Culture Quest: Ukraine

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Gustavus -- Make your life count.

O0 C1 P -The 14-hour overnight train ride from the sleepy border town of Chelm, Poland, to Kyiv is one of only a handful of ways you can get to one of Europe's great capital cities during the war.

Hour upon hour, through villages, farms, factory towns, wide-open fields, and forests.

It's also on these trains that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fled the country at the outset of Russia's invasion on February 24th, some on this very train, in this exact cabin, their lives upended.

Kyiv itself is a classically beautiful European capital city of almost 3 million people.

Stunning old buildings, modern new ones.

Restaurants, clubs, museums.

People out, going about their day.

And as a visitor to this city on a beautiful September day, you get a sense of normalcy at first.

But that sense of normalcy starts to disappear a bit as your traveler's eye takes in the details of the city in its current state.

The number of people in fatigues, the sandbag- and concrete-enclosed statues, concrete blocks and welded-together steel I-beams used to obstruct and derail tanks are scattered around the city, ready to be pushed into the streets.

And below the Independence Column in Maidan Square, in the center of the city, is a little grassy knoll filled with Ukrainian flags with the names of the dead from the war written on them.

In a war whose intent seems in part to erase Ukrainian culture, it's that culture itself that has risen up to help unify the country.

All of the artists, musicians, curators, satirists, all using their talents to contribute in any way they can to help galvanize Ukrainians in the fight for the survival of their country, both its proud heritage and its potential future.

And it's because of that cultural front that we're here in Ukraine.

Our first stop is at Mystetskyi Arsenal, one of the most prominent museums in the country, to meet with its director.

Mystetskyi Arsenal is the largest cultural museum in Ukraine, housed in a massively impressive building that used to be an actual arsenal and fortification well into the 20th century.

And this is the museum's director, Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta.

She holds and has held several board and committee positions over the years, and has a master's in cultural studies.

Because cultural centers have been targets during the war, the museum removed and hid all of its artworks.

But in normal times, it's an incredibly vibrant place.

Arsenal discusses what's valuable in society, often focusing on social debates, digging into those issues through the lens of contemporary art.

In the 19th century?

-Yes.

-Okay.

Boy, there was a lot going on in the '20s.

-Exactly.

-The '30s, with Stalin's purges.

-Yeah.

Exactly.

Hundreds.

-Cultural leaders of all types, from writers, educators, musicians, artists, were all at risk of imprisonment or execution, and their works destroyed, like the artist Mykhailo Boychuk.

Yeah, you just wiped out an entire generation of knowledge and creation.

-Yeah.

-Now, imagine... [ Children shouting, laughing ] [ Explosion ] [ Siren wails ] -So, in the face of the Russian invasion making it to suburban cities like Irpin and Bucha, just a handful of miles outside of Kyiv, and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, with the reality of Russians targeting museums, churches, and other cultural centers, with museum employees having their own families to take care of during the invasion, Olesia and her team stayed to protect the museum.

When the war started... what happened to everything?

Well, and this is, I assume, happening at museums... -Yes.

-...all over the place.

So in the middle of a war, they got back to what they do best -- starting conversations through art.

They realized that things took on new meanings during the war, from simple daily phrases to centuries-old works of art.

I wish you clear skies.

Yeah.

-Exactly.

-Yeah.

The exhibition showed works that now held very different meanings to the people looking at them through the lens of the war they are living in.

A 1980s painting of a beach scene in Odessa now reminds viewers of the land mines buried there.

A whimsical work of two nude carpenters looks like a home with its roof blown off to one person, or the promise of reconstruction to another.

So they created a video exhibition of all their curatorial staff describing their experiences during the war.

So, you -- you were able to open it in here?

-Yes.

-It's amazing that you managed to put on an exhibition in the middle of a war.

And they quickly discovered that this exhibition was inspiring their visitors to talk about their experiences during the war.

So they created a space in the museum where their visitors could record their stories from the war.

Oh.

Oh, okay.

I see.

No, I get it.

Okay.

The visitors could use this space to record something for themselves, or if they wanted to, they could also share it with the museum.

I like that idea of not drawing a line between your curatorial staff and the public, because they have shared experiences.

And it makes the public feel not like visitors in this space.

It makes them feel like they're a part of... Hardest winter because of... ...all of the -- all these other issues, yeah.

