Olena Syniavska

GRANTEE

Documenting Ukraine Grants

When the Sky Came Crashing Down: Southern Ukraine in February 2022

This project documents the experience of Russia's full-scale invasion of southern Ukraine. It includes written testimonies from eyewitnesses of the first days of the war, accompanied by photographs from private archives. The written format enables participants to recount their experiences in a reflective and emotionally safe manner, and the visual materials provide a powerful documentary dimension. By combining approaches from oral history, archival research, visual anthropology, and the digital humanities, the project will contribute to creating a regional archive of lived experience. The collected materials will be stored in the State Archives of the Odesa Region and, with the respondents’ consent, in the transdisciplinary Documenting Ukraine archive.