On my first visit to Ukraine, in August 2022, I happened to run into a crew of precocious 16- to 21-year-olds, who liked to hang out at a tiny coffee shop near my AirBnB in Kryva Lypa, the famous bohemian courtyard of Lviv, Ukraine’s sixth biggest city.  They were amazing, products of Ukraine’s middle class, liberal values and education. They all spoke English, either OK or excellently, and were well versed in Russian, European and American as well as Ukrainian culture and history, from punk music to film and literature, although the Russia aspect was largely renounced after its brutal invasion of February 2022.

As I returned to Ukraine in 2023 and then 2025, I watched them grow and was lucky enough to document one of them, Vasyl, as he followed the classical liberal path from enjoying the world to realizing it was a dangerous place and becoming a fighter himself. It is an incredible transformation, from a happy-go-lucky and skinny kid to muscled married man—I was lucky enough to attend his wedding—and seasoned soldier.

We are lucky enough to have him and other Ukrainians standing on the front lines of democracy, defending all of us from the spread of devastating fascism.