The dogs of war: stories from Ukraine's front lines

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3 days ago

Former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba plays with his rescue dogs, Marik, 3, and Puzan, 3, at his home in Kyiv.
Image: Serhiy Morgunov/The Washington Post
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv's top diplomat made a very personal and little-known policy decision: He encouraged Ukraine's Foreign Ministry staff to bring their dogs to work.
Dmytro Kuleba's rule meant employees didn't have to leave their terrified dogs at home during missile and drone attacks.
And it meant Kuleba's new rescue, a gray French bulldog named Marik, scooped from the wreckage of the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, would spend the next couple of years overhearing foreign policy discussions as he waddled around the office.
Zhuzha, who is around 6 years old, was adopted by Mykola Kulivets while he served in the Ukrainian military. After surviving several front-line postings together, the pair demobilized and moved to Kyiv. Kulivets brought Zhuzha on a first date with Maria Smirnova, who fell in love with both of them. The couple now live together with Zhuzha
Image: Serhiy Morgunov/ The Washington Post
Such an arrangement might seem unusual for a foreign minister - but not in wartime Ukraine.
Russia's invasion has made the security of pets a national priority. Families in front-line towns often flee Russian shelling with multiple pets in tow, and soldiers feed and care for those left behind. Volunteers then risk their lives to evacuate them to safer cities, where they are often adopted into Ukrainian families or sent abroad.
The lengths Ukrainian troops and volunteers have gone to rescue vulnerable dogs has spurred a massive cultural shift, transforming Ukraine - once criticized for its treatment of animals - into an extraordinarily dog-friendly country. Gone are stuffy old rules banning pets from many places. Kuleba resigned in 2024, but the Foreign Ministry confirmed that his dog policy remains in place.
Dogs are also now welcome inside most restaurants, cafes, beauty salons, grocery stores and hotels in major Ukrainian cities. They're often greeted with water bowls and treats or, in some cases, their own menus.
Kulivets with Zhuzha in his apartment in Kyiv.
Image: Serhiy Morgunov/The Washington Post
And, like Marik the French bulldog, and Kuleba's later rescue, Puzan, who is from the eastern town of Lyman, many of these dogs were rescued from the front lines. In Kyiv's sprawling parks, families now trade notes about their four-legged mutts' hometowns, describing dramatic escapes from war.
Ukrainians' commitment to saving front-line animals 'literally changed how we as a nation are perceived abroad,' Kuleba said.
Here are some stories of the dogs of war. 'A basic need'
A pack of abandoned dogs roamed the nearly empty village close to the eastern front where Ukrainian soldier Mykola Kulivets was stationed in 2022 - but the smallest, with her long black fur and pointy ears, stood out from the rest.
One April morning, she appeared all alone at the door of Kulivets's makeshift base. He fed her a sausage and she never left. He cleaned her dirty, matted fur, named her Zhuzha, let her move inside - and two months later woke up to her giving birth under his cot.
The timing could not have been worse: Kulivets's battalion was about to relocate to a village near the front-line city of Avdiivka, and he now had six dogs - including five puppies - in his care. His commander, a dog lover himself, told Kulivets to bring them along.
For the rest of the summer, as fierce battles took place mere miles away, the dogs distracted Kulivets and his fellow troops from the horrors of war. 'To have some little one to take care of - I think it's a basic need for every human being,' he said.
From afar, Kulivets's mother helped find homes around Ukraine for the four male puppies. His grandparents agreed to adopt the only girl, whom they named Asya. In late August, when the puppies were two months old, Kulivets drove to Dnipro to pass them off to his mom - his first time seeing her since he had deployed. He returned to war the same day with only Zhuzha left.
Back east, Kulivets moved with Zhuzha to the city of Bakhmut, which Russia later destroyed and seized. Under intense shelling, he would hurry her outside for bathroom breaks. His team grew so attached that it named the command center Zhuzha, and her name appeared in official military orders.
Kulivets and Zhuzha eventually demobilized, and both have settled into civilian life in Kyiv. 'When my commander calls me, his first question is not about me - it's about Zhuzha,' Kulivets said.
In villages outside Kyiv, Elina Sutiahyna, 64, and Nadiia Tkachenko, also 64, friends who ran small kiosks in the same market, heard through volunteers about Zhuzha's front-line puppies who needed homes.
Sutiahyna adopted one and named him Avdyusha, after Avdiivka, the city Kulivets's battalion defended. The dog now assists Sutiahyna's husband, who had a stroke, acting 'as his eyes and ears,' she said.
Tkachenko took another and named him Archie.
'To me it was important to help an animal from the front line,' she said. 'If you see these videos of soldiers with animals, you can't help but just cry.'
'Not normal anymore to buy dogs'
Early in the war, Hanna Rudyk, deputy director of Kyiv's Khanenko Museum, left home with her young daughter, Silviia. They moved to Germany, and her husband, Artem, unable to travel due to martial law banning men from leaving the country, stayed behind.
Rudyk knew they would eventually return to Kyiv but feared air raid sirens and explosions would traumatize Silviia, who is now 10. Maybe, she thought, a dog would help. But it had to be a rescue - during wartime, she said, 'it's not normal anymore to buy dogs.'
Then she saw a Facebook post from a volunteer. Troops fighting in the eastern city of Toretsk, since destroyed by Russian artillery, had been caring for a dog who gave birth at their position. The surviving puppies had been evacuated - and one still needed a home.
The remaining dog was a white female with brown spots and big pointy ears like a cartoon character. They named her Latka, Ukrainian for 'patch.'
Her goofy personality has helped Silviia adjust to life in wartime. When Russian attacks on the capital send them running for cover at night, Silviia and Latka curl up in the hallway and go back to sleep together.
