to mobilize more people to fight Russia, or other totalitarian regimes, and this raises important questions of social equality—who will be required to fight and who will be allowed to work? For how long are you obliged to fight? What are the job guarantees for reservists? How will the state ensure a fair rotation? We also work on issues of inclusive workplaces, combating discrimination, advising veterans who want to change careers, and motivating veterans to stay in Ukraine when so many of their families may have started new lives in Europe.  

The perception of veteran policy as part of defense policy has been an important development. Before the full-scale invasion, many veterans I knew were already preparing for war, so I started doing medical training, stockpiling provisions, and packing an emergency survival bag. Those who have served in the military help civilians to be more prepared. I have learned a lot about different types of weapons, bulletproof vests, and organizing supplies. Their experience is a key part of our collective defense, our collective resilience.

I was afraid when the full-scale invasion started. Because I have worked for human rights organizations on the issue of war crimes, I knew that war with Russia would involve torture, rape, and killing. And it did, on an enormous scale, as we saw in places like Bucha and Mariupol. In my mind I was prepared to die, but we were saved by our service members and that’s why I dedicate my work to them every day.  

Since 2014, what should have been the best years of my life, and those of my colleagues and friends, were spent during war and revolution. But after the full-scale invasion, veterans and their families are no longer a small, marginalized club of people; it’s now the experience of the whole of society. And we can work together, as a community and as a nation of veterans. 

Bucha: Rising from the Ashes

Mykhailyna Skoryk-Shkarivska, former deputy mayor of Bucha, founder of the Institute for Sustainable Development of Communities

Before the full-scale invasion, Bucha was a nice middle-class, up-and-coming suburb of Kyiv. We were working on different strategies to encourage more people from the capital to move here, uniting communities from the urban and rural areas, digitalizing services, and trying to put the place on the map and grow the local economy.  

Four years later we consider that the plans we had for Bucha before the invasion are even more important to deliver now. When your city is a symbol of the worst war crimes committed in Europe this century, it’s a challenge to convince people to move here—but we are turning Bucha into an example of renewal, resilience, and a triumph of the Ukrainian people.  

Though the war started in 2014, we were not prepared for the type of violence we saw in 2022. We lost more than 500 people, and we have memorials to those killed or who died because of the occupation. The victims ranged from infants to the elderly. 

Russian forces were hunting local officials, but we still had to provide humanitarian services. The mayor of neighboring Hostomel was killed while delivering supplies to residents. Municipal workers like electricians, gardeners, and cleaners were also targeted while doing their jobs. We also still remember the dozens of mayors and other officials currently in Russian captivity in the occupied areas of the country. 

Some residents never came back after their houses were looted or destroyed. Others were determined to restore it, despite what Russia did, because it is our land, our home, and we have to be here. Moving back was a delicate process because, though the occupation only lasted one month, it took more than a year to remove all the explosives. One family found their daughter’s piano booby trapped with a grenade.  

Bucha was almost empty when it was liberated on March 31, 2022. From a population of around 53,000 in the city, only 3,500 remained. We urgently needed to restore water, electricity, and gas. We prioritized establishing teams to provide psychological support, alongside rebuilding schools, kindergartens, and children’s services, to encourage families to return. Then we convinced banks and post offices to reopen, and soon businesses were encouraged to come back. We were supported by thousands of volunteers from all over the world. 

One of my fears when I returned to Bucha was that a once-open place would become closed. But it was the opposite. Even carrying such pain, the people wanted to share their story with the media. We interviewed witnesses and helped police and prosecutors gather evidence. We had to remember everyone, to identify every victim, and to collate individual and collective memories. Bucha didn’t forgive and still demands justice.

Because of our experiences during the occupation, we were more prepared for the recent harsh winter and the attacks on energy infrastructure. Some people have been renting places in Bucha to escape the freezing conditions in Kyiv. We also have thousands of internally displaced people here. The municipality and businesses have been stepping up, supported by civil society. But beyond the urgent humanitarian support, we are now looking to long-term strategic planning like achieving energy autonomy.  

We are now working with other de-occupied areas like Irpin, Hostomel, and Borodyanka, helping communities to increase their capacity, work with foreign partners and develop innovative tools to provide municipal services. Community building is so important, knowing that you are among people going through the same tough situation but still sharing the same dreams of improving and implementing local changes. Crises create problems but also opportunities, and Bucha is using this opportunity very well. 

Ukraine’s Civic Fightback

By Vladyslav Galushko, associate director at the Open Society Foundations

On the second day of the 2022 invasion, President Zelensky, surrounded by his advisers, posted a video reassuring the country with a simple declaration: “We are all here, our soldiers are here, and citizens of the country are here. We are all here protecting our independence.” Last week, a U.S. news network visited an underground kindergarten on the frontline. The children were all wrapped up in warm clothes, and the teacher was helping them cut and paste flowers to develop their motor skills. That simple scene demonstrates how Ukraine can win this war.

Ukrainians do not possess a magic gene that allows them to survive anything; they are just people who have chosen to have agency over their lives. They have seen areas which Russia has captured and occupied, where people have no hope or control, and they manifestly reject it. That’s what defines Ukrainian society. There are many cases of heroism—rescuing wounded residents from bombarded buildings or bringing power generators to civilians living in frontline areas—but most people exhibit everyday acts of perseverance just by adapting.  

When the full-scale war started, the Open Society Foundations provided Ukrainian civil society with flexible support so it could regroup and reshape. Beyond immediate humanitarian needs, we now direct our efforts toward complex systemic issues where we can make the most impact such as investing in local communities’ capacity to receive internally displaced people, supporting initiatives to develop a national strategy for veteran reintegration, and backing organizations researching green energy solutions.

Even in wartime, Ukrainian society insists that certain freedoms cannot not be given up if we want to preserve our democracy, as witnessed by last year’s “Cardboard Maidan” protests that reversed the government’s attempt to strip the anticorruption agencies’ independence. The war in 2014 begun after Ukrainians demanded a geopolitical realignment away from Russia and toward the EU. Twelve years later, Ukraine continues to make significant progress in its EU accession process even while fending off the onslaught by Russia.  

This war has also revealed how horizontal Ukrainian society has become. For a state which only emerged from totalitarianism three decades ago, it is an impressive feat. Citizens have kept up the pressure on the government because they know how much is at stake. Putin is banking on the world’s increasingly short attention span, and the war in Ukraine eventually becoming normalized. But Ukrainians have persevered through the last four years enduring the kind of suffering that few can imagine. And yet they still know why they are fighting—for freedom and human dignity.

People often ask Ukrainians if they are exhausted after all these years. But most do not have the luxury of introspection, wondering how long this may continue. Mostly people just get on with living. If you have an appointment at 11am but there is an air raid alert, then you reschedule to 1pm. That's the story of resilience that we want to tell—not pretending that we have an unlimited capacity for pain, but simply doing the ordinary things in extraordinary circumstances. Every day.