When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it upended the established world order, beginning the largest conflict on European soil since the Second World War. In 2025, Russia has yet to formally declare war on the neighbor it is trying to destroy. Yet Ukrainians have been forced to adapt regardless.

Across the country, schools have gone underground, with lessons taking place in basements or in many cases, online. Buildings have been converted into rehabilitation centers, stabilization points, and makeshift hospitals to deal with the overwhelming number of injuries sustained on the front lines. I have watched as families move beds into hallways or underground shelters to escape shelling, spending sleepless nights listening to explosions ring out, hoping home will be there in the morning.

An estimated fifteen percent of Ukraine’s infrastructure has been destroyed, and almost twenty percent of Ukrainians are living in poverty that has been exacerbated by inflation and a government focus on military spending. The country is facing mental health and accessibility crises as a staggering number of people continue to sustain debilitating injuries.

Yet the children who take classes in basements and chatrooms still play on mangled playgrounds outside their apartments. Soldiers who can no longer walk unassisted are getting married and finding new purpose, aided by prosthetics, while mothers who were once homemakers in Ukraine’s conservative society are taking on the role of both parents, going out to work in the morning and cooking and caring for children in the evening.

The war has destroyed buildings, infrastructure, and landmarks. It has taken lives and torn families and communities apart. It is a war that is fought not only in trenches but in kitchens and coffee shops, bedrooms and schools, offices and playgrounds. Yet in more than three years, Russia has not been able to destroy what makes a place a home; its people. The people of Ukraine, exhausted, displaced and grieving, have not given up, determined to endure, to rebuild and to go on living. They embrace calmness and fortitude, even as they face some of the darkest days of the war. It is this collective persistence that is the focus of When the Smoke Clears. Some of Ukraine’s most powerful stories are taking place far from the frontline, rarely seen in international headlines or news broadcasts because they are woven inextricably into the daily lives of ordinary Ukrainians. This project seeks to illuminate these quiet moments, which all too often go unseen.

01

The empty mass graves of the “Killing Fields” in Izium, Ukraine, 2025.

02

Ira,19, supports her boyfriend, Mischa, in the hospital after he lost both his legs defending Ukraine, 2022.

03

Members of the Azov Brigade hold military training for civilians and volunteer soldiers in Odesa, 2023.

04

Multiple explosions from Irpin and surrounding regions are seen from a balcony of a residential building in Kyiv, 2022.

05

Victoria, 6, runs to her family’s bunker in Saltivka in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She spends most of her time underground to avoid intense shelling in the area in 2022.

06

An elderly woman’s body is guarded by a dog after she was killed in Bucha, Ukraine, 2022.

07

Two soldiers play chess at their base outside of Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, 2024.

08

A summer afternoon in Odesa, Ukraine, despite night attacks, 2023.

09

A young Ukrainian boy is returned to Ukraine after being kidnapped and deported to Russia, 2024.

10

Yarolsav Matyozov is reunited with his mother in Dnipro, Ukraine, after they escaped the siege of Mariupol at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 2025.