Occupation Diaries

The Russian-Ukrainian war has been going on for ten years. In 2014, the Crimean Peninsula and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions fell under occupation. After the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the occupied territories expanded even further, including parts of the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. By spring 2022, Ukrainian defense forces liberated the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions. In the autumn of 2022, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and part of Kherson regions were also liberated.. This is approximately 39,000  square kilometers of Ukrainian land. Today, Crimea remains fully under Russian control. Parts of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions are partially occupied. A total of 1,09,000  square kilometers of Ukrainian territory remains occupied. This is 18% of Ukraine's territory. We do not have accurate figures of how many people are currently living under occupation. Probably, more than a million.

Occupation is like a black hole: a place where gravity is so intense that nothing can escape. It is impossible to testify from the occupation. The occupation is silent. Only those who leave know what this ‘black hole’ really is. These stories tell us of the inability to imagine the next day, as well as the experience of loss, abduction, physical and psychological torture, and death. The memories are fragmentary and chaotic. 

The Occupation Diaries is a documentary project that captures the experience of occupation. The heroes of the project are the people who found the courage to put on paper their daily lives under occupation. After their release or escape, they chose to share memories that they would probably prefer to forget. The project is based on the photographs of heroes and their diaries, personal objects, and landscapes of liberated Ukrainian territories wounded by the war. The project fills the information vacuum caused by the occupation. It collects, documents, and researches authentic written testimonies, making it possible to fill in the silences, with voices of those who had no hope of ever being read. The voices of people who managed to overcome the boundaries of fear, war, occupation, and even time as it is. 

Photographer Mykhaylo Palinchak | Producer Olena Huseinova | Curator Kateryna Radchenko

'Occupation Diaries' photo project was exhibited during international group photography exhibitions "Beyond The Silence" in Jam Factory Art Center (Lviv, Ukraine), March 21 - June 1, 2025; during Angkor Photo Festival (Siem Reap, Cambodia); in Rebollar Art Studio (Mexico city, Mexico); in Egin Art Space, (Almaty, Kazakhstan);