So, you kind of live in -- a foot in two worlds because you obviously have to deal with the -- the here and now and be... try and be as flexible and nimble as possible with the war, but you're also -- you still have to look forward.

Ukrainian rail has, in many ways, been the lifeblood of the country during the war.

Railway employees risking their lives to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people out of occupied areas, with estimates of at least 300 rail employees losing their lives in the effort.

Hauling invaluable supplies in from the west for distribution to the hardest-hit parts of the country.

Trains being seen as a sign of hope and a route to safety by Ukrainians.

And it's those same trains that are now being used in a project to inspire and to serve as a very real connection between Ukrainians in the newly unoccupied areas of the east, all the way to the west of the country.

The project, called "Train to Victory," was the brainchild of a Ukrainian PR firm called Gres Todorchuk, in collaboration with Ukrainian Rail itself.

And they hired the person I'm with, Katya Taylor, to curate the project, working with a group of muralists to paint a train that would be seen by people all across the country.

Katya herself wears a number of hats as a freelance curator, project designer, and author with multiple degrees ranging from economics, finance, and art history, with multiple projects running right now, all directed towards the role of art during the war.

And we were lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time with her on this trip.

That's pretty cool.

There are seven painted rail cars, and each one represents one of the occupied regions.

And the subject matter in each mural revolves around a hero from that region.

Each rail car has a QR code that you can pull up extra information on the hero from that region.

Yeah, look at that.

So, that there is all about that wagon.

-Yeah.

You can have it in English.

Let's have it in English.

-Oh, yeah.

There we go.

So, there's that.

-So, you see the... First, you see the region which is... -Oh, which that's from.

-Yeah, Zaporizhzhia.

So, this is the story of Zaporizhzhia.

We can see that.

It's listed here.

This is the name of the artist and then we have the story a little bit of the heroes of the region.

-That's such a great use of technology.

-Yeah, so easy.

This is Crimea.

This is just a general image.

For you, it probably doesn't mean much, but why it is here -- -But to a Ukrainian, would they -- would they kind of understand?

-Now, yes, because there's a story behind.

-The story is about a young street artist named Bohdan Ziza, who protested Russia's occupation of Crimea by throwing paint in the colors of the Ukrainian flag on a Russian government building.

-He, like, threw the paint, the yellow and blue paint.

-Yes, alright.

Yeah.

-And the paint, like, started to, you know, leak.

So that's why it's leaking paint.

That artist is in jail, probably for the next 15 years or something.

-Yeah.

Another impactful mural revolves around Ukraine's wheat fields.

-It is about wheat.

Ukrainian agricultural people, they keep working while the Russian war because they were bombing the fields and the fields started to burn.

So there were like huge fires.

All the fields were in the fire.

-Yeah.

-And the guys who were working on the fields, they continued actually to, you know, to... -To harvest?

-Yeah, they continued until the end.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

It's the last one we've got here.

-That was it.

That's perfect timing 'cause I think the train's about to leave again.

-Yeah.

They're saying goodbye to us.

That's so sweet.

-That's great.

That is.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Yeah.

-Yeah, absolutely.

Nice to meet you live and in person.

-Yeah.

It's great.

-Alright.

Till tomorrow.

-Yeah.

-The next day, we went to Katya's place to discuss the many projects she has going on right now.

The first is her project Artists Support Ukraine Foundation.

Together with her partner in this project, Volodymyr Kadygrob, they created a virtual gallery on their Instagram page where people can see protest art created by artists from all over the world.

It's also a place where people can make donations which go towards the foundation.

It's like you, for example, yeah, sitting in United States.

You say, "I want to support Ukraine.

What can I do?"

And I say, "You can print exhibition."

It's, like, ready there.

Like, PDF with instruction.

You can print exhibition in your city, have it there, invite people for the opening, and then when people come to the opening, they also donate.

-You mean print the -- like, a full-blown exhibition and hang it and have an event.

-Yeah.

Like, it will be a poster exhibition.

There will be some installation and video art.

-Yeah.

-So it's kind of cool.

It's not just prints.

So we had 10 exhibitions in 10 different countries by now, organized, yeah, by people I've never met in my life.

-Yeah, right?

Yeah.

-Yeah.

This is amazing.

