On a Saturday afternoon in late May, as air raid sirens wailed across Kharkiv, 16-year-old Sofiia Moroz ducked into an underground metro station with her dance shoes in her backpack. Two hours later, she was leading a group of children through a hopak—the explosive traditional Ukrainian folk dance—while the rumble of distant artillery vibrated through the concrete walls above them.
"Nobody here is forgetting the war," Moroz said afterward, catching her breath on the platform. "We dance because of it. It keeps us human."
Culture as Resistance
As Russian forces press their offensive on Kharkiv Oblast, civilians in Ukraine's second-largest city are enduring some of the most intense shelling since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Tens of thousands have evacuated. Those who remain face daily power outages, disrupted water supplies, and the psychological toll of life within range of Russian glide bombs.
Yet alongside the hardship, organized cultural expression persists—not as denial, but as a documented thread of Ukrainian resistance. During Soviet-era repression, underground kobzar musicians preserved banned national identity through song. In 2014, during the Revolution of Dignity, protesters on Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnosti sang folk anthems between clashes with riot police. Today, that tradition has adapted to metro stations, basement shelters, and makeshift community centers.
Specific Scenes of Resilience
In Kharkiv's Saltivka district, once one of Europe's largest residential neighborhoods and now among the most heavily shelled, the volunteer group Kultura Opory (Culture of Resistance) runs weekly dance and music sessions in a reinforced basement. On May 18, they hosted a fundraiser where attendees paid what they could; proceeds went toward purchasing tourniquets and medical supplies for frontline medics. Between sets, a local poet read work about displacement. Then the accordion started, and people danced.
Kyiv has seen similar adaptations. The folk ensemble Drevo, known for reviving pre-Christian polyphonic singing, now rehearses in metro stations during air alerts. Their performances, filmed on phones and shared widely, draw thousands of online viewers—many of them displaced Ukrainians abroad.
"We're not performing despite the danger," said Drevo member Ostap Kovalenko, 34. "We're performing in it. The context changes the meaning."
More Than Escapism
Psychologists working with trauma survivors in Kharkiv say collective cultural activities serve a practical function. Dr. Iryna Terletska, a clinical psychologist with the Ukrainian NGO Vostok SOS, explained that structured group movement helps regulate nervous systems overwhelmed by chronic threat.
"People often assume it's about distraction," Terletska said. "But dancing together in a shelter is an act of coordinated agency. It says: we are still here, we still choose what we do with our bodies, and we still belong to each other."
The participants span generations. At one recent Kharkiv shelter session, a 71-year-old retired engineer taught teenagers steps from a kolomyika dance native to the Carpathian region. A 9-year-old girl showed her classmates a TikTok-choreographed routine to a Ukrainian pop song. Both were absorbed into the same evening.
The Weight of the Moment
No one involved pretends that music neutralizes the war. On May 22, a Russian missile strike on a Kharkiv hypermarket killed at least 19 people. The following evening, Kultura Opory still held its scheduled session—but began with a moment of silence, and several regular attendees were absent, having fled westward overnight.
"Some days we cancel," said organizer Yevhen Polishchuk, 29. "Some days only three people come. We're not trying to create a fantasy. We're trying to keep the social fabric from tearing completely."
What the World Is Watching
For international observers, the persistence of Ukrainian cultural life under fire offers a window into how societies process protracted conflict. It is neither the whole story nor a sentimental sideshow. It is one measurable response among many—alongside military defense, humanitarian aid, and political advocacy—that keeps civilian society functioning.
As the war enters its third year, the dancers, musicians, and organizers in Kharkiv and beyond continue without a clear endpoint. Their sessions are rarely filmed by professional crews. They do not trend reliably on social media. But they recur, week after week, underground and in earshot of the front.
"We'll stop when there's no one left to teach," Moroz said, zipping her dance shoes back into her bag as the all-clear sounded. "And then we'll start again when people return."
