How Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine Brought Ukrainian Culture Into The Global Spotlight

Lesia Khomenko, “Imaginary Distance”, 2025. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo: Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 launched more than a military conflict; it thrust Ukraine’s rich and vibrant culture into focus.

Across galleries, festivals, and theaters from Kyiv to London, from Paris to New York, Ukrainian artists are reclaiming their narratives—asserting their country’s place in the world not as a victim of history, but as a force shaping it.

In New York City—a place where people from all over the world have sought a place and a voice—that creative renewal is on full display. This fall saw the city filled with Ukrainian performances, exhibitions, and film screenings. In November, Metrograph—a highbrow arthouse cinema in New York—hosted the series “Soul and Soil: Ukrainian Poetic Cinema,” showcasing avant-garde masterpieces by Ukrainian filmmakers from the 1960s and 70s —classics created with a freewheeling, experimental approach and the resilient Ukrainian spirit.

During October, the Ukraine-focused non-profit Razom organized the third annual Ukrainian Culture Festival. The event hosted more than 30 elaborate daily events at venues such as the New York Public Library, Quad and Regal Cinemas, Teatro Latea, Bowery Poetry Club, and Science for Fiction. Besides arts and culture, the program featured guest speakers, discussions, and interactive experiences, re-shaping Ukraine’s cultural image by showing its place within the melting pot of artistic expression in the Big Apple.

A Cultural Renaissance. This year, the play Cassandra—a Ukrainian classic, written by modernist playwright and poet Lesia Ukrainka in 1908—debuted at the Teatro Latea on the Lower East Side. Directed by Artemis Wheelock, the story takes place at the close of the Trojan War and follows the prophetess Cassandra, whose accurate predictions no one believes. “What draws me to Cassandra is how painfully familiar her isolation feels,” explained Wheelock. “Ukrainka shows us the cost of knowing the truth when no one will face it.”

While The New York Times failed to include any titles focusing on Ukraine or by Ukrainian authors in its annual list of “100 Notable Books,” and Foreign Affairs magazine didn’t have any Ukrainian books in the Eastern Europe section of its “Best Books of 2025” list, The Washington Post is turning the tide by including Maria Reva’s Endling and Sam Wachman’s Sunflower Boys in its 2025 “50 Notable Works” list (for fiction), and Artem Chapaye’s Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns (for nonfiction).

The force of the Ukrainian literary movement was evidenced by the sheer number of authors represented at New York City’s Ukrainian Cultural Festival in October. Writers such as Oksana Lutsyshyna, Olia Hercules, Volodymyr Rafeyenko, Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed and Darya Tsymbalyuk were all in attendance, along with their books—available in English and in Ukrainian—in addition to a “Poet As Witness” poetry reading at the Poet’s House national poetry library in lower Manhattan, touching on topics from migration and feminism to environment and cultural survival.

At the festival, Maria Reva, the Ukrainian-Canadian author, read excerpts from her novel Endling, offering a window into Ukrainian life during Russia’s all-out war from an unexpected angle. The novel, in the author’s own words, explores “a rare snail breeding in Ukraine and the equally perplexing world of modern dating.”

“Contemporary Ukrainian culture is no longer asking to be seen,” said Virlana Tkacz, Yara Arts’s artistic director and long-time proponent of bridging Ukraine with the global audience. Yara Arts Group performed poems by Serhiy Zhadan, a Ukrainian award-winning writer-turned-soldier from Kharkiv, at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the festival. Ukrainian actress Svitlana Kosolapova recited Zhadan’s poems in Ukrainian, while New York poets, including Wanda Phipps and Bob Holman, offered responses in English. Ukrainian culture, Tkacz said, “is showing the world what it means to survive with dignity.”

Creating New Narratives.

Though more than 1,200 visitors joined the Ukrainian Culture Festival over one month, there is untapped potential for Ukrainian creators to reach global audiences. Ukrainian art, fashion, and music are beginning to interest not only the public but also entrepreneurs and those who see potential for turning Ukrainian talents into profitable mainstream projects.

However, the process is far more complicated than just putting Ukrainian artists and authors on display. Focusing on Ukrainian history and culture also serves to eliminate Russian cultural myths and re-evaluate deeply embedded imperialist narratives in the West. With a century of using Russian culture as a tool of propaganda and influence, and with Moscow continuing to pour millions of dollars into disseminating Russia’s version of reality today, the task is challenging but moving forward at full speed.

