In December I went to Ukraine to report on how the war has exacerbated domestic violence. It was a topic I had wanted to write about for a while. Studies show that war magnifies gender inequalities and increases gender-based violence. I had read many stories about Ukrainian women being trafficked, exploited, and suffering from sexual violence perpetrated by Russian soldiers, but hardly anything on domestic violence. I was curious about how the war had impacted it – and thought it was important to shine a light on what was going on. I had been researching and interviewing people for the story since the summer, in the hope that I would receive a reporting grant for the trip (I didn’t). In the end I decided to stop waiting and go for it. Sometimes you’ve got to take a leap of faith, particularly if you believe the story you want to tell is an important one. So I set off to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine. I did narrow my focus slightly due to a very tight budget - ideally I would have visited other areas of the country.
It was a gamble: as a freelancer I didn’t have the support of a news outlet behind me, neither did I have a commission (despite the numerous pitches I sent, many publications were reluctant to send a freelancer out there), and because of this I wasn’t able to get media accreditation from the Ukrainian government. I didn’t even know if they would let me into the country.
Thankfully they did.
This story would not have worked without on-the-ground reporting. Being in Ukraine, meeting survivors face-to-face, hearing about their lives, getting a sense of the place, the mood, the atmosphere, the details; these are the things that make a story. It’s also a chance to learn and develop as a journalist - this trip taught me so much, and I got to meet some incredible people along the way.
The survivors I interviewed were some of the bravest and strongest women I’ve ever met. Not only have they lived through a war that has torn their lives apart, they’ve had to endure being abused by someone they loved - and who they believed loved them too.
Khrystyna* described how, after a particularly bad period of shelling, she was sat on a bus with her son waiting to go to Poland - the other passengers were fleeing Putin’s bombs, but she was fleeing her abusive husband. She never managed to escape; he found her just as the bus was about to depart and then took their son away.
Another woman, Oksana*, told me how her husband of 16 years, a commander in the Ukrainian army, had come back from the frontline traumatised. That’s when the abuse began.
“Before May he didn’t even scream at me, he was the perfect husband, the perfect father,” the 40-year-old said, as she perched on her bed at a women’s shelter.
“This current war made him a monster.”
She tried calling the police, and they said: “‘There is nobody. Call us when something really bad happens to you. This is not a big deal, especially with the situation the country is in now. You should be patient, he’s a hero.’”
Oksana believes the prevailing view of all soldiers as heroes has prevented her from receiving help. It has also made her feel guilty for asking. She said that through the lens of the war, “I am a bad person, and he’s a hero.”
Domestic violence, which disproportionately impacts women, increases during and after war as stress levels rise, families are displaced, and traumatised combatants return home from the battlefield. This can lead to violence – including physical, psychological, and sexual - erupting inside the home. Yet it usually goes unreported, and, with soldiers seen as heroes defending the country, there is a reluctance to criticise those who are also abusers.
The experts I spoke to said it is only going to get worse; this is just the tip of the iceberg. There was a wave of domestic violence after the 2014 conflict in the Donbas and there will be another big wave after the current war is over.
They told me action is needed now.
The women I met had been through so much, yet there were still moments of hope, amongst moments of anguish and fear and uncertainty.
One woman, Maria*, described how her ex-boyfriend had beaten her and broken her collarbone. She showed me the scar; a long white line etched into her skin, which she hides under high-necked tops. When people ask about her scar she tells them she slipped in the bathroom. She is now planning to cover the scar with a tattoo of a phoenix; a symbol of hope and rebirth. “I want to make something beautiful out of something very bad in my life,” she said.
I’m grateful to these women for sharing their experiences with me, and to all the people I met while in Lviv who showed me so much kindness. I’m so happy that the piece has now been published in TIME Magazine in partnership with The Fuller Project - two publications I have always admired. The leap of faith paid off.
Read the full story here.

Reading
Conversations on Love - I’m late to this book but am enjoying dipping in and out of it. Natasha Lunn’s writing is filled with empathy, emotion and honesty, as she delves into love in all its myriad forms, from sibling love, to friend love, romantic love, endings, beginnings, and everything else in between. It features conversations with Roxane Gay, Alain de Botton, Lisa Taddeo, Philippa Perry, and loads of others who discuss what love means to them.
Law of the Body - Everyone needs to read this visceral poem by Lizzie Harris in The New Yorker. Read to the end for a punch in the gut.
Feeling abandoned by the world in a stricken corner of Syria - This is a devastating dispatch from northwest Syria, where many had already been displaced by war and are now having to rebuild their lives once again after the catastrophic twin earthquakes which hit the region last month. By Raja Abdulrahim with haunting photos by Emily Garthwaite.
Art, culture, trauma, and solidarity in wartime Ukraine - Loved this piece in Huck Magazine about the young Ukrainians who are banding together to resist the Russian invasion and champion freedom of expression and creativity.
Writerland, Chapter 95: How can I be great? - One of my favourite newsletters about writing, and this edition tackles the question of greatness.
Watching
Tokyo Vice - I loved this series about a US journalist - Jake Adelstein - who in 1999 becomes the first foreigner hired by a Tokyo newspaper and is thrust into the battle between two criminal gangs in the city’s dark underworld.
The Worst Person in the World - A beautiful film by the Norwegian director, Joachim Trier, about a woman on the cusp of turning 30 who flits between relationships, jobs, and selves. She is indecisive, chaotic, and always seems to lead an exciting life but it’s also one filled with longing, self-doubt, and disappointment. The film also deals with her troubled relationship with her father, #MeToo, wanting children vs not wanting children, cultural relevance, and death. It is enchanting and relatable, and makes me want to move to Oslo.
Writing
‘This war made him a monster.’ Ukrainian women fear the return of their partners - See above.
Women suffer ‘layers of violence’ 12 years after the start of Syrian war - Ukraine is in the global spotlight, but we mustn’t forget another war that has been raging for the past 12 years: Syria - a country that, like Ukraine, is also being bombed by Russia. In this piece for The i Paper I look at the impact the war has had on Syrian women, from the increased risk of sexual violence, to changing gender roles, and the urgent need for women’s political representation.
One Syrian woman I spoke to, Amina Abdullmajid Albish, runs The White Helmets’ women’s centre in Idlib, northwest Syria, and is hoping for a brighter future for her own daughters, aged 17 and 6. She says she doesn’t want them to get married young like she did.
“My personal life before the uprising was totally different, I married after ninth grade at school [around 15 years-old] – there were no rights for women at that time. […] I’m standing by my daughters and providing them with psychological support – I talk to them to try to overcome the effects [of war], the psychological impacts, the danger, everything. I’m trying my best to be a good mother to them.”
If you have any thoughts on my articles or on this newsletter, I would love to hear them.