On 21 June 2026, the War Museum hosted a meeting with released prisoner of war Mykyta Markitanov; poet Oksana Stomina, the wife of Dmytro Paskalov, a defender of Azovstal who was released from captivity; and artist Maryna Sochenko, whose works portray prisoners of war. Through creativity, the participants were able to endure the trials of war, captivity, and loss.
Mykyta Markitanov is a Ukrainian serviceman and soldier of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade who voluntarily joined the defence of Ukraine in 2023. He was captured in February 2024, and his family learned about it from a video circulated by the occupying forces. The defender returned home on 24 April 2026.
While being held in a penal colony in Grozny, Chechnya, he wrote poems, which he later concealed in his shoes and carried with him to freedom. His poems, written in red ink on ten sheets torn from a squared school notebook, were donated to the collections of the War Museum. As Mykyta recalled, he could not hide all his poems in his shoes and therefore had to destroy the others.
During the event, Mykyta Markitanov recited one of the poems he had saved, entitled “Youth.”
Oksana Stomina is a poet and civic activist from Mariupol, as well as the author and editor of numerous collections of works about the war that have been translated into German, Italian, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, and Czech. In May 2026, her husband, Dmytro Paskalov, a defender of Azovstal who had been held in russian captivity since May 2022, returned home.
Ms Stomina noted that her poems were letters to the husband whose return from captivity she had awaited. She read one of them, “Where You Are,” to those present.
The poet also said that it sometimes seemed to her that people were forgetting the price being paid to defend our country. By organising such events, she said, the Museum fulfils an exceptionally important mission: showing the war in all its dimensions.
Maryna Sochenko spoke about her own pain and about how creativity helps her overcome it. She is a prominent Ukrainian artist, Honoured Art Worker of Ukraine, and lecturer at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. The russian-Ukrainian war occupies a special place in her work, particularly prisoners of war, whom she portrays in hospitals.
Her son Liubomyr served in the infantry of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade from May 2022. From 2023, he served as a drone pilot and squad commander in the brigade’s strike UAV company. Liubomyr Sochenko was killed on 16 September 2025, and a commemorative event in his honour was held at the War Museum last month. Ms Sochenko emphasised that portraying service members is one of her most important missions and that she seeks to preserve the image of every hero.
Guests also joined the conversation, including Roksoliana Khmara, the wife of Hero of Ukraine Stepan Khmara, and Mariupol native Viacheslav “Slavik” Dolzhenko.
For more than 20 years, Mr Dolzhenko personally assembled a unique collection of antiquities and household objects in the basement of his home. During the event, he presented Maryna Sochenko with a copy of his book “Slavik: A Museum in the Basement”. This documentary publication was created on the basis of Viacheslav Dolzhenko’s personal diaries. In it, the author tells the story of his museum, an informal institution that was destroyed during the siege of Mariupol, while the basement itself became a shelter for local residents.
The meeting became a sincere conversation about the strength of the human spirit, memory, and creativity, which helps people endure even the darkest times. The War Museum continues to serve as a space where the voices of those who have endured war and captivity can be heard, where their testimonies are preserved, and where the memory of the Ukrainian people’s struggle for freedom is safeguarded.
We thank all the participants and guests for their openness, courage, and willingness to share their stories.