Cultural scholar Svitlana Biedarieva, in her new book Ambicoloniality and War says, “The Ukrainian-Russian case offers a framework for understanding this shift: Ukraine has made significant progress in decolonization processes since the onset of the full-scale invasion, due to the relentless resistance to Russia’s aggression.” Culture, according to her, has become both a reflection of society’s resilience and a powerful source of societal change.

“Not only is Ukrainian culture competitive on a global level,” she explained, “it also has the potential to set precedents and uncover new topics, potentially leading the world’s cultural trends”.

“Ukrainian culture has become noticeable in the world because of the terrible events that have happened and continue to happen,” says Yuri Nikitin, a Ukrainian music producer now living in the US, and founder of the project State of Love, which aims to bring Ukrainian creatives to fame and unite them around the globe. “Ukraine became a powerful brand; you practically can’t find a person who’s never heard of Ukraine. The Ukrainian diaspora, western media, and ordinary citizens who care about Ukraine, support and organize cultural events around the world.”

As of late 2025, there are 5.7 million refugees from Ukraine living outside the nation. The Migration Policy Institute estimates the total number of new Ukrainian arrivals and the existing Ukrainian diaspora in the United States at 1.1 million. Among them, approximately 175,000 Ukrainians entered the U.S. through the “Uniting for Ukraine” program, in addition to thousands of additional asylum seekers, bringing the total number of Ukrainian refugees who have come to the U.S. since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to approximately 260,000. Prior to 2022, New York’s Ukrainian-American population was estimated at 150,000.

Forced by the tragic turn of history beyond Ukraine’s borders—not for the first time, for that matter—Ukrainians accelerated the process of creating a new narrative for Ukraine, long in the making, free of Russian propaganda and appropriation.

Olena Speranska, an art curator from Ukraine, now based in New York, fled her home in Irpin, near Kyiv, at the beginning of the war, when Russian forces occupied the region.

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s re-classification of Ivan Aivazovsky, Arkhyp Kuindzhi and Ilya Repin as Ukrainian artists is cited as a concrete instance of cultural re-appropriation and decolonizing art history,” Speranska said, referring to the correct attribution for the artists as “Ukrainian, born Russian Empire.” The war forced Speranska to leave behind her own project, Biruchiy—a successful contemporary art residency she founded together with Gennadiy Kozub. One of her ongoing projects is a collaboration with an American multimedia artist Phil Buehler for his two-week art residency in the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia “Together We Stand. Documentation.”

Some artists make it their mission to translate Ukrainian identity for a broader audience: “I see Ukraine not just as a country, but as an idea,” says Yurko Gutsulyak, a Ukrainian graphic designer living in Canada who presented his yellow-and-blue poster series in New York. “It’s everywhere—in chemical elements, in the plasticity of body language, even in a bouquet of flowers.”

Ukraine In The Big Apple

In New York, Ukrainian artistic and cultural hotspots are reinventing themselves, responding to the calls of the times. Fletcher-Sinclair palace, a landmark 19th-century mansion near the city’s Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has long been home to the Ukrainian Institute of America (UIA). Founded in 1948, today the Institute hosts about 60 events annually—twice the number compared to the years before Russia’s savage full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Between visits by top diplomats and politicians, including Ukrainian President and First Lady Volodymyr and Olena Zelenskyy, and UN-based discussions on Ukraine-related topics and cultural events, the UIA’s calendar is full all year round. UIA President Kathy Nalywajko and Executive Director Lydia Zaininger received one of Ukraine’s highest state awards, recognizing women for their contributions to the country’s cultural development.

The aptly named “Ukrainian Village” within the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan is another area that has blossomed into a vibrant center of Ukrainian life after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. For more than a hundred years the area has housed Ukrainians and their businesses: there is a street named after Ukraine’s most prominent poet, Taras Shevchenko; the Shevchenko Scientific Society, a 150 year old scholarly institution; the stately St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church sits proudly on 7th street, the Ukrainian Museum is nearby on 6th street, and other Ukrainian organizations and businesses, including the Ukrainian National Home and the legendary Veselka restaurant dominate a block on 2nd avenue.

