Win Fragrance Prizes While Supporting Ukraine’s Young Talent
Since 2024, I’ve spent about six months in Ukraine, much of it traveling along the eastern and southern border. Sometimes, when I share photos of markets, sunlit streets, or old facades still standing proud, I get the question: Where’s the war?
We’re used to the stock images: bombed-out buildings, women crying before rubble, soldiers caked in mud. But war doesn’t always look like that.
War is the grinding exhaustion of nights spent listening for air raid sirens. It’s planning your day around the threat of missiles. It’s the constant worry for your family’s safety. It’s losing your home and scrambling to pay rent somewhere else.
And sometimes, war is a photograph of a talented teenager who will never get to grow up.
Veronika Kozhushko—Nika—was only 18 when a Russian missile struck Kharkiv in August 2024. She was already recognized as a gifted young artist—writing poetry, painting, exploring graphic design. Friends called her fiercely intelligent, endlessly curious, deeply woven into the city’s literary and art scene. She had plans. She had promise. She had so much life ahead of her.
Miche in Win Fragrance Prizes While Supporting Ukraine’s Young Talent: Victoria, thank you for showing us these beautiful, gifted, brave Ukrainians. The world needs every single Nika out there so badly. July 17, 2025 at 1:35pm