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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Illia Novikov

In war-weary Kyiv, wounded Ukrainian veterans turn epic poetry into living testimony

Russia Ukraine War Veterans Theater - (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Sitting in a circle the day before opening night, Ukrainian war veterans and drama students took turns reading their lines from a script that traveled centuries to reach them.

At the center was Olha Semioshkina, directing the group through her adaptation of “Eneida” by Ivan Kotliarevskyi — an 18th-century Ukrainian reimagining of Virgil's “Aeneid.” This production, though, had a modern-day message about resilience in the face of the war that's nearing its fourth year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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