-With the money raised from donations from their Instagram page and their ready-to-print exhibitions from around the world, they've been able to send mini grants to artists in need around Ukraine.

-And there are a lot of people like that.

-Wow!

That's incredible, though.

I love this idea of art being proactive rather than -- I mean, I love the painting on a wall or the sculpture in the gallery, but I even more so love it when it's being used to do something important like this, that it can be transformative in someone's life.

That's really cool.

And there's yet another project she came up with in the first few weeks of the war.

"The Captured House."

"The Captured House" exhibition toured throughout Europe from April through July.

That's a physical -- -It is a physical exhibition.

It is idea, you know, to talk to European people about what is going on in Ukraine, not with the media or news or, like, a general language, but more with a visual language to talk to -- not to their minds, but to their feelings.

-Yeah.

-We had no money in the beginning, we had no place where we're gonna show them, and generally no idea of how we're gonna bring all that to Europe.

-So, what's going through my head is you're trying to collect works from 50 different artists, get it all here.

You're also trying to arrange where it's going to be shown in Europe.

You're also trying to raise money, frankly, in a situation where the vast majority of anyone's spare money is going to support, you know, the military and that sort of thing.

So you've got a lot of struggles, let alone just trying to live life in the middle of a war.

How did -- That's a lot.

Right.

"We're not going again."

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No idea.

Were you doing this while you were still there?

-Yes.

[ Fingers snap ] -"That's the spot."

Yeah.

Katya had a clear understanding that this exhibition could act as an ambassador to the policymakers of the countries that the exhibition went to.

Art is such a visceral or such a raw thing.

Especially in a time like this, to have art be such a visceral thing on paper or in sculpture or in video, I think it's super-important because it -- because that gets out to the rest of the world, as well.

"Toronto Television" is a satirical series on Ukrainian television that started in 2016 and has expanded since then into a wildly popular YouTube channel, as well.

The series is in the same genre as "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," Samantha Bee, or Hasan Minhaj, and they are hugely successful, all led by their anchor, Roman Vintoniv, who in the show plays an impressively naive character named Michael Shchur from Canada, along with his co-host, Yaroslava Kravchenko, and their cadre of reporters, each of them specializing in their own areas.

But then the invasion happened, and with it, their target changed to one clear subject... Russia.

Now they're using their individual reporting styles and applying them to the war they've been dropped into, like Anatoly Ostapenko taking deep dives into origins of weaponry and war crimes, Alexandra Gontar discussing issues of Russian propaganda, Max Shcherbina dismantling conspiracy theories, Yaroslava Kravchenko taking on perceptions in the West about Russia.

Roman himself has dropped the Michael Shchur persona and is in the military, serving first as a foot soldier, and now as the press secretary of his brigade.

And he's still producing occasional segments for "Television Toronto" itself.

And Alina Sheremeta is doing what her colleagues say is the toughest work of all... ...spending much of her time embedded with troops on the front lines.

And make no mistake -- while this is satire, comedy, they set an exceedingly high standard for the work they put out there.

We spent time with Yaroslava and producer Vitaly Lurasov, as well as Roman, who is home on a day off from the military.

Little thing that gets on it, yeah.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

-All these people.

Yeah.

-Really?

A lot of your pre-war stuff was about... And is that -- Does that exist during war?

Or is that off during war?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Is large, yeah.

But it would take a much higher threshold.

Yeah.

A great benefit of "Toronto Television's" YouTube channel is they're now able to produce and post content at will, which makes their news organization much more nimble during the war.

Producing content directed at Russia wasn't a new concept for them to wrap their minds around.

If anything, the war verified already-held opinions about their neighbors to the north and east.

It's out in the open.

Yeah.

[ Laughter ] Yeah, I -- I totally get what you're saying.

It's "the curtain's been lifted" sort of thing, yeah.

[ Laughter ] Yeah, and goes forward from there.

And then there's music.

-[ Singing in native language ] [ Air-raid siren wailing ] [ Jet engine whooshes ] -The band KAZKA created a heartbreaking video early on in the war and since then has been doing charity concerts and other work all over the world.

- No, I'm not okay It's 4 in the morning, I don't get no rest Sister, I'm just doing everything I can -[ Singing in native language ] -Okean Elzy and its frontman, Slava Vakarchuk, a band used to playing packed stadiums around Europe, now plays for the front lines and does countless interviews and charity concerts.

