This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Tetiana Burianova contributed to this report.
Oleksander Samus would have continued drawing cartoons for a French media company for a living, but the war in Ukraine added a dramatic pivot to his life. He joined the army against the wishes of his wife, also an artist. Barely a month into the war, a mine exploded beneath their house in Kharkiv, nearly killing his 14-year-old son with shards of their windows which had eviscerated with the explosion.
“That was the breaking point,” Samus said. “Can you imagine how it made me feel?” His wife, son, and daughter evacuated to Poland as he was deployed to the frontlines.
This war, stretching into its fourth year, is Europe’s deadliest since World War II. Amidst the fear, desolation, and precarity of war, soldiers inspired and comforted one another. When Samus’ teammates discovered his skills as an artist, they requested drawings of their families and loved ones. In turn, he admired the ink many had on their bodies, often bearing a nationalistic or militaristic tilt.
“Everything starts from childhood — older generations like my parents taught me that tattoos are something bad, only for prisoners and criminals,” Samus said. His time deep in the trenches repositioned his perspective. He decided he not only wanted a tattoo himself, but wanted to learn the art himself someday — after all, he is an artist by trade.
Research has shown that tattooing is associated with increased risk of all hepatitis infections, particularly hepatitis C, further exacerbated when done outside tattoo parlours. There is strong evidence that shows risk of transmission of blood-borne diseases, including syphilis, through unsafe tattooing practices, including unsterilized needles, contaminated ink or unhygienic settings.
Two years into his service, the frontlines of the war remained in flux. “We had to work in places where you don’t know what the terrain looks like,” Samus recounts.
In December 2023, he stepped on a landmine in the Donetsk region, blowing off his right leg. Nine surgeries and months of physical therapy at a military hospital later, Samus was fitted with a prosthetic. It took him nearly seven months to learn how to walk again.
Back in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine after Kyiv, Olena Vovk is transcending
conventional norms in her mission to meet the needs of soldiers and their families. She met Natalia Schedlkunova, who served 30 years herself (her husband was killed the day of the full-scale invasion; her son, Evgeny Olegovich Hromadskyi, was lauded the youngest hero in Ukraine in his role in defending Kharkiv from the Russians).
They found refuge in mourning losses together, while recognizing the immense gaps in both veteran care and support for military families confronted by secondhand trauma. In 2023, the pair concocted the idea for a tattoo parlor, Vovk Studio, mandated to meet soldiers and veterans’ needs.
“I get the sense that many really wanted tattoos, but were afraid to commit,” Vovk said. “The war had brought a different sense of urgency, because there might not be a tomorrow. Before, it was just a mark on your body. Now it’s more about identity: what you want to tell about yourself, how you see yourself. As professionals, we’re helping people achieve this.”
Samus was connected to Vovk Studio through a journalist friend, where he took the course that Vovk and Schedlkunova carefully designed, which encompasses learning about the history and art of tattooing. Along with 30 other pupils — veterans like himself or family members of soldiers — they practiced first on fake skin, then models under the guidance of various top masters.
“When I’m tattooing, I forget everything that is going on,” Samus said. “When you’ve been in the war for two years, you collect a lot of negativity — you’re always stressed, trying to forget the horrible things you’ve seen, but working here in the studio, I feel like I’m coming back to civilian life. I’m deep in the art and living in a different reality in the world of art and creating.”
As for his own first tattoo, Samus plans on getting an illustration of a chest plate on his left forearm, picturing wife’s face in the middle: “To remind me, what I am fighting for.”
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, tattooing in Ukraine — which has long been a proud display of national identity and culture — has taken on a renewed, powerful statement of unity and resilience. But there’s a darker side to this emergence, including nationalist tattoos referencing the Russian gulag and white supremacy appropriation of Norse symbolism.
The Azov Regiment, one of the Ukrainian National Guard’s most well-known units, has been subject to Russian propaganda including accusations of branding themselves with Neo-Nazi symbols, such as the Wolfsangel rune or “wolf hook.” Although these were mythological markers of protection, luck, or healing in ancient Germanic culture, far right nationals have succeeded in linking such symbols to ideals about blood purity and other fascist ideology.
Yet Ukrainian tattoos run the risk of being a liability on the frontlines. In Kharkiv Oblast, members of the 13th Khartia Brigade were honing their First Person View drone piloting skills. One of the pilots going by the call-sign “Bar” had a tattoo of ammunition on the back of his right hand, which he did not want photographed.
Should separatists or Russian sympathizers here in the east identify him, it could bring major problems for him: “There are Ukrainian soldiers who get tortured or killed for their tattoos,” Bar said.
Lobyntseva obtained a degree in art therapy from the PLINE Center in Psychology in Kharkiv. Although she is not currently practicing as a therapist, she is highly sensitive to the dynamics of art therapy for both instructors and recipients, recognizing the potential unintended consequences that could come from imbalanced dynamics.
There is the potential for a tattoo artist who hasn’t properly healed from horrors of war to transfer bad energy to clients — it’s a blood process after all — or enabling his military colleagues to get pieces they may regret later on. “If I’m going through something, I don’t want my energy to rub off on someone else,” Lobyntseva says. “My tattooing session may not be therapy, but it’s nice when it can be a form of comfort.”
At Vovk, Samus is elated to have finished his tattooing rehabilitation course. Now, he’s waiting for clients. Should the traffic remain thin, he is considering signing a new army contract. There’s a phrase they have, he shares: “Once you’re in the military, you’re in the military forever.”
Kang-Chun Cheng is a Taiwanese American photojournalist from New Hampshire and based in Nairobi, Kenya for five years, covering the environment, foreign aid, and outdoor adventure. Her upbringing in West Lebanon fostered a deep love for the outdoors.