In the early 2000s, the diaspora enclave was relatively quiet, though still very much alive, with the annual Saint George Ukrainian Festival and Ukrainian stores and cultural events. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004 and Maidan Revolutions in 2014 fueled the Ukrainian diaspora with a new sense of focus on keeping Ukraine on course toward a more democratic, western future free from Russian influence. However, Russia’s invasion prompted a cultural resurgence and an influx of refugees, and the small community began to burst with new ideas, anti-war protests, fundraisers, and cultural happenings.

With Russia destroying schools in Ukraine, and killing and kidnapping Ukrainian children en masse, many families seek safety across the ocean in New York. In New York, there are now hundreds of children from modern Ukraine. They attend Ukrainian Saturday schools and join youth organizations and scout groups, such as Plast and SYM, within their new communities. This unification of American-born Ukrainians and new refugees was reflected in a photo exhibition by Ihor DIA/spora during New York’s Ukrainian cultural festival.

The Ukrainian Museum, led by Peter Doroshenko, reframes inherited narratives and merges contemporary Ukraine and its diaspora. Doroshenko, a Chicago-native of Ukrainian heritage, is the founding president of the PinchukArt Centre in Kyiv and the director of Dallas Contemporary. He and his team are leading the change.

The Malevich Black Square event — held in mid-November at the Ukrainian Museum — proved the organization can transform into a trendy event space and host a fundraiser where old meets new. During the Black Square Fete, next to the photo exhibition of renowned Kharkiv photographer Boris Mikhailov (whose work was prominently displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in 2011), patrons, collectors and other representatives of a newly formed Ukrainian New York’s ‘beau monde’ enjoyed contemporary live music and refreshments, while raising funds for the Museum’s upcoming efforts to support Ukrainian culture and preserve its heritage.

At Mriya Gallery in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood, Ukrainian-born artist Zoya Frolova and Latvian artist Janis Jakobsons explored conflict and transformation at a show entitled Edge of Illusions this past October. Frolova, who grew up in Kharkiv, presented artwork in which warships were replaced with delicate paper boats — fragile yet defiant symbols of survival. Vasyl Myronenko, a renowned Kharkiv artist from the 1960s, anchored the show with a rare etching of Zaporizhstal, one of Ukraine’s largest steel mills. Organized by Rukhart, the show introduced artworks from long-time collector Arthur K. Mann Sr., whose collection includes more than 20 of Myronenko’s color etchings, among others.

This past summer, in Harlem’s Morningside Park, a 6-foot futuristic steel sculpture by Michael Levchenko—an artist from Kyiv, currently living in New York—was displayed for the public. Titled ‘Post-Tango,’ the sculpture focused on human devastation, about a dance turned into a vision of survival. Now, together with another colorful creation by Levchenko—“Metamorphosis of Memory”—the sculptures by the Ukrainian artist have been displayed at SculptHamptons, an outdoor sculpture exhibition in Watermill, Southampton, a place favored by American art-lovers. As Biedarieva puts it, “Ukrainian artists are not just documenting loss. They’re redrawing the boundaries of what it means to exist, to imagine, and to be free.”

Lesia Khomenko, a multidisciplinary artist from Ukraine, did not cease to express herself upon arriving in New York to escape the carnage of the war. Khomenko held a solo show, “Image and Presence,” in the Ukrainian Museum in New York in 2023. Her exhibition “Imaginary Distance” is currently on view at Pinchuk Art Center in Kyiv, with one large-scale artwork presented at Kyiv’s central train station, connecting Ukrainians dispersed all over the world by the war, making the distance, indeed, imaginary.

Ukrainian Cinema In The Times of War

Ukraine’s years-long struggle to turn back Russia’s full-scale invasion has inspired a world of cinema, saturated with striking documentary films by Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian filmmakers, as well as feature films from Ukraine.

In 2024, a filmmaker from Kharkiv, Mstyslav Chernov, won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for his film “20 Days in Mariupol.” The film turned an unflinching eye to the suffering of ordinary civilians under seemingly indiscriminate Russian attack.

“The Oscar win for ’20 Days in Mariupol’ is emblematic,” says Biedarieva. “It’s not just a Ukrainian story. It’s a story of truth-telling in a world of disinformation.”