-[ Singing in native language ] -The indie folk band DakhaBrakha has a worldwide fundraising tour that barely leaves time for travel in between gigs.

And there are countless others in all genres of music doing whatever they can to make a difference... -[ Singing in native language ] -...which led us to the wildly popular group ONUKA and their lead singer, Nata Zhyzhchenko.

-[ Singing in native language ] -While ONUKA is known as a cutting-edge folk electronica band, their music goes much deeper than that label.

- Please don't try to explain 'Cause you do not understand -Nata's own family is steeped in Ukrainian culture, and that culture is infused throughout their music.

Some of ONUKA's greatest live performances are playing alongside the National Academic Orchestra of Folk Instruments.

Nata and her husband, Eugene Filatov, who is Nata's other creative half and co-founder of ONUKA, and their young son Sasha live in Kyiv, but their home in Chernihiv has been in the family for five generations.

Nata, only two days back from a charity concert in Lisbon, Spain, was kind enough to invite us up to their home there to spend the day with her, and her brother Sasha gave us a ride.

Chernihiv is around 150 kilometers north of Kyiv, along one of the two main highways the Russians used to try and take Kyiv in February and March.

It's also along this highway that the world saw some of the first signs of Ukrainians fighting back -- and winning.

All along the way, there are little villages destroyed, military roadblocks every 10 or 20 kilometers, tank tracks embedded in the highway's asphalt.

[ Air-raid siren wails ] And you never escape the air-raid sirens here.

The siege of Chernihiv started on the second day of the invasion, February 25th, cutting off Chernihiv from Kyiv and the rest of the country with regular and seemingly indiscriminate shelling of the city, killing hundreds over the next several weeks.

But it all ended around March 31st, when the Ukrainians were able to retake the highway we just came up on, reconnecting Kyiv with Chernihiv, pushing out the Russian troops and ending the siege of the city.

This is a place with hard stories to tell, and what happened here is still happening in cities across the front lines of Ukraine.

But it's also a place where Ukrainian fighters held the line, who resisted the Russian invasion and won, freeing their own city and playing a key role in helping to stop the Russians from taking Kyiv itself.

Chernihiv is one of the most ancient cities in Ukraine, dating back to the 700s, with deep cultural roots.

And you would be hard-pressed to find a stronger advocate for that culture than Nata.

With that in mind, we start out in the early 1990s.

I mean, you started playing which instrument?

-Sopilka.

This is actually mine.

I'll show you.

-Yeah.

-And this is made by my grandfather's students.

It started from sopilka.

-But this is you at a super-young age.

-Yeah, nine.

Maybe nine.

But I started at four.

He taught me, my grandfather, how to play, and I started to play some tunes.

Then they became more complicated, more complicated, and I started to play with orchestras.

This is about the impact of my grandfather, who really is my teacher in life.

-The band's name, ONUKA, actually means "granddaughter," a direct homage to her grandfather.

Well, your grandfather was a big deal in the musical instrument world here.

-Yeah, he's pretty well-known, and he made a lot of folk instruments of Ukrainian, instruments of other countries.

-Nata's grandfather, Alexander Shlyonchyk, won several national awards and honors during the Soviet Union days.

And this was his home workshop where he and Nata spent countless hours.

-He encouraged me to fall in love with Ukraine in childhood, to fall in love with music, with Ukrainian history, with motherland.

And it was not like a kind of lectures.

It was just a dialogue between granddaughter and grandfather.

-Well, it's like this -- like this room, in a way.

-Yeah.

-It's just infusing you.

All those -- all those little moments kind of seep into your DNA.

-Yeah, I think that you got it, actually.

-That love for folk music would become the foundation for ONUKA.

-I think that folk, it's so big bunch of knowledge, of customs, of traditions, of philosophy.

-The part that I thought was so cool about it was what's going on in here -- is tradition and culture and just an interest in your past.

Yet, your music is super-modern.

- Yeah [ Singing in native language ] I wanted to play electronica by Ukrainian instruments.

[ Singing in native language ] I wanted to show how bandura can sound, how cimbalom, how sopilkas and all these -- our instruments can sound weird, modern, unique.

