Ukrainians grapple with how to memorialize a war still being fought

Editor’s Note: The following is part of a series of reports by the Kyiv Independent about the memorialization of Ukraine’s fallen soldiers and civilians.

Every nation-defining event in Ukraine's nearly 35 years of independence has begun in the main square of its capital city, Kyiv. There, on what is now called Independence Square, democratic protests sparked three revolutions, each commemorated by several memorials.

But none of those memorials are as prominent as the square's newest addition — a collection of flags, photos, and candles installed by passersby since 2022 on a lawn of the square to pay tribute to those killed fighting in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

At almost any moment throughout the day, people can be seen walking through the memorial, placing a new flag or photograph, or just stopping by to pay their respects.

For now, it's the closest thing Ukraine has to a national memorial to the war with Russia — a conflict that has united Ukrainians more than any other event in their history.

In 2025, stalled peace talks reignited debate over how the war might ultimately end. But only its outcome will determine the story future memorials tell Ukrainians and the world — whether one of victory, tragic loss, or a frozen front line that stands as a warning of wars yet to come.

While the improvised memorial reflects a public need to honor those killed in the war, designing a permanent monument for a conflict with no clear end presents a unique challenge for urban planners and designers. Lingering Soviet-era practices and customs around memorialization also call for a radically new vision for commemoration.

There is no way to tell how people will remember this war decades from now. But there is little doubt that Ukraine's war-forged national identity will be central in shaping the country's future.

‘The memory of the war is everywhere’

Experts agree that Ukrainians’ need for the war commemoration is stronger than ever, driven not only by daily personal losses they endure and witness in the news but also by the threat of their country's history being rewritten to serve geopolitical agendas.

"People demand that this war be remembered here and now, because we are not sure that we will survive a genocidal war against Ukraine," said Anton Liahusha, a historian and dean of the recently founded master's degree in memory studies at the Kyiv School of Economics.

"The memory of the war is indeed everywhere because each of us carries our dead with us — even those who think the war is far away," he told the Kyiv Independent.

As trauma continues to compound over time, spontaneous acts of commemoration emerge as people struggle to process their grief over experiences that continue each day, and as a result of a lack of time and distance from them.

“We cannot afford to calmly sit and debate about the past today,” Liahusha said.

It is often through debates that take place long after a tragic event that its true impact on society becomes clear — shaping how it is remembered and what lessons are passed on to future generations.

A famous showcase of this process was the first national memorial to the Vietnam War in the United States, built in Washington, D.C. in 1982, seven years after the two-decades-long war ended. Its design by a Yale architecture undergraduate, Maya Lin —  two black granite walls engraved with the names of dead and missing servicemen that was selected by an expert jury in a nationwide competition — was revolutionary and faced harsh criticism at the time.

One loud objection was the lack of triumphant attributes in its austere V-shaped black granite slicing into the slope of the park — "the earth cut open," as Lin called it — which contrasted with monumental white memorials long the norm in Washington, D.C.

Maya Lin's Vietnam memorial started a new page in the world's memorialization practice, because it spoke to people in "a completely new language" which made sense in the context of that war, said Oksana Dovhopolova, a historian who co-founded a non-governmental educational project in Ukraine called the "Memorialization practices lab" that teaches students to develop meaningful commemorative designs.  

"Every war and every tragic event creates its own language of memorialization because every historical event is unique — World War I, World War II, 9/11 in New York," Dovhopolova told the Kyiv Independent.

In Ukraine, she believes the language of memorialization will be invented eventually. "But for now, this search resembles a repetition of the World War I memorials," she said.

'We don't know the final destination'

The primary problem for commemorating the ongoing war with Russia is that no one knows how it will end.

While there are efforts around the world to commemorate traumatic events as they continue, such as an online museum dedicated to murdered journalists in Mexico, physical memorials throughout the past century almost exclusively appeared after the event's conclusion.

"Just imagine, we build a monument to victory now, and then we lose the war," Liahusha said. "Or we make a very tragic monument, and then we win the war, and we will have a celebratory narrative of survival," he added.

Another scenario, one in which the war is frozen at the current front line, leaving Crimea and territories from five Ukrainian oblasts with an estimated 5 million people under Russian occupation, would portray an even more complex narrative — about a fight that is expected to continue sooner or later.

"(In that case), we would need a third type of monument — a 'present continuous' type, where there is no completed narrative of this war," Liahusha said.

Ukrainian civil society is already working to build memory sites for some episodes of an ongoing war, such as the Bucha massacre that occurred outside of Kyiv during Russia's month-long occupation there, or human rights violations in Yahidne in Chernihiv Oblast. Building memorials in these places is possible because Russia was driven out of those areas in 2022, giving these local events a sense of finality.

However, experts agree that the nationwide commemorative policy will take shape after the war, "when we are no longer in the midst of it," Dovhopolova said.

