‘Why would I leave a place I know and love and head out into nowhere?’

‘Why would I leave a place I know and love and head out into nowhere?’ Oksana remembers asking during the war’s first days.

An engineer at a national research institute, she enjoyed the perks of Ukraine’s privileged professional elite, raising her two children—a girl, nine, and a boy, 15—in comfort and security.

She still isn’t sure what changed her mind. Whatever the reason, once Oksana made it, it took her less than two hours to pack and get out the door. The trip to Lviv took 23 hours, mostly because the train kept backtracking to avoid Russian bombardment.

The scariest moment came that night. The train stopped and passengers were told to get out. They stood in the dark in an open field listening to shells exploding nearby.

“The weight of it finally hit me,” she says. “I’d been a successful professional with an important job. I had wonderful friends. My children were facing a bright future. Now I was homeless, with nothing, on a freezing train, heading to a place where I knew no one.”

An acquaintance knew someone in a village willing to house Oksana and her children in exchange for a small government subsidy. Both the children enrolled in school. Oksana found a job stocking shelves at a local grocery store and set about building a new life.

This is one of more than 15 million stories.

After February 2022 more than 15 million people were displaced within Ukraine and fled their country.

Extensive damage to infrastructure, corrupted economy, severe social and psychological impacts on the population and many more.

Ukraine will never be the same.

There is not much to do except take Ukrainian refugees under protective care and let them speak.

Being a platform of self-expression for the young generation of creatives from
Ukraine, Solomiya mag is on that mission.

Aims to promote the visibility of common democratic and European values shared by people from Ukraine and other European countries.

War Dreams from Yevhen, a young soldier from Odessa.

A series of portraits by Italian photographers Caimi&Piccini while raising thought-provoking questions about masculinity in war.

Vsevolod Kazarin, Alex Mashtaler’s unpublished photographs about the innocence of youth with the unforgiving harshness of reality.

The writings of Lucy Zoria, Sebastian Wells offer diverse insights into the lived experiences of young Ukrainians abroad.

Solomiya offers its readers profound, diverse and subjective perspectives on current realities and complex social issues in Ukraine - and beyond.

Check THIS and part of anti war resistance!