Chernov’s new film, “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” is a documentary shot mostly with POV cameras mounted on Ukrainian soldiers fighting to take back Ukrainian territory, meter by meter. The film brings the viewer deep into the realities of war and offers a window into the mindset of Ukrainians, fighting for their country’s survival, and saving civilians and even people’s household pets at the same time.

Despite the war, Ukrainian filmmakers are making feature films that reflect the broader transformation of the country’s society. “The Editorial Office” (2024) by Roman Bondarchuk is another noteworthy film from Ukraine; a satire about a journalist’s struggle to expose the truth about a forest fire. Unexpectedly, the film touches on cult leaders, politics, and literary references from early American New Age literature.

Pavlo Ostrikov’s feature film “You Are the Universe” (2024), imagines the last Ukrainian space trucker drifting through the remnants of Earth. The soundtrack features Ukrainian retro music from the space trucker’s parents’ vinyl collection, juxtaposed with tranquil images of space.

Many professional filmmakers and film crew members have joined the Ukrainian Army, choosing to use actual weapons instead of just art. This past fall, during a major film industry event in Kyiv—the Dzyga Awards, an event that could be described as Ukraine’s Academy Awards—nearly every award reception was accompanied by a moment of silence to honor an awardee or a member of the team killed by Russian forces, turning the ceremony into a memorial to Ukrainian talent. Some chose to leave Ukraine and start over elsewhere. There are Ukrainian directors and actors making their first steps in Hollywood, and we’ll likely hear their names soon.

The war has also drawn international artists to cover Ukrainian stories. French filmmaker Olivier Sabil’s “Viktor” follows a deaf man in Kharkiv as he tries to make sense of the war and find a way to be helpful.

Viktor Nordenskiöld, an award-winning Swedish director, in his new film “The Eukrainian” followed Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Olha Stephanishyna (who now serves as the Ambassador to the U.S) as she pursued Ukraine’s EU membership amidst Russia’s launch of its full-scale invasion.

“Checkpoint Zoo,” a documentary directed by Joshua Zeman and supported by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions, is a poignant documentary that follows the evacuation of five thousand animals, including lions, cheetahs, kangaroos, and llamas, from Kharkiv’s eco park, by a group of brave animal-lovers in the early days of Russia’s invasion in 2022.

The feature debut of Galway-born filmmaker Gar O’Rourke, “Sanatorium,” offers a vivid look at Kuyalnik Sanatorium, a large 1970s building near Odessa in southern Ukraine, where a small group searches for love, healing, and happiness, and where mud treatments and Soviet-era therapies continue despite a war nearby. The Irish Film and Television Academy has chosen “Sanatorium” as Ireland’s official entry for the international feature film category for the next Academy Awards.

For more artistically inclined viewers, there is “Match in a Haystack,” a documentary about dance and resilience. The feature-length film, directed by five-time Emmy Award winner Joe Hill and executive-produced by world-renowned ballerina Misty Copeland, follows a group of Ukrainian female dancers as they attempt to stage their first performance since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Most cultural events highlighting Ukraine are made possible by private funding and donations, large and small, from many supporters. But there are exceptions. France and Ukraine have launched a collaborative cultural initiative entitled Le Voyage en Ukraine (The Ukrainian Season in France). The 4-month-long program will feature some 50 events blending cinema, music, and literature, with participation from Juliette Binoche, Michel Hazanavicius, Raphaël, Philippe Claudel, and, from Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov, Iryna Tsilyk, Olga Gibelinda, Volodymyr Voyt, Bohdana Pivnenko, and the Dakh Daughters.

Regardless, Russian attacks grind on, and so do Ukrainian artists’ attempts to focus on, understand, and promote Ukraine’s seemingly indestructible spirit.

Russia Destroys Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage.

As the winter holiday season sets off, “Carol of the Bells”—a familiar holiday tune – resounds everywhere, from stores to films to holiday concerts. The song is very popular, and yet many people don’t know that the composer behind it is Ukrainian.

Mykola Leontovych wrote the melody in 1916, inspired by Ukrainian folk music motifs. Leontovych was murdered at his parents’ home in Ukraine in 1921 by a Kremlin agent. His music lived on, thankfully, and in 1922, Carol of the Bells was performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, becoming a hit for over a century.

