The glare of war forces carefree children to grow up quickly. Poems by Artur Dron’, currently serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and Maksym ‘Dali’ Kryvtsov, killed in the line of duty in 2024, illuminate the tenderness, resolve, and tragedy at the heart of Ukraine’s fight to protect the future of its children.
The poem ‘Children’ is part of Artur Dron’s collection Тут були ми (We Were Here), written largely on the frontlines. In this piece, the twenty-four-year-old poet and combatant articulates the fundamental reason why Ukrainians have chosen to resist a vastly larger aggressor. Ukrainian patriotism is rooted in the desire to protect future generations — not only physically, as a natural human instinct, but also by preserving their dignity, freedom, and national identity, which Russia seeks to erase in its war against Ukraine. It is for the future of Ukrainian children — to ensure they grow up with pride in who they are and the ability to pursue their dreams — that yesterday’s carefree boys and girls took up arms to become today’s servicemen and servicewomen. Amid the unparalleled trials the soldiers face, they are also protecting the humanity within themselves, as if safeguarding their inner child.
Artur Dron’s collection in Ukrainian is illustrated with children’s drawings sent to soldiers. In the afterword, he mentions that these drawings gave him and his fellow fighters the strength to persevere and hope in their darkest moments. To support the children affected by the war, Artur raised over one million hryvnias for the Voices of Children Charity Foundation through his readings, book sale proceeds, honoraria for publications and translations, and charity auctions. The collection We Were Here has been published in English, Swedish, and Norwegian, with translations into French and Polish underway.
—Yuliya Musakovska
Children
When we speak of hope
we’re actually speaking
of children.
I’m grateful for the memory of you
which still passes through me
though it was all so long ago.
And someday all children
will squint at the sun.
And those of us who survived
will see
that none of this was in vain.
Here we rarely speak of hope
or patriotism
or the Motherland.
But when we speak
it is always about children.
And when I remember you,
I imagine the child you were,
squinting at the sun.
Those of us who survive
will be silent for a long time.
Because who needs words
about hope
when it’s standing right in front of you?
Wearing muddy shorts,
scratching the mosquito bites on its arms,
flashing its milk teeth
at the sun.
By Artur Dron’, translated by Yuliya Musakovska
**
Scores of young people gathered in Kyiv to pay their last respects to Maksym Kryvtsov, call sign ‘Dali’, on 11 January 2024. The poet, photographer, and machine-gunner spent most of his adult life defending Ukraine from Russia’s ongoing invasion, having joined a volunteer battalion in 2014 at the age of twenty-four. He was also a beloved mentor at the Strokati Yenoty (Motley Raccoons) adventure camp for kids. His poetry, imbued with a childlike wonder at the beauty of the natural world and the people around him, continues to inspire and console young Ukrainians growing up in the midst of all-out war. Since Kryvtsov’s death, young performers from Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Ivano-Frankivsk have staged shows to deliver his poems — full of love, whimsical observations, and the darkness of war — in their own voices. Kryvtsov’s first poetry collection, Вірші з бійниці (Poems from the firing trench), was published by Nash Format in Ukraine at the end of 2023.
The two poems by Kryvtsov featured in this issue of the London Ukrainian Review provide a glimpse of childhood shaped by war. One opens with the words, ‘Hey kid’, and presents the soldier Dali’s encounter with a child in a bomb shelter. While there is no escape from the shelling above, the poet still tries to protect the child, including by ‘translating’ the events outside into images suitable for a child’s imagination: ‘this cellar | is your fortress | as long as metal dragons | fight battles outside’. The second poem begins with scenes of the poet’s childhood bravery — ‘I was never afraid of the dentist’ — and traces the disorienting transformations of a person caught up in war. Although Dali found purpose in mentoring children and working for veterans’ organisations after he demobilised from the National Guard in 2019, he was irreversibly changed by his wartime experiences. Kryvtsov re-enlisted when Russia re-invaded on 24 February 2022 and kept writing poems until he was killed just short of his thirty-fourth birthday.
He never had any children of his own.
— Larissa Babij
***
Hey kid
here’s a cereal bar
I bet you’d prefer
a piece of chocolate
true, it’s not a Bounty, Snickers or Twix
just a plain old cereal bar
made of dried fruit
no added sugar
a healthy snack mm–mm–mm.
Hey kid
this cellar
is your fortress
as long as metal dragons
fight battles outside
we have to wait here
the way you wait for it to stop raining
although I doubt this is how you imagined
your first month at school.
But you have a sword
you know
that you have a sword
your little hands
your little eyes
your little heart
warm as a mitten
hey kid
as long as we’re both in the darkness
we’ve got to stick together.
He’s around six or seven
wearing a thin, brightly coloured hat
and a short, plum-purple jacket
I look into
his little eyes
calm and quiet
as a lagoon
he looks at me
the way you look out the window of a train
as it pulls away from your beloved city.
Thank you, he says
and dissolves into the darkness
the way the city dissolves
in the solvent of the longest night.