[ Singing in native language ] To show Ukrainian young people how our instruments can look like and sound like... [ Singing in native language ] ...and to be proud of Ukrainian culture.

[ Singing in native language ] [ Cheers and applause ] -Today is -- What is it -- September...

I guess -- -We are waiting for October.

-This is September 18th.

-Mm-hmm.

Watching the news, there seems like there's great progress going on or progress going on on the east.

-Yeah.

-All these areas are starting to be taken back.

-Unoccupied.

-Unoccupied.

-Yeah.

-There's also, uh, hard stories coming out of that.

-Yeah.

-Do you allow yourself room for hope?

You know?

-Yeah.

Space for hope.

-Space for hope in this.

-There is nothing except hope.

I have never felt so happy to live here, to belong here, to know what my purpose is.

My purpose is to make Ukraine blossom.

I understand it like a cultural front -- the front line of culture.

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

-What our artists and colleagues do with this -- donate and charity concerts.

I think that this -- the front line of culture is also very important.

And it's not in comparison with the real front line, but it's supporting a rear guard of it.

-We're here because of exactly what you're talking about, about this second front of culture.

I mean, we're not -- we're not war correspondents.

You know, this is a television series about art around culture around the world.

And it was seeing -- Slava Vakarchuk?

-Yeah.

-I saw him playing the piano, singing this, like, raspy voice, beautiful, heart-wrenching song.

-[ Singing in native language ] -It's this beautiful song.

I mean, it was like, "Wow.

That's incredible."

Then I started seeing -- I saw a couple artists, and one of them was this -- this guy in the East.

And I got to admit -- I don't remember what city he was in -- but it was getting shelled, just beaten up.

And he was in a cellar, and he was with a family, and he's an artist, and he just started sketching.

And somehow these sketches came out and wound up, I think, in The New York Times or something like that.

But I was like, "Wow."

This is also incredible because it's art, and art's getting out and influencing people around the world.

And it was at that stage that I thought, "We got to go there."

[ Cheers and applause ] ONUKA has had a nonstop fundraising tour all across Europe, as well as a six-city charity tour across the United States... when this happened.

-There was a moment -- We had bracelets with Ukrainian flags, and we have a lot of equipment, like instruments, and we were just having some domestic flights in America.

And the captain saw these bracelets, and he made an announcement... -Oh, God.

-"Here is a musical orchestra from Ukraine, and they're touring the world with charity concerts."

And everyone was applause.

And it was a moment... -Wow.

-...like in a movie.

It was some kind of this, uh, moment when you understand that you're not alone in this.

-You're not alone, yeah.

Like so many other public figures, Nata is also involved with a long list of fundraisers, including Help Kharkiv, the big one, UNITED24, Repair Together, a group that, among other things, gets volunteers to clean up damaged and destroyed places, Spunbond, an organization that provides medical supplies and care to people in need, and one here in Chernihiv called "This Is My City" that's grown well beyond its initial goals, a group we're on our way to meet with now.

But it's not possible to drive through Chernihiv without seeing the impact of the siege.

Mariupol, Bakhmut, Kherson, Kreminna, and countless other cities from large to small that are barely a shadow of their former selves after Russian bombing.

And then that's a hospital that got bombed?

-Yeah, it's a hospital for heart diseases.

-I mean, that, for whatever reason, you can still see an impact of a rocket or something.

Yeah, the back of cabinets and clothes.

And you see plates.

Yeah.

A room...

I mean, just lives and history and all these things just gone in a -- gone in an instant.

[ Indistinct conversations ] This is a charity tournament?

If you are looking for hope, then look no further than what this group of friends have created to help their fellow Ukrainians.

-Actually, this is Sasha.

-Hey.

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

This is -- [ Speaking native language ] It's like "This Is My City," the name of this charity foundation.

-Oh!

Okay.

-And this tournament is managed by them.

He's responsible for work here.

-I have a lot of friends, military friends and policemen from Chernihiv.

-It starts with, like, organization for helping and supporting friends, but it's grew to the big foundation who help provide support all over Ukraine.

-And it was to help Chernihiv... -Yeah.

-...but -- -It grew to something bigger.

-It just expanded, yeah.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-And there are countless organizations that have sprung up all across Ukraine like this one, made up of people just wanting to help.

