Conscription for men, a Soviet legacy, was scrapped in 2013 but then reinstated just a year later, owing to the war. infection are higher than in the rest of Europe. In some parts of the country, rates of H.I.V. One in five of those who age out of the internat system end up in prison one in ten attempt or commit suicide. In Kyiv, Ukraine’s biggest and richest city, teens have been found living in tunnels underneath the infrastructure that was built for the 2012 European Football Championship. Parts of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine are still under Moscow’s control, and the rest of the region is struggling to rebuild from the war. These pictures should make us think about the possible futures of these young people, and of their country.
Russian speakers in Ukraine-controlled territories have become more committed to Ukraine, and Ukrainians as a whole seem more open to Russian speakers-including to Zelensky, who won in a landslide. One of the results of the war with Russia has been a stronger civic identity. The young women wear ball gowns or more casual short skirts.įrom the photos, we cannot tell whether the teens are Ukrainian- or Russian-speaking. Unlike teens in the U.S., the young men’s dress varies quite a bit, from tuxedos or conventional suits to brightly colored jackets or uniforms. In some of Chelbin’s photographs, the teens re-create those old styles: a subject stands, for instance, with a hand resting on the shoulder of a peer sitting nearby. Our view is that of an outsider, although Chelbin’s father was born in western Ukraine, and she grew up fascinated by the black-and-white portraits that he had brought with him when he left as a child. Each time, her subjects were on the precipice of adulthood, attending their high-school graduation, an event that includes a prom. The Israeli photographer Michal Chelbin has made images of Ukrainian teen-agers at two different locations during two distinct periods: first, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, in 2008, and then in and around Kyiv, in 2019. With the country’s economy unable to recover, many Ukrainians have been forced to work or move abroad, to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and even Russia.
and have fought Vladimir Putin’s invasion, despite lacking a functioning military at the start of the conflict. In their long conflict with Russia, Ukrainians have not been submissive: they burned their own fields and livestock to resist Soviet rule raised two revolutions, in the pursuit of democracy, after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and fomented war in eastern Ukraine, leading to nearly fifty per cent inflation the following year and to more than ten thousand civilian casualties and the internal displacement of some one and a half million people. Since Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union, it has faced several severe economic depressions and ongoing violent meddling by Russia. One of the strongest states in Europe a millennium ago, Ukraine has had a devastating century, including two forced famines, first under Lenin, in 19, and then under Stalin, a decade later. Although we have learned something about Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s neophyte President, there has been very little said about the lived experiences of the country’s nearly forty-four million people. Amid the maelstrom of the Trump-impeachment proceedings, Ukraine has been less a reality than a projection of America’s post-Cold War neuroses.