A year later, bells were hung on the trees of the sakura alley, symbolizing the voices of children killed by the aggressor. The year before, on 4 June 2023, a \u201cVoices of Children\u201d action was held in the city garden<\/a> of Odesa. And in August 2022, an installation, \u201cChildhood.2022\u201d, dedicated to children who died during the war, was set up near the military administration, with anti-tank guns and painted helmets with flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Olena Oliynyk<\/a>, director of the department of culture of the Odesa regional state administration, it symbolized \u201cthe foundation of spirituality, which will sprout with light colours even in such harsh realities\u201d. For Andriy Lyubov, the artist who created the installation, each flower symbolizes a child whose life was taken by the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Behind the regional military building, in a \u201cGlory and Freedom\u201d park, a memorial to the \u201cFighters for Ukraine\u201d is also meant to honour the memory and the names of not only the fallen soldiers, border guards, and law enforcement officers, but also those of civilians, such as rescuers, volunteers, and medics. This year, several NGOs, such as Veterans Hub Odesa<\/a>, Hearts of mothers of Odesa region, and Family of angels of light, held an event there, called \u201cThe Bell of Memory\u201d, to honour the names of all those who died in the Russian-Ukrainian war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when asked about the site, some locals criticized the lack of shade and the absence of landscaping on the site. The artist, who asked to remain anonymous, does not like either the location of the memorial, which is behind the military site: \u201cWhy not in front of the building? It\u2019s some kind of disrespect for the dead.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For Oksana Dovhopolova, professor of the master\u2019s program in memory studies and public history at the Kyiv School of Economics, the memorial is \u201cuncomfortable\u201d, \u201cterrible\u201d and \u201cshould be demolished\u201d. \u201cBecause trees cannot survive there. As an object, the memorial is not interesting at all. It\u2019s hot in summer and cold in winter. No one goes there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The memorial has not been finalized: there are no names of the victims, although at the presentation of the project, Olena Pavlova, a member of a city council commission, had insisted on immortalizing the names of the fallen rescuers, doctors, volunteers, and journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\t According to another city council departments\u2019 directors, Oleksandr Zhiltsov, the memorialization of the Russian-Ukrainian war<\/a> is prolonged with the creation of a map of future sites of commemoration by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory. The map should display reliable information to make both residents and visitors relate to the memorials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea is to start with a standard model on Mytna Square, with information about the victims of the Odesa seaport, and on Soborna Square, to memorialize rocket and drone attacks on the historic centre of Odesa \u2013 a UNESCO World Heritage site. These latest initiatives were submitted to the city council by the Odesa regional state administration in March 2025. By order of the Odesa regional state administration, the Ilf and Petrova Street<\/a> in Odesa was renamed Glodan Family Street. On 23 April 2022, a Russian missile destroyed the Tiras residential complex in Odesa: eight people were killed and 18 injured. The tragedy claimed in particular the lives of three-month-old Kira Glodan, her mother Valeria, and grandmother Lyudmila. Yuriy, Valeria\u2019s husband and Kira\u2019s father, was out shopping before Easter. After his family was killed, he joined the armed forces of Ukraine and died a year later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The street was renamed last year, but the old Russian-language sign is still there. As for the building that was restored after the hit, it does not have any sign on it. Oksana Dovgopolova, a professor in the Philosophy department at Odessa, believes that the neighbours would not want any signs of the tragedy on the building: \u201cThey don\u2019t need to be reminded of anything. They already know everything. At first, people brought toys there. Everyone came, threw out their emotions, and then the municipal service came and threw the toys in the trash. In Kharkiv, for example, the communal services wash them and put them back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Glodan family has also commissioned a monument to sculptor Mykhailo Reva, who has already drawn sketches. \u201cA shot door symbolizes a dead family, a shot childhood,\u201d he describes. \u201cAnd if the door is the main metaphor as a transition to another world, then the toys scattered around may represent those children who were taken away by the war.