"Oftentimes, memory actually comes after other processes of truth-seeking, justice, and criminal accountability," said Kerry Whigham, assistant professor of genocide and mass atrocity prevention at Binghamton University in New York, during an online workshop on memorializing ongoing atrocities.

"First, we need to get a really clear view about what crimes occurred that we need to memorialize and remember," he said.

'A symbol of those who are attacking us'

It is natural for a nation to draw guidance on commemorating something new from the commemorative heritage that their culture has accumulated — things people are used to seeing in place of a war memorial, as illustrated by a statue called "Three Soldiers" that was added beside Maya Lin’s memorial in Washington D.C., two years after its construction to satisfy a more conservative public.

But in Ukraine, this has become nearly impossible, as much of the country’s memorial heritage — including Soviet-era war monuments and statues — is now linked to Russia, the successor to the USSR and its current invading aggressor.

"No country has ever been in such a situation — where the (Soviet style) of commemoration that people are used to is now becoming a symbol of those who are attacking us," Dovhopolova said.

According to Dovhopolova, who held workshops for over 300 students in 2024 that developed 25 memorial projects after interviewing locals in various communities, the Soviet-style has become "absolutely unacceptable to people to be used with regards to our (ongoing) war."

"So we are forced to look for our new language," she said.

The makeshift memorial with thousands of flags on Kyiv's central square, each representing someone killed by Russia, is the most well-known and internationally understood example of an emerging commemorative language in Ukraine.

Started by Ukrainians memorializing a Ukrainian tragedy, it nevertheless "works on everyone," whether they are foreigners or bystanders who didn’t lose friends or family to the war, Dovhopolova said.

'We have to listen to each other'

Public discussion around memorial sites in Ukraine is complicated. Developing them is a painstaking task for which the state has few resources, and there are no playbooks or examples of successful large-scale commemoration of ongoing or recent events in the country’s modern history.

But Ukrainian and foreign memory experts say that even as the war continues, ensuring transparent communication between the state, society, and experts is key to the process.

According to Dovhopolova, the interviews her students held with survivors of Russian war crimes in communities like Bucha, Irpin and Kharkiv suburbs, heavily damaged by Russian shelling, showed that it's important for local residents to have a say in how a memorial in their community should look, since they will live with it.

"People in Bucha and Irpin do not need a 'big man' to come and build them a beautiful monument," she said.

"Local communities say: 'We are not seen.' The government says: 'We don't have the resources,'" Dovhopolova added. "Artists say: 'Everyone has no taste, so we will teach everyone (how to build memorials).' And when people don't hear each other, it can't work out well."

So far, most of the work toward memorializing the war in Ukraine has been done through grassroots initiatives by local communities, activists, or organizations.

They criticize the state for being too slow to react to people’s needs and inadequately managing existing projects, such as the construction of the national military cemetery, which was postponed several times in light of corruption scandals and the public's demands for an open, transparent competition on its design.

Open competitions that allow people to submit designs, Liahusha said, are usually "a very good tool and fuel for continuing discussions" on national memorial sites.

"(A major war memorial) cannot be discussed on the margins or even among experts and specialists," he added.

However, Liahusha argues that while the state must ensure a transparent development process, it is experts who should lead the way in shaping the conversation around a national war memorial — whether on Independence Square or elsewhere in Kyiv.

"Even a proposal for the competition on what should be there, what the memorial should mean, is a very difficult professional job," he said.

When to build a war memorial?

Experts agree that now is not the time to build a monument on Independence Square to commemorate the war.

"If we work too quickly to concretize memory in the immediate aftermath (of atrocities), before a shared narrative has been created, it can oftentimes increase tensions among a society rather than decrease them," Whigham said.

Instead, while the war is ongoing, the state can collect testimonies and artifacts for future museums and support people who find numerous temporary ways to commemorate, including the makeshift memorial with flags on Independence Square, Dovhopolova said.

"Temporary solutions will give everyone a feeling that they are seen, that their pain or pride will not be forgotten," she added.

Local sites of memorialization, such as in places of mass executions, could also be developed already to give voices to the victims and provide recognition and a sense of symbolic repair of some harm, according to Whigham.

Often started by victims, survivors, or family members of people who were killed in conflicts around the world, they have a much smaller audience than national memorials, but pave a much richer way for a long-lasting impact on their communities, he said.

To help with this, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory published a set of recommendations on memorialization in 2024 that includes two pages of guidelines for communities developing memorials, along with ethical and legislative norms. Later, they could be used to guide the development of a national war memorial.

"But first, we need to make sure that Russians don't kill us all," said Anton Drobovych, ex-head of the Institute of National Memory, who co-developed the guidelines and former soldier.

"Only then can this new language of remembrance take shape, along with all these memorials."

Note from the author:

Hi, this is Natalia Yermak. I wrote this story for you. Commemorating an ongoing war is an unparalleled challenge that Ukrainians wrestle with, and sadly, Ukraine's experience will set an example for potential future conflicts around the globe.

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