Respected author, PhD in political science, combat medic in the Armed Forces of Ukraine — Kateryna Zarembo’s story is not unusual. Writing from her frontline position, she elucidates why Ukrainian writers, artists, and performers interrupt successful cultural careers to join the military defence of their homeland.
‘What is your education?’ my future commander asked when I came to apply for the position of combat medic in his unit. ‘I have a PhD in political science’, I replied. ‘What brought you here, disappointment?’ This dialogue sums up my professional U-turn after Russia invaded Ukraine. I had devoted my career to political analysis, academic research, and literature. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion, continuing this work no longer makes sense to me.
Political analysis falls flat because it failed to predict Russia’s large-scale attack. Nor could it explain why the world, which prematurely dismissed Ukraine’s defensive capabilities, needs to help Ukraine resist and prevail. Academic research seems ever more futile because, in wartime, spending years working on research and then waiting just as long for it to be published is an indulgence we can’t afford. As for literature, I continue to write, but this has become a form of release and relaxation, rather than my main job. My main job is tactical medicine: I am now a combat medic in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), and I spent the year before that travelling to the frontline as a volunteer combat medic with the Hospitallers Medical Battalion.
‘You have a gift for writing, so write’, people tell me. ‘Advocating for Ukraine abroad is also a very important mission.’ I have heard this countless times over the years of full-scale war. The importance of diplomatic work at both the state and civil society levels is undeniable. And yet Ukrainian poet, Yaryna Chornohuz, winner of the Shevchenko Prize, Ukraine’s most prestigious literary award, is a drone operator. Ukrainian theatre director, Olena Apchel, who had a promising international career — she was the co-director of the Berliner Theatertreffen, a German theatre festival, and sat on the juries for international theatre awards — returned from abroad to join the army. She now serves in an artillery reconnaissance unit. A third of the members of PEN Ukraine serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine as gunners and combat medics, they fire artillery and perform reconnaissance. The Ukrainian army is a melting pot of artists from all fields: writers, painters, designers, dancers, architects, vocalists, composers. Some are more well-known than others, for instance, Marharyta Polovinko, who served in the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade and was killed in the spring of 2025, or dancer Dmytro Dikusar, a former contestant on the show Dancing with the Stars, who joined the ranks of the Ukrainian army in the first days of the full-scale invasion. Trying to name them all would be a thankless task, but singling out only a few is an injustice to the rest. The Ukrainian writer, Artem Chapeye, who joined the Ukrainian army in the first days of the full-scale invasion, in his book Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns: Thoughts on War, argues that nobody is more or less deserving of risking their lives when their country is under attack.
Ukrainian artists and creative professionals have always faced a daunting task: not just to create art, but to make Ukraine visible and known throughout the world, making up for centuries of obscurity imposed by the Russian Empire. Even in peacetime, it’s an arduous task. We are working today so we can see the fruits of our labour ten or twenty years from now, or perhaps even later. But the Russian invasion robbed Ukrainian culture makers of even this brief time, because while they are creating, the Russians can occupy their cities, enter their homes, and kill them and their loved ones. As Ukrainian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk said in one of her speeches, ‘I can’t just wave the Geneva Convention in front of a Russian tank, because that won’t stop a Russian tank’.
It’s true that when you join the war effort, there’s a good chance you might die. But when people are willing to defend themselves and others, chances are that at least someone will survive. If we stop defending ourselves and our people, that will be the end — both physically and intellectually — of Ukrainian culture.
Theodor Adorno supposedly said it was impossible to write poetry after Auschwitz. To me, this statement is not about the literal impossibility of creating poetry after crimes against humanity, but about the futility and pointlessness of poetry if it cannot protect people from death. A poem cannot stop massive bleeding, but the MARCH protocol[1] can. That is why, during the war, tactical medicine, and not literature, is my top priority.
This is not to say that the war has put an end to creative output. Quite the contrary, and here I will focus on the literary scene, since that’s the one I know best. Many names have been added to the list of authors of war poetry in the first years of the full-scale invasion, including Pavlo Vyshebaba, Eva Tur, Artur Dron’, Andriy Semyankiv, and others. In 2025, we saw the release of several nonfiction books by Ukrainian writers-cum-soldiers about their wartime experience: in addition to the above-mentioned book by Artem Chapeye, new books were published in Ukrainian by Dmytro Krapyvenko (Use na try litery, or ‘A World of Acronyms’) and Artem Chekh (Hra v perevdiahannia, or ‘Role-play Games’). These and other books serve as important documents and reflections on the war experience, making an invaluable contribution to Ukrainian literature. It’s worth noting, however, that their publication is also a matter of luck.
Andriy Hudyma, a soldier in the 80th Separate Air Assault Brigade, did not live to see the presentation of his book 69 Spices for the Heart. He was killed in the battle for Bakhmut in 2023. Maksym Kryvtsov, a machine-gunner in the Special Operations Forces, laid his hands on a newly printed collection of his poems just days before being killed in 2024. Victoria Amelina unearthed the diary of the Ukrainian poet and children’s book author, Volodymyr Vakulenko, after he was murdered by Russian soldiers. His diary was published posthumously, as was Victoria Amelina’s book. Amelina died from injuries sustained in a Russian bombing of a restaurant in Kramatorsk just days after the presentation of Vakulenko’s book. Afterwards, her friends and family brought the book she had been working on to completion: Looking at Women, Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary (HarperCollins) was awarded the Orwell Prize for political writing in 2025.
Not everyone is even that fortunate. How many unfinished manuscripts and paintings, unsung songs, and unfilmed scripts will never be experienced by an audience? As of September 2025, the monitoring project, Ukrainian Culture Makers Killed by Russia, run by PEN Ukraine together with a number of other Ukrainian institutions, lists 234 people. The monitors point out that the list is not exhaustive. Excluded from this list are not only unreported crimes, but also undiscovered talents: those who were killed before they had a chance to make a name for themselves as artists and develop their creativity.
For many of the artists who have survived, war means abandoning the talents and skills they have cultivated over the years and quickly learning how to shoot, handle mines and explosives, fly drones, and read maps. But it’s important to do what you believe in, especially in wartime. I, for one, believe in the work of the Ukrainian army.
Endnotes
[1] The MARCH protocol is a step-by-step medical treatment system used by first-aiders, soldiers, and emergency workers worldwide to remember the proper order of treatment for trauma injuries. MARCH stands for: M – Massive hemorrhage, A – Airway; R – Respiration; C – Circulation; H – Hypothermia/Head injury.
Kateryna Zarembo is a researcher, lecturer, translator, and author who has long combined academic, literary, and policy work. She is currently serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a combat medic, following a year as a volunteer medic with the Hospitallers Medical Battalion. From 2010 to 2019, she worked at the New Europe Center, focusing on European integration, Ukraine’s security, and international advocacy. Her book, The Rise of Ukraine’s Sun (Choven, 2023), explores civil society in eastern Ukraine. It has been published in English as Ukrainian Sunrise: Stories of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions from the Early 2000s (trans. Tetiana Savchynska, Academic Studies Press, 2024).
Image: Sevilâ Nariman-qızı, arif qurşun olğanda (when a letter turns into a bullet) from the series menim – seniñ (mine – yours), 2025
