Ukraine's Unfinished Grief

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Yulia Kolesnikova in her studio in Kyiv.(Dzvinka Pinchuk)

After four years of war, Ukrainians are reckoning with irreparable loss and finding ways to persist in the face of it.

Alyssa Oursler
March 20, 2026

Kyiv—In a quiet boutique tucked off Velyka Zhytomyrska Street, Yulia Kolesnikova threads yarn into itself, her needles clinking together with each stitch. It is her unseen accompaniment to a famous photograph. In the photo, Maksym Kolesnikov, her husband, has just been released from Russian captivity, and he is holding an apple, which he regards with awe. It’s his first piece of fresh fruit in a year.

Kolesnikov was mobilized on February 24, 2022, the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and taken captive within weeks. Nearly a year passed before his wife received a call from an unknown number. It was Kolesnikov, on a journalist’s phone, telling her he had just crossed back into the country. Their reunion happened shortly thereafter.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope waits 20 years for her husband Odysseus to come home from fighting in the Trojan War. Under pressure to remarry, she fends off suitors by saying she will choose one once she has finished a burial shroud for Odysseus’s father. By day, she weaves. By night, she undoes her own work.

Kolesnikova has jet-black hair and a small rose tattooed on her wrist. She is, in some sense, a modern-day Penelope, using yarn to survive the uncertainty of waiting. We met at her boutique, Aimee Studio, in November, as rumors of a potential peace deal swirled around the city. She was wearing a gray sweater she knitted by hand—the first piece she kept for herself. Behind her was a colorful array of clothes and wool.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ukraine-grief-memory-mourning/
Archive: https://archive.is/2026.03.20-165415/https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ukraine-grief-memory-mourning/

🌻🇺🇦❤️🇺🇦🌻 Slava Ukraini! 🌻🇺🇦❤️🇺🇦🌻

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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Photos by Dzvinka Pinchuk, who also contributed reporting.