\u201d This future memorial will most likely be installed in Shevchenko Park<\/a>, between the monument to the Unknown Sailor and the Afghanistan monument. \u201cIt will be logical and appropriate,\u201d the sculptor believes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several other memorialisation initiatives are emerging in Odessa. This year, on 15 March 2025, employees of the Emergency Medical Care and Disaster Medicine Department of the Odesa Regional Council opened a park in a residential area of the city, with a plaque in memory of a fallen paramedic, Serhiy Rotaru. A year earlier, on 15 March 2024, Rotaru\u2019s medical team was the first to arrive at the site of the hit and began to provide assistance to the victims. But Russia hit the same spot again and Rotaru died. In June 2024, Serhiy Rotaru was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Rotaru\u2019s colleagues say the family of the paramedic is very touched by the memorial and comes every month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About 130 kilometres further east, in Mykolaiv, the head of the city council, Oleksandr Senkevych, was approached in August 2024 by the family of the owner of the Nibulon agricultural corporation, Oleksiy Vadatursky<\/a>, who was killed in a Russian shelling, on 31 July 2022. He had been staying in Mykolaiv since the beginning of the war. During this time, the invaders looted Nibulon\u2019s granaries in Kherson, hit the company\u2019s tugboat and shelled elevators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His family also asked for approval to install a memorial plaque in his honour on Vadatursky Street, which was renamed in his memory. \u201cAs of today, a temporary memorial plaque has been installed on the building,\u201d the city council says. Earlier, in June 2024, a mural in honour of the deceased was unveiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The city council received another request by a family, on 17 January 2025, asking for permission to install of a plaque in the Mykolaiv gymnasium<\/a> in memory of a 13-year-old boy who died during a Russian attack on 19 July 2024. A X-59 missile fell on a residential area with a kindergarten, housing buildings and a playground. Four people were killed and 24 injured. It was proposed to arrange a memorial corner at the expense of the family. But as of now, \u201cthere is no information on the installation of a memorial corner in the said gymnasium,\u201d deputy mayor Yuriy Andrienko says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Mykolaiv, the city council says it \u201cdoes not keep separate statistics on the memorialization of military and civilians, since the military who defended Ukraine were also civilians in the past\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 29 March 2022, Russians attacked Mykolaiv with a cruise missile. The strike hit the fourth floor of the Mykolaiv regional military administration. \u201cFor five days, rescuers were searching for victims and bodies. On that day, Russia killed 37 people who came to work. Each of them had plans for the future, and their families and friends were waiting for them at home,\u201d recalls<\/a> the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in the Mykolaiv region. Last year, on the anniversary of the deaths, Vitaliy Kim, the head of Mykolaiv regional military administration, wrote<\/a> in a post on Telegram: \u201cWe remember... We will avenge everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Subsequently, on 29 August 2024, a memorial was erected there, dedicated to the people who gave their lives for the freedom of Ukraine. In the centre of the memorial is a carved silhouette of a family \u2013 a mother and her children who are under the protection of the military. On both sides, trees have been planted to hang ribbons and tokens with the names of the victims. \u201cThrough this silhouette, you can see the building of the Mykolaiv regional council and the Mykolaiv regional military administration, which was hit by a Russian missile on 29 March 2022. Blue, yellow, and red light bulbs were installed in the memorial, and photos of the victims were placed next to it and blue and yellow flags were installed,\u201d the Mykolaiv regional council said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The memorial combines the memory of civilian and military victims and people come to the site to talk about what happened. The shattered building itself has become a monument visited by groups of people who come to recall how they felt when the full-scale invasion<\/a> began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another 70 kilometres east, in Kherson, a working group was formed by the regional military administration on 28 May 2025 to develop and prepare a project named \u201cPlace of Remembrance of Civilian Heroes of Kherson Region \u2013 Honor Everyone, Remember Everyone\u201d. \u201cThe project aims to honour the heroism of the civilian national resistance of the Kherson region and preserve the memory of those who died as a result of Russian armed aggression, in particular during the period of occupation and repression,\u201d says Volodymyr Kliutsevskyi, deputy head of the regional state administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe focus is on preserving the memory of people who performed their civic duty, volunteered, saved others, spread the truth, resisted information or died for their pro-Ukrainian position,\u201d the department of humanitarian policy explained on a Facebook post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Kliutsevskyi, the working group will develop an implementation plan including the creation of a physical space of memory and a digital archive. The working group includes an architect and expert in documenting the destruction of cultural heritage and cultural infrastructure, a sculptor and wood carver, a