The injured Ukrainian soldiers taking up tattooing as a form of therapy – Yahoo News Canada
The injured Ukrainian soldiers taking up tattooing as a form of therapy Kang Chun Chen Wed, January 7, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. UTC 7 min read
A tattooing session at Stroom Studio – KC CHENG Oleksander Samus would have happily kept working as a cartoonist were it not for the Russian bomb that exploded under his house, almost killing his teenage son.
“That was the breaking point,” he says. “Can you imagine how it made me feel?”
Against his wife’s wishes he joined the Ukrainian infantry, first learning how to use a machine gun before becoming a sniper and serving in the battle for Bakhmut.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In the trenches around that city, which finally fell to the Kremlin’s forces after a gruelling siege, his comrades discovered his skills as an artist and had him draw pictures of their loved ones. At the same time, he developed a newfound appreciation for the tattoos that they wore.
“Older generations like my parents taught me that tattoos are something bad – only for prisoners and criminals,” Mr Samus says.
The experience of war changed his perspective, and he decided that he not only wanted a tattoo of his own, but wanted to learn the trade himself.
Many Ukrainians have undergone the same shift – since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, tattooing has become a vital means of expressing Ukrainian identity and celebrating its culture. But it is also emerging – for good or bad – as an unlikely source of therapy for those wounded in the fighting .
Oleksander Samus, a veteran who lost his foot to a landmine in Donetsk, has been through the Vovk tattoo rehabilitation course – KC CHENG In December 2023, while fighting in unfamiliar terrain in Donetsk, Mr Samus stepped on a landmine which blew off his right leg.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Nine surgeries later, he was fitted with a prosthetic. It took him nearly seven months to learn how to walk again.
“The rehabilitation went better than I expected,” he recalls. “But there was still the question of what I would do after.”
After nearly four years of war, Ukraine’s government lacks both the manpower and resources to support many wounded veterans as they transition back to civilian life.
Mr Samus was keen to get going as a tattoo artist, but lacked a license and equipment. He was also mindful of the health risks that come with tattooing.
“You need a clean environment [to tattoo] – it’s a big responsibility.”
‘I feel like I’m coming back to civilian life’ Research has shown that tattooing, particularly when done in informal settings, can be associated with increased risk of hepatitis infections. Unsafe practices including the use of unsterilised needles or contaminated ink, also raise the risk of other blood-borne infections like syphilis or HIV.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Mr Samus was introduced to the founders of a new tattoo parlour, Vovk Studio, which was set up specifically to help rehabilitate wounded soldiers.
Its founders, Olena Vovk and Natalia Schedlkunova, have close ties to the Ukrainian military. Ms Schedlkunova herself is a veteran and her husband was killed on the first day of the invasion, while her son, Evgeny Olegovich Hromadskyi, was lauded the youngest hero in Ukraine for his role in defending Kharkiv from the Russians.
Together the pair designed a course that covers the history and art of tattooing.
Along with 30 other students, most of them soldiers, Mr Samus practised first on fake skin, before graduating to tattooing models under the guidance of expert teachers.
Mariika Lobyntseva tattoos a soldier at at Vovk Studio – KC CHENG “When I’m tattooing, I forget everything that is going on,” says Mr Samus. “When you’ve been in the war for two years, you collect a lot of negativity – you’re always stressed, trying to forget the horrible things you’ve seen.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “But working here in the studio, I feel like I’m coming back to civilian life. I’m deep in the art and living in a different reality.”
Ms Vovk said the immense gaps in veterans care, as well as support for military families, were part of the inspiration for the studio.
“Our soldiers lack rehabilitation programs,” she says, adding that she believed the war had transformed the image of tattooing in Ukrainian society.
Prior to the war, people generally were more timid about permanently marking their bodies, she says.
“I got the sense that many really wanted tattoos but were afraid to commit – the war brought a different sense of urgency.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “Before, it was just a mark on your body. Now it’s more about identity: what you want to tell about yourself, how you see yourself. As professionals, we’re helping people achieve this.”
Olena Vovk, 50, the co-founded of Vovk Studio in Kharkiv – KC CHENG There is a darker side to the trend, however.
The Azov Brigade, a former militia formed to fight off Russian-backed separatists in 2014 that has since been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard, has long been associated with far-right groups and neo-Nazi ideology and its members have been accused of appropriating Norse symbols in their tattoos.
Odesa-born tattoo artist Mariika Lobyntseva says that strangers have mistaken the runes tattooed on her Icelandic husband’s chest for far-Right symbols.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement A member of a Kyiv-based tattooists’ collective called Stroom Studio, Ms Lobyntseva already has one tattoo linked to the war, inspired by her family.
As the war broke out, she had a call from her mother, who proudly announced she had dug a trench in the garden.
Meanwhile, her 86-year-old grandmother was busy repurposing glass bottles.
“She calls me and tells me that she’s making Molotov cocktails in the kitchen!”
Ms Lobyntseva soon had one inked on her left wrist.
Mariika Lobyntseva’s molotov cocktail tattoo – KC CHENG Olena Poputnikova, 33, founded a tattoo studio Stroom nearly a decade ago as an antidote to old-school, macho tattoo parlor culture. She has seen her military clientele base surge with the war.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Since the fighting began she has been inundated with requests for Ukrainian tridents, brigade insignias and emblems, and lyrics from Ukrainian songs or poetry.
At the same time, Ms Poputnikova helped many to cover up Soviet symbols like the hammer and sickle.
One of her clients was a veteran with an amputated leg. As part of processing his loss, he wanted to create something new on his body.
As well as nipple and face piercings, he went for an intense tattoo covering his whole hand.
“When he finally got it, he was so crazy happy,” she says.
The Ukrainian word ‘palyanitsa’, meaning a piece of bread, has become a code word used to identify Russians, who find it difficult to pronounce. It is now a popular tattoo and a symbol of Ukrainian identity.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “In a nice font, of course,” Ms Poputnikova adds.
Olena Poputnikova, founder of Stroom Studio – KC CHENG
A nationalistc tattoo Olena Poputnikova did for a Ukrainian soldier – KC CHENG After nearly four years of war, Ukraine is suffering from a national mental health crisis on a scale that is only just becoming clear.
Around 10 million Ukrainians are living with or are at risk of a mental health condition, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Yet support for mental health issues is largely left to a loose patchwork of charities and organisations that have sprung up in the wake of the conflict.
Ms Lobyntseva, the tattoo artist, obtained a degree in art therapy from the PLINE Center in Psychology in Kharkiv.
Although she is not currently practising as a therapist, she believes her art can have a similar effect.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “My tattooing session may not be therapy, but it’s nice when it can be a form of comfort,” she says.
Others might take a different view – considering the tattooing of physically and mentally damaged servicemen as dangerous, or at least something they may later regret.
Tattoos may have therapeutic potential, but experts caution it can never replace therapy – KC CHENG While some doctors back the therapeutic potential of tattoos, many caution that ink can never replace therapy.
Back at Vovk Studio in Kharkiv, Mr Samus is elated to have finished his course and is waiting for his first clients. Should the traffic remain thin, he is considering signing a new army contract.
“There’s a phrase we have”, he says. “Once you’re in the military, you’re in the military forever.”
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement As for his own first tattoo, Mr Samus wants an illustration of a body armour plate on his left forearm, with his wife’s face in the middle: “To remind me what I’m fighting for.”
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Tetiana Burianova contributed to this report.
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