As Russia's attacks continue, Ukrainian musicians see work as resistance and refuge
Musicians from Kyiv and Odesa discussed working in war-torn Ukraine.
LONDON -- It was a "sleepless night," said Daria Kolomiec, a Ukrainian cultural activist, performer and DJ based in Kyiv. Explosions were happening around her apartment as she sheltered in the bathroom. Earlier on Wednesday evening she attended a concert in Kyiv by the band DakhTrio.
"Even when the air raid alert started the concert continued," she said on Thursday. "Sitting there I felt like there could be a massive attack, but I just needed to spend time with people."
Air raid sirens echoed in cities across the country overnight into Thursday morning, forecasting deadly Russian attacks that have, according to Ukrainian officials, killed at least sixteen and injured more than a hundred others.
Amid that strike and hundreds of similar overnight Russian aerial attacks, new and traditional Ukrainian music has become for many a sort-of counterpoint to the sirens that blare around the country nearly every night, several musicians who work in Ukraine told ABC News.
Almost 300 miles away from Kolomiec in Kyiv lies Odesa, Ukraine’s third most populous city, located by the Black Sea. It was also targeted in Thursday’s massive Russian strike, officials said.
Hobart Earle is conductor of the city’s Odesa Philharmonic Orchestra. Throughout the war they have continued to play, even after the orchestra’s concert hall was damaged in January 2025. Three ballistic missiles fired from Russian-occupied Crimea directly hit the nearby Hotel Bristol. The shock shattered the concert hall’s stained-glass windows and the main door was blown off its hinges.
“That door survived the Russian Revolution, the Civil War, the Second World War, and everything Mother Nature had to throw at it, but the force of this missile blast was too much,” Earle said.
The orchestra was set to perform that evening. With less than six hours' notice, Earle moved the concert to the Odesa Conservatory.
“The place was full to the rafters. It was a very symbolic moment because it showed that people really do need music. When times are tough, that is when the arts are needed more by people. Music is transformed by war,” Earle continued.
During Thursday's attacks, the Conservatory's student accommodation was hit by a Russian drone, wounding five, officials said.
Earle’s sentiment was echoed by Kyiv-based electronic musician SI Process, or Stanislav Ivashchenko. He created the track "Kyiv Future" during the winter of 2025 when Russian strikes hit critical energy infrastructure leaving Ukrainians freezing, without electricity or heating.
“I wrote it on the last charge of my laptop, which is why it carries a certain ‘dark-groove of our lives,’” he said. “Creating in such conditions is incredibly difficult, but there’s also a clear sense of how unique this moment is.”
When the war broke out with Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Kolomiec knew she needed to stay connected with friends. In apartments across the city, they have in the years since gathered and played Ukrainian songs both new and old -- “this is how I stay mentally okay.”
Musical events of all kinds, from informal gatherings to electronic music festivals to classical concerts, carry an “important mission,” said Ivashchenko, “to bring people together, to offer a sense of mental return to normal life, and of course, to support our soldiers. Every festival raises funds for aid.”
But the harsh realities of war are never far as events sometimes are paused during air raid alerts when people move to shelters. There are also many musicians who are fighting on the front line.
On the night of the 15th, DakhTrio performed musical arrangements of words by Ukrainian poets. Kolomiec said a setting of a poem by Vasyl Stus felt particularly relevant. Stus died in 1985 in the Russian Perm-36 labour camp, where he had been imprisoned for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.
His work focused on Ukrainian identity in the face of Soviet repression: “There is a fight; I’m on the battlefield, / Where all my soldiers are the words I wield,” Stus wrote, according to a version translated by Artem Pulemotov.
“Creating music in Ukrainian was not only discouraged but dangerous” Kolomiec said.
Earle premiered "Up in Flames" by Ukrainian composer Eduard Resatsch in early 2024. These five symphonic songs are set to poetry by Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko. The fifth song describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as “the Loch Ness of the cold Neva,” Earle said, the Neva being the main river flowing through St. Petersburg.
Earle also recently premiered Resatsch’s "Nadiya," which translates to "Hope." He will conduct its second performance in Kyiv on April 24. Elements of the piece could draw comparisons to the everyday sounds of living in a warzone -- when asked whether listeners could hear sweeping musical motifs as air raid sirens, Earle agreed.
Some music has been recontextualized by the war. Violinist Stepan Andrushchenko is co-founder of modern folk band ShchukaRyba, he described how traditional Ukrainian folk songs which were once “heard simply as beautiful songs, now sound extremely relevant and almost describe today’s reality directly.”
“There Stands a Steep Mountain” is one such folk tune:
I will go to the steep mountains, I will cry there alone,
I will ask the falcon, I will ask the grey falcon:
Have you seen my beloved?
After the start of the war, Andrushchenko noticed many Ukrainians wanted to reconnect with their roots. Music, particularly folk music, could provide the sense of belonging many were searching for, and an answer to the ever-present questions, he said, including “What are we fighting for? What are we defending?” His band believe “tradition should stay alive,” he said, “We want people not only to listen but to join in.”
Amidst the sounds of war, through music, some measure of hope can be found, artists who spoke with ABC News said. There’s a Ukrainian saying, Earle said, “Hope dies last.”
Even if Russia destroys Ukrainian sovereignty, Kolomiec said, "the songs will stay."
ABC News' Yulia Drozd contributed to this report.
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