museum director, a music and drama theatre director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Kherson regional library for children has joined<\/a> the initiative and says it is currently searching for symbols and images that could inspire a future art object. Thus, children are involved in this initiative and have offered their own vision of the memory of the civilian heroes of Kherson region<\/a>. For example, a child has painted a monument in the form of an angel embracing a doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the artist Oleksandr Tanasiuk, who survived the occupation and left Kherson, this monument is needed, but not now, because the city is still very dangerous. \u201cIt\u2019s not the right time to build something there yet. Perhaps we need a virtual monument<\/a>, a museum where documents about every crime of Russia will be drawn up. There are fewer and fewer people there and they don\u2019t care about monuments. But people will mature over time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aside sites and events set up by administrations and NGOs, some citizens initiatives arise from spontaneous acts, such as art works in the well-known Knizhka market in Odesa, as well as in the main street of the city, Deribasivska Street. Like in Odesa, Kherson displays several street art initiatives, mostly inscriptions, poems, and drawings on windows covered with plywood, as markers of the war, in places where ordinary people become victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2023, paintings by Kherson artists appeared in the windows of the city that had been damaged during Russian attacks as part of an initiative by the NGO Centre for cultural development Totem. So far, this project of street exhibitions called \u201cAfloat\u201d has united more than 50 artists. \u201cThese are not just posters with artists\u2019 works. We are constantly collecting and updating an archive of locations where these exhibitions can be located. These are not just paintings that appear in the city. Each street exhibition is something personal that the author wants to say to their city here and now,\u201d the organizers say<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oleksandr Tanasiuk has provided works for this project: one of them is about the flooding of the city during the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station<\/a>, when more than 30 civilians died. He says that it is about the eternal dichotomy of the struggle between evil and good, darkness and light, black and white, morally positive, and as an antagonist, morally negative and judgmental. \u201cI did not want to make absolutely depressing paintings that would illustrate the dark side of what is happening, because there is so much anxiety and negativity in the lives of Kherson residents. But even the bright moments \u2013 the liberation of Kherson and the de-occupation \u2013 are filled with sadness and tears of those who left during this period of war. But the white balances the black and gives hope,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last May 2025, Kherson artists organized the exhibition \u201c(No) Time for Dreams\u201d in Odesa in the bomb shelter of the Museum of Western and Eastern Art. Partly a project of the artist Valentyna Ivanova, it features works by children from Kherson who paint in bomb shelters. \u201cArt is especially impressive when its medium is under threat,\u201d Ivanova says. \u201cIt becomes emotional, deep, and at the same time holds old meanings and creates new ones. At such moments, ordinary things that we did not attach artistic significance to before, acquire a tremendous power. Like these children\u2019s handprints made in a bomb shelter. Or the candle drawings on the ceiling of the basement where people were hiding during the occupation. It becomes a testimony,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sculptors and artists ask not to rush into monuments. But for Odesa\u2019s professor of philosophy Dovgopolova it is necessary to collect information about them. \u201cFirst of all, it\u2019s about tact and trying to avoid retraumatization. (\u2026) There is a demand for trauma treatment,\u201d she says. \u201cI want the practices of remembrance<\/a> to be different, to be thoroughly discussed in the community and to have their own therapeutic effects. But there is one thing: authorities are solving these problems in a piecemeal way, we lack specialized communities that specialize in memorialization, and as a result, distrust between the authorities and the community is growing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This report was produced thanks to a grant from the Fondation Hirondelle\/Justice Info. It brings together three articles published in July 2025 in \"Intent Press<\/a>\".<\/em><\/p>\n\n\nThe shortcomings of the Odesa \u201cFighters for Ukraine\u201d memorial<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Mapping memorials and renaming streets of Odesa<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Plaques for memory requested in Mykolaiv<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
No distinction between military and civilian memorials in Mykolaiv<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kherson: not the right time?\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Street art by and for ordinary victims<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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