The guy on the left is Sergei, and we were just hanging out, talking about his time competing in the London Olympics when this came up.

-Actually, he saved my family.

When Chernihiv was encircled in March.

So it was difficult situation here.

He take out a lot of people from Chernihiv to Kyiv.

-2,000 people.

-2,000 people.

-What?

Sergei's story is one that everyone here is proud of, so everyone joined in the telling.

But in essence, here's what happened.

When Chernihiv was surrounded by the Russians and the highway up here was covered in Russian tanks, Sergei and his friends took the back roads.

What would normally be a 150-kilometer, 2-hour trip on a highway became a 350-kilometer, 7-hour trip on the back roads with the ever-present danger of being blown up by a tank or a landmine.

On the first trip, they had a caravan of 20 cars, but after that they only had 10 because people dropped out from the obvious danger.

And as if that weren't dangerous enough, Sergei and his friends decided to haul barrels of gas and oil up to Chernihiv to help supply Sasha's military friends here.

So you would bring gas up here, and then, in that same trip, you would bring people back?

Am I understanding that?

Or is that a different -- People back.

-People back.

Yeah.

-This was one of the more incredible stories we heard here, but it definitely wasn't the only one.

And they were all told in that sort of nonchalant, "it's just what we did" way.

Thanks for telling that story, man.

Wow.

Wow.

A style of storytelling that seems to come from being in the middle of a war.

That was great.

-Thanks.

-Yeah.

We've talked about how the war has kind of affected or maybe even changed what people see themselves doing in the future in their lives.

You know, just kind of made them, "You know what?

This is kind of what I want to do with the rest of my life."

-Absolutely.

Absolutely.

-Has it had that effect on you, do you think?

-The war is -- It's a big challenge.

It is a big challenge.

-It is.

It's war.

Yeah.

-But it also creates opportunities, you know?

It makes people more resilient.

It makes people -- I mean, Ukrainians -- I mean, they are, I think, the most resilient people in the world, you know?

-I saw those photos.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that!

That's perfect.

-Separately, we're talking just the same... -Exactly.

Yeah.

Totally.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-This is Ian.

-Hi, Ian.

-Nice to meet you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's been telling me all about you.

So, are you cool with coming around with us?

Stas' day job is as a website designer, but he's also started a nonprofit called Chernihiv Wooden Lace, restoring traditional houses.

In normal times, this work helps preserve the history of the region, but in wartime, preserving traditional homes like these takes on all sorts of additional meaning.

And Stas' restoration projects have no shortage of people wanting to jump in and be a part of preserving culture here.

Stas even gives tours through the city of the houses they've worked on, as well as some that they haven't.

On top of all this, he's also in the army.

You got conscripted February 24th, but did you have any military background?

-No.

-I didn't think so.

-Zero.

Yeah.

-Zero?

Which is not uncommon with so many people that got conscripted, I suppose.

-Yeah, there was no other way to stop Russia.

-Stas is stationed here in Chernihiv and fought during the Russian siege of the city.

And, like Nata was saying, you had two friends that were killed.

-Four.

Four.

Out of 13 people.

-Wow.

-So, four people were killed, three were injured, and only six people managed to get out of it without a scratch, including me.

-Really?

Yeah.

-Yeah.

So I got lucky.

-And they were all -- Before this started, they were just doing whatever they did for their daily lives?

-Yeah, yeah, they were just, you know, regular people not related to the military.

I started working on this house last fall, and I wanted to finish it this year... -Yeah.

-...regardless of the war.

-So he used his days off from the military to finish the project.

-People who walk by this house on a daily basis look at this and see that there's still, you know, a beam of light and hope and some move forward.

This is something that makes people smile.

And since we're able to do this, then why not?

-Keep doing it.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Well, this is Ukraine.

-This is.

This is Ukraine.

This is Northern Ukraine.

This is -- This is typical for the north of Chernihiv Oblast and the north of Sumska Oblast.

-Yeah.

-And the people who created -- who built these houses, they -- they had style.

They had a sense of aesthetics.

-Yes.

I love that.

Yeah, absolutely.

-And, you know, every house owner wanted to be unique.

He or she wanted to be different from his or her neighbors.

Basically, people were show-offs in a good way.

Most of these houses belonged to several owners.

And this dates back to when the Soviets conquered this area, so people who used to own this house were kicked out.