Leontovych’s story is one of numerous horrific accounts of Russia’s many attempts to crush or subdue Ukrainian culture. An entire generation of Ukrainian poets, writers, and artists—later remembered as the “Executed Renaissance”—were killed by order of Soviet Premier Josef Stalin in 1937. For decades, during the Soviet regime, Ukrainian culture was heavily repressed and dominated by Moscow. The killing of the Ukrainian cultural elite continued until the very end of Soviet times.

Vasyl Stus, a prominent Ukrainian poet, translator, and human rights activist, was killed in prison in Russia in 1985, four years before the Berlin Wall came down. This past week, an exhibition dedicated to his life titled “Vasyl Stus. As Long As We Are Here, Everything Will Be Fine,” opened at the Art Arsenal in Kyiv, exploring the artist’s life and the history of resistance to totalitarianism through art and word.

But Stus is by no means the first artist and activist whose humanism and devotion to Ukraine brought an early death. Just 15 years prior, in the fall of 1970, renowned mosaic artist, Alla Horska, was found with her skull battered in by a hammer. The following day, her father-in-law was found dead on nearby train tracks, and Soviet authorities summarily deemed their deaths a murder-suicide—though those who knew them beg to differ.

Horska, along with a group of other Ukrainian artists, featured Ukrainian culture heavily in their work. They attempted to digest the viciousness with which the USSR had sought to keep its thumb on Ukraine and control its language and cultural narrative.

The focus on Ukraine brought them into the crosshairs of Soviet authorities, who bridled at the notion that Ukraine was its own land and cultivated its own culture. Horska would ultimately fall victim to its efforts to quiet rebellious voices. Stus, himself, attended her funeral, proclaiming quite presciently, “Today it’s you. And tomorrow, it’ll be me.”

Russia’s Ongoing Slaughter Of Ukrainian Intellectuals And Artists

Award-winning Ukrainian writer and poet Victoria Amelina was killed in the summer of 2023, after sustaining injuries in a Russian missile attack on a restaurant in Kramatorsk. Her non-fiction book Looking at Women, Looking at War, published in 2025, received critical acclaim and the prestigious Orwell Prize. Viktoriia Roshchyna, a 27-year-old Ukrainian investigative journalist, was captured by the Russian forces during the second year of the full-scale invasion, brutally tortured in a Russian prison, only to be recognized amongst the remains of Ukrainian servicemen in 2024. It’s estimated that since the beginning of the war, at least 200 Ukrainian journalists and reporters have been killed in Ukraine, with Russian forces deliberately bombing hotels in the frontline cities where media representatives tend to stay.

This ongoing culture-assassination campaign by Russia puts Ukraine’s heritage: as of the summer 2025, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture estimated that at least 1,630 cultural heritage sites and 2,437 cultural infrastructure facilities have been damaged or destroyed as a result of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.

Speranska, the art curator and Biruchiy founder, says: “Approximately 120 museums and galleries, 39 theatres, cinemas, and philharmonic halls, 784 libraries have been destroyed as of today. It is a systematic work on the destruction of Ukrainian culture.”

While Ukraine’s cultural heritage is very important, says Ukrainian music producer Nikitin, drawing only on Ukraine’s past and traditions is not enough. “It seems to me,” he says, “that the promotion of contemporary Ukrainian culture is even more important right now. We must show the world not only our courage and strength, he says, but also our beauty, talent, and love.”

And so Ukrainian artists and intellectuals continue the mission begun decades ago by the likes of Ukrainka, Stus and Horska. In 2026 at the Venice Biennale, Ukraine will present a sculpture and installation-based project by Zhanna Kadyrova entitled “Security Guarantees,” curated by Ksenia Malykh and Leonid Marushchak. It will be centered around Kadyrova’s sculpture Origami Deer, evacuated from the frontline town of Pokrovsk, a city that once housed 60,000 residents, now almost entirely destroyed by Russia’s war.

The Ukrainian Contemporary Music festival returns to New York for its seventh year in the spring of 2026. Titled “Mosaics,” the program will highlight the rich diversity of peoples, landscapes, and musical practices that make up Ukraine’s cultural identity today.

“Ukrainian artists are not just documenting loss,” said Biedarieva, adding that exiting its post-Soviet shadow, Ukrainian culture shows it is competitive and capable of setting new global trends. “They [Ukrainians] are redrawing the boundaries of what it means to exist, to imagine, and to be free.”