Across town, a puppy from a different Toretsk litter was also settling into his new life.
Serhii Piatkov, 35, already had one dog - Leonardo, a Russian toy terrier named for the Ninja Turtle - when he started donating about $25 a month to an animal shelter in Kyiv.
In July 2024, the shelter held an adoption drive. Piatkov, who runs an advertising firm, stopped by and locked eyes with a black and white border collie mix with freckled legs. Rescued at just a few months old from Toretsk, he was now surrounded by dogs with severe disabilities. The dog looked like he didn't belong, Piatkov thought.
A few days later, he took him home.
Keeping with the Ninja Turtles theme, he named him Donatello - Doni for short. 'He's my small bear,' he said. 'Dogs are friends and partners'
Three-year-old Lisa doesn't mind when air raid sirens blare in Kyiv, because that means her owner, Olesya Drashkaba, comes to hide by Lisa's bed in the hallway.
Lisa is named for the eastern Ukrainian city where she was born, Lysychansk - which Russian forces seized in 2022.
Drashkaba, an artist, was abroad early in the war, but when she moved back to Kyiv and opened her empty apartment, she immediately knew she was going to need a dog. Friends shared photos of Lisa, who had recently been rescued from the east, and Drashkaba fell in love with the funny strawberry-blond mutt. Lisa adapted quickly to her life bouncing between Drashkaba's studio, exhibitions and trendy cafes in central Kyiv. She catches the attention of so many passersby that Drashkaba met her now-partner when he stopped to say hello to Lisa.
'I think it's very good that people finally understand that dogs are friends and partners and even maybe more,' she said.
Olha Kotlyarska, 29, likes to point out that because of the war, she and her dog, Khvoya, are both on antidepressants.
Kotlyarska is a lawyer assisting investigations into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Khvoya is a shepherd mix who was born in Avdiivka and cared for by Ukrainian troops until volunteers moved her and her siblings to safety in January 2024. Russia seized control of Avdiivka shortly after.
Khvoya's adjustment to a more peaceful life in Kyiv has not always been easy.
'In the beginning she was scared of everything and everyone on the street,' Kotlyarska said. With training, medication and love, she's making slow progress. 'It still takes a lot for her to not be in panic mode, and it's still something that we are working on,' Kotlyarska said.
'The saddest dog ever'
Russian forces had advanced in the Zaporizhzhia region and were heavily shelling the town of Orikhiv in late 2023 when Ukrainian volunteers drove in, searching for a dog they had been asked to find and rescue. Then a different scruffy black dog ran in front of their car.
The volunteers could see he was unwell, with overgrown hair, wounds and a collar digging into his neck. He went running. They chased him into a basement, where they found Ukrainian troops sheltering from Russian attacks. The soldiers helped usher the dog into a crate, and between artillery rounds the volunteers fled with him.
Back in Kyiv, Kateryna Lytvynenko, 37, saw a shelter post photos of 'the saddest dog ever.' The human rights adviser at Save the Children had fostered several dogs already, including one her dad adopted. She wanted her own and hoped to find one from her home region of Zaporizhzhia.
When she met him, she wept. Here was this abandoned dog, from the front line near where she grew up, hair shaved and with sad brown eyes begging her for a home. She took him home the next day and named him Marko.
One week after Marko's adoption, a tiny brown dog was born in the same town on Christmas. Volunteers evacuated the puppy to Kyiv, where so many applications flooded in to take her that 'it was like trying to rent an apartment in a prime location in the center of Kyiv,' recalled Dmytro Kustov, 29, a stretching coach who eventually won out.
Born in a desolate place, Kari, whom Kustov calls his 'clever, sneaky little fox,' now attends all his stretching classes and has a wardrobe of miniature winter clothes and boots.
'It's our dog'
Days after Russian troops retreated from their bloody assault on the Kyiv region in 2022, Dmytro Slivnyi, 41, was rushing supplies to the besieged areas when he came across a big, lonely dog by the road. When it was time to return home, he called his wife, Oleksandra Berezovska, and told her, 'I'm coming back - but not alone.'
The couple, who already had two dogs, washed her, named her Golda and fostered her until a friend adopted her.
'When they left, I said to my husband, 'It's a mistake - it's our dog,'' Oleksandra recalled.
When their friend deployed to the front line, Golda ended up back with Dmytro and Oleksandra, and eventually they decided she would stay for good.
Around the same time, Ukrainian photojournalist Anastasia Vlasova was documenting the aftermath of Russia's atrocities near Kyiv when her colleague saw a little face poke out from behind a burned-out tank.
'It was definitely the worst time imaginable to get an animal,' admitted Vlasova, 32. Her schedule was packed with assignments. She brought her home that day and named her Javelina, after the U.S. shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapons that helped Ukraine defend Kyiv in 2022.
Sometimes, Javelina's traumatic past comes out when she panics from loud noises, like explosions or thunder, that send her into hiding. Vlasova said her strategy is: 'Okay, I'm going to cuddle her.'
'Our moral values'
For three years, combat medic Roman, 33, had seen all kinds of pets - dogs, cats, horses, cows, even ostriches and a turtle - abandoned across the front line. One dog his unit took care of for six months died when she stepped on a grenade.
So when he was deployed to Russia's Kursk region last August and found a fluffy tricolor dog cowering in an abandoned garden, Roman, who can only be identified by his first name because he remains on active duty, feared going through the pain of losing a war dog again.
But when he sent photos to his partner, Nadiia, she said his only home would be with them.
Roman's deputy company commander, who had already adopted two cats, approved the dog's staying with Roman's unit until he could evacuate him to Nadiia.
The troops initially named the dog Sudzhyk, for Sudzha, the Russian town Ukraine had seized during the operation. But when the dog moved in with Nadiia farther from the front, she renamed him Leo.