-Mm-hmm.

-And this house was divided between several other people who didn't have any connection to this -- to this property.

-As a result, so many of these great old places fell into disrepair over the coming decades.

Stas' restoration philosophy revolves around the idea that these homes are ever-evolving things.

-Yeah.

Look at these colors.

They are modern.

They're contemporary.

-They are.

-It's an interesting observation of how people react to these kind of decisions, because, obviously, these colors are not typical.

-No.

-They are not historical.

Honestly, I don't -- I'm not a supporter of sort of, you know, fighting for some historical appearance of whatever, because this -- color is something that helps you embed this piece of history into today's reality.

-I love this idea of respecting culture and tradition.

But part of that respect, in my mind, is letting it evolve and move into the future... -Yep.

-...instead of making it a stagnant thing.

And to me, that -- to me, that respects it, you know, and it keeps it progressing.

-It mattered -- [ Speaks native language ] So, it mattered for me to put my hand on this house and bring it back to life.

Plus, because it belongs to several owners, as well, it used to be painted in, you know, all kinds of colors.

And you clearly see that it belongs to different people who don't talk to one another, you know, when they decide to paint their -- -Yeah, yeah, right.

I've seen houses like that.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

One of the important conditions of restoring this house, when we talked to the owners, was that we will collectively choose a color scheme which would work for everybody.

-Mm-hmm.

-And at the same time, we would paint the house as if it belongs to a single family.

-Yeah.

-So it looks uniform.

I mainly think about passing this over to the next generation.

It's something that, you know, we can put our hands on today... -Yeah.

-...and then preserve and pass over to whoever comes next.

-Yeah.

-And this is how we pay respect to people who built this.

-As our time up here in Chernihiv was coming to an end, we made our way back to Nata's house.

I've said it over and over again on this trip, but it's so incredible to see everybody -- at least that we've run into -- at every level just doing whatever they can do to pitch in and make a difference.

-We have a very rough way to our freedom, but it would be very and deeply cherished.

-We talked about hope earlier and the need for hope and the existence of hope in Ukrainians.

-And the hope is so big that it can't contain in me.

I can't contain it.

-Contain it.

Yeah.

-Yeah.

It's bigger than my mind.

– But with the 11: 00 p.m. curfew fast approaching, it's time to stop.

[ Conversing in native language ] Time to go?

Okay.

We got a curfew to beat.

-Not to be stuck here.

-Yeah.

Alright.

We spent the last few hours of our stay here filming around town before our train ride back to Poland.

While filming right under the Independence Column in Maidan Square, I happened to see some beautifully painted I-beam battlements that are actually called "hedgehogs" across the street.

I had read about these before our trip -- that a woman was painting hedgehogs around town with traditional Ukrainian motifs.

So we headed over to have a look.

While we were filming, a woman came up and set down some boxes next to the hedgehogs and started to unpack her gear.

That woman was the person who was painting the hedgehogs, Varvara Logvyn, just happening to come down to the square on a Sunday afternoon to paint some more.

I introduced myself, and we had a quick chat before heading off to catch our train.

But it was this moment of happenstance that, for me, became the perfect anecdote for what's happening here.

While Varvara has a very successful business in her normal life, she also has a university degree in art and wanted to use that talent not only as an outlet of her own expression during the war, her own form of resistance, but also to add something to the people's lives around her, to give them something to smile about, to be inspired by -- by coming down to the center of Kyiv on her free time to paint, imbuing an object of war with the cultural motifs of the people it's there to defend.

That attitude is my lasting impression of Ukrainians.

In a war whose intent is to erase, to cow a population into submission, it's done the exact opposite, uniting a country in a singular fight for their freedom.

The people we met with here are representatives of the millions more Ukrainians in all corners of society doing the same thing -- contributing in any way they can.

Ukrainians were unwillingly dropped into this crucible of war, but as hard and as brutal as it has been and surely still will be, there seems no doubt in the people's minds we met here that what will emerge from that crucible will be a stronger country filled with people who have a renewed sense of pride in their history and who will carry their proud culture and country into the future.

-[ Singing in native language ] [ Cheers and applause ] -Gustavus Adolphus College equips students to lead purposeful lives and act on the great challenges of our time.

Gustavus.

Make your life count.