I don’t hear any gunfire
I don’t think about anything
I just search for the boy
because I’ve found something
in a pouch on my tactical vest —
another cereal bar
true, it’s not a Bounty, Snickers or Twix
not even a piece of chocolate
just a plain old cereal bar
made of dried fruit
no added sugar
a healthy snack mm–mm–mm
hey, where are you, kid?
By Maksym Kryvtsov, translated by Larissa Babij
***
I was never afraid of the dentist
going there felt like an act of courage
a noble feat
with the reward
of a chocolate wafer from the sweet shop
down the road
of course
I had to wait a few hours to eat it —
the longest hours of my life.
I’d go with my head held just as high
to have blood drawn from my finger
and they’d hand me a lollipop
strawberry flavour —
this wasn’t the dentist
after all.
Now the world draws our blood
without asking
and in return it steals your dreams
paints your surroundings with darkness
claims your body —
no lollipops for you.
I look at the sun
the sun looks at me
wordlessly
and I lose the staring contest.
War takes your clothing
your belongings
your apartment
your house plants
your flower beds
where mint and roses grow
your old sofa
war
erases you
wears you down
like the soles of knock-off trainers.
It yanks the life from you
like rotten teeth
only there are no chocolate wafers
just a different you
locked in your apartment
pacing through the rooms
waiting
for someone
with the keys
to open the door
waiting
till that someone
is you.
For now
you breathe empty space
as the skilled surgeon of war yanks out
one rotten tooth after another
and the sun
the sun watches you without blinking
silent and still
as a statue.
By Maksym Kryvtsov, translated by Helena Kernan
Artur Dron’ is a Ukrainian poet and soldier. A graduate of the Faculty of Journalism at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, he worked as an event manager at Old Lion Publishing House. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Artur joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Artur debuted with the poetry collection Dormitory No. 6 in 2020. His second book, We Were Here (2023), written while serving on the frontline, reflects on human resilience and love amidst war. The collection has been translated into English, Swedish, and Norwegian, with French and Polish editions underway. Jantar Publishing released the English edition, translated by Yuliya Musakovska, with support from the Ukrainian Book Institute’s Translate Ukraine programme and the editorial team at the University of Exeter. Currently undergoing rehabilitation after a severe injury, Artur continues to write, offering poignant insights into the human condition during wartime.
Maksym Kryvtsov, call sign ‘Dali’ (1990–2024), was a poet, photographer, and machine-gunner. After participating in the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv, in 2014 he joined the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps to defend eastern Ukraine, and then served in the National Guard until 2019. After demobilisation he worked at rehabilitation centres for veterans in Kyiv and volunteered at the Motley Raccoons children’s adventure camp. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Kryvtsov joined the AFU’s Special Operations Forces. His military honours include the President’s Order of Merit (III degree), the Cross of Merit honorary badge from the Commander-in-Chief of the AFU, and the Cross of the Special Operations Forces. Kryvtsov’s 2023 poetry collection Вірші з бійниці (Poems from the firing trench) was named one of the year’s best Ukrainian books by PEN Ukraine. The Minefield of Memory: Diaries, Essays, Stories — a posthumous collection of Kryvtsov’s writing — was published in 2025 by Nash Format.
Yuliya Musakovska is an award-winning poet and translator. She has published six poetry collections in Ukrainian, most recently Stones and Nails (2024). Her collection, The God of Freedom, was published by Arrowsmith Press in an English translation by Olena Jennings and the author. Yuliya’s poems have been translated into over thirty languages and published worldwide, appearing in AGNI, Tupelo Quarterly, The Southern Review, The Common, NELLE, The Continental, and other publications. As a translator, Yuliya works with English and Swedish, and has translated Tomas Tranströmer into Ukrainian. Her current focus is on Ukrainian soldier poets. She translated Artur Dron’s full-length collection We Were Here into English (Jantar Publishing, 2024), and edited its Swedish translation (Vi var här, Ariel & ellerströms, 2023). In 2023, Yuliya paused her twenty-year career in international business to dedicate herself to cultural advocacy for Ukraine. She is a member of PEN Ukraine.
Larissa Babij is a Ukrainian-American translator and writer based in Kyiv since 2005. A Kind of Refugee: The Story of an American Who Refused to Leave Ukraine, a book based on her dispatches on Substack from wartime Ukraine, was published by ibidem Press in 2024. Her writing and translations have been published in The Evergreen Review, Arrowsmith Journal, London Ukrainian Review, Krytyka, and other publications. Together with Helena Kernan, she is translating Maksym Kryvtsov’s poetry collection, Вірші з бійниці (Poems from the firing trench), into English. She is a member of PEN Ukraine.
Helena Kernan is a literary translator of Ukrainian and holds master’s degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley. Originally from the UK, she has lived in several European cities including Kyiv, where she worked with the Theatre of Displaced People and Centre for Civil Liberties, and is now based in Berlin. She works with a wide variety of texts, from contemporary Ukrainian drama to poetry, documentary films, witness testimonies, and editorial pieces. Together with Larissa Babij, she is currently translating Maksym Kryvtsov’s poetry collection, Вірші з бійниці (Poems from the firing trench), into English.
Image: Stanislav Turina, Drawing (special for the London Ukrainian Review), 2025
