Inna and her three children left Luhansk in 2014 when the war reached their home. They found refuge in the Carpathian town of Rakhiv, where they began a new life.
I met them by chance in 2017 while traveling through Ukraine. I needed a place to stay for the night, and a mutual friend gave me Inna’s number. Over breakfast she told me their story — they had fled the war in Donbas. Since then, I kept coming back to visit them.
Over the years we became close. I didn’t want to photograph them as “war refugees” — there are too many stories like that already. What mattered to me was the atmosphere of their home, the quiet rhythm of their days, the warmth of their relationship, and their quiet resilience.
Ten years later, the war is present again — even in Rakhiv the air-raid sirens can be heard. But war never became the center of their lives. Inna didn’t allow fear to shape her children’s future. Despite everything, they grew up, laughed, studied, and dreamed.
This is not a story about war. It is a story about the human strength that survives in spite of it.
