June, 2024
Kutuzivka is a small village northeast of Kharkiv, just 18.5 kilometers from the city center and only 24 kilometers from the Russian border. It was occupied within days of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, and was recaptured on April 28. But life there has not returned to normal — the village remains under constant threat from attacks launched across the nearby border.
Before the war, Kutuzivka had around 1,500 residents. Today, fewer than half remain. The village once had an active community life, centered around the House of Culture.
When Russian forces took control of the village, they established their military headquarters inside that same building. A space once dedicated to collective life became a command post — until liberation.
These images trace a geography of waiting, suspended between the need to stay and the impossibility of leaving.
The portraits were taken inside that building — in the same rooms where daily life was once shared, then occupied, and finally reclaimed.
There are no heroes in these rooms. Only people surviving, day by day, as the distance grows between the war and the world.
