Author: Reporter

The 43-year-old Ukrainian actor took to the stage wearing a black leather jacket and with a moustache painted on her face. Ruslana Ostapko was performing in multiple traditionally male roles in a recent production of the Chernihiv Regional Youth Theater. With so many men serving in Ukraine’s armed forces to repel Russia’s invasion, the theater has adapted to the realities of war, and women are taking the spotlight. “We were rehearsing Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ when suddenly our men were taken to the front,” said the theater’s 52-year-old director, Roman Pokrovskyi. “We only had the female part of the troupe...

Ukrainian war veteran Oleksandr Shvachka lost his left leg to Russian tank fire outside Kyiv. Three years on, the latest step in his physical and mental rehabilitation recently unfolded under a brilliant blue sky on a snow-covered mountain more than 5,000 miles away. Shvachka, 38, was one of five Ukrainian veterans who came to the Pacific Northwest for ski lessons in March with Oregon Adaptive Sports, an organization working to make sports more accessible to people with disabilities. On a recent day, he listened attentively to an instructor before launching himself down a slope at Hoodoo Ski Area in...