10+1 stories about love and war.
Nataliia Melnychuk, Maryna Usenko, and other participants of the “Veteran’s Wife” project share what it means to love, to wait, and to keep living forward.
While working on the “Veteran’s Wife” project and watching the community take shape, we witnessed so much — waiting, loss, love, resilience. And from that came a powerful idea: to create a photo project that would reveal the beauty and strength of women who serve as a steadfast rear for the men defending our country.
Together with Cosmopolitan and caring partners, we were able to bring these stories to life and share them with you.
Cosmo gathered 11 stories from participants of the “Veteran’s Wife” project. These are not “inspirational stories,” and there is no pathos here. This is life as it is: love at a distance, waiting, reunions, new rules of intimacy when reality has changed.
These are stories of relationships sustained by short “++” messages, brief leaves lasting only a few days, and decisions made “for now.” They speak of loss and of the harsh reality that must be lived through. The piece offers an honest and unfiltered look at the lives of military wives and partners.
Nataliia Melnychuk
«I asked for honesty and openness: if something doesn’t feel right to you or to me, we talk about it. We are adults, and we understand that beyond romance, married life includes challenges, crises, and differences in character. If we approach it consciously, everything can be worked through».
Maryna Usenko
«My husband is the person for whom I would reach for a star in the sky. While he is in captivity, I am his voice. I push myself to the limit so that I will never have to regret not doing everything I could. When my husband was taken prisoner, our eldest daughter asked, ‘Will I have another dad?’ I said, ‘No.’ — ‘Will you do everything to bring Dad back?’ I promised, ‘Yes.’».
Kseniia Popil
«Many people tell me, ‘It’s not normal — living separately, being without your husband.’ But I’ve come to understand that for us, this is our version of normal,” she says. “I don’t know any other life with my husband outside of war. But this is our life. We’ve adapted to it. He believes that while the guys are still in captivity and the country is at war, he cannot leave our shared cause. And I can’t go to him because I have a six-year-old child. So this is how we live».
Nataliia Yaremenko
«I still set a goal for myself — to find my husband. Recently, an acquaintance asked me, ‘Do you still love him?’ I don’t know if it’s love, but I respect him deeply. And what we had during those short three months together is something I wish every woman could experience. Some people live an entire lifetime without ever feeling that. We dreamed of having a son and dogs; we talked through every detail of our future».
Polina
Karabut
«In a relationship with a civilian, you can prolong the ‘honeymoon’ phase, but with a serviceman everything is different. Decisions are made quickly and intuitively. You can’t plan trips far ahead or postpone life for ‘someday,’ because that ‘someday’ may never come. There is only ‘now.’ It teaches you to value time and to be present for each other, even from a distance.».
Oksana Vishchyk
«When Serhii was wounded, I was angry at everyone — at the men on the street, at the women whose husbands were at home. I didn’t want to see anyone. At some point, I told myself: enough of living in blame. He is alive, we made it through. When the full-scale war began, I realized how deeply precious our family is to me».
Marina Protas
«My transformation rested on three pillars. First — spirituality: a two-month fast and prayer helped me tame my ego. Second — education: a study of military psychology gave me an understanding of the ‘preservation’ of servicemen — a state in which feelings and emotions are pushed inward for the sake of survival. Third — acceptance: since then, my messages have become a safe space».
Kateryna Tkachenko
«I try to adapt to this, because we are now two different, ‘new’ people. We are growing in different social environments: I am in the civilian one, and he is in the military one. And no matter how hard it is for us — especially when it comes to understanding each other — we try to change what depends on us and preserve what matters most: our family».
Kateryna Chyzhyk
«It was saving for me. Through action, I thought not only about the ‘here and now,’ but also what I needed to do tomorrow. This kind of planning helped me find meaning in repetitive movements and in the physical, emotional circumstances — so that this day could pass from today into tomorrow. We received a large grant, and on April 19, 2024, the psychological support center ‘ProZhyty’ opened in Dnipro».
Yana Senyk
«I can say that this is the kind of love that happens once in a lifetime. He is an honorable, conscientious man with a capital M. In six years of marriage — not a single reproach, not a single scandal, not a single argument. He is calm, and I am a hurricane. He softens things, I raise the wave,” Yana Senyk says about her husband, Junior Sergeant Serhii Senyk, who was killed at the end of September 2022 near the village of Mykolaivka Druha in the Donetsk region.
Nataliia Ishchenko
«We talk a lot, we learn to reach agreements, we argue and make up. What holds us together are our shared plans for competitions and trips — we grow together, challenge ourselves, and move toward our goals shoulder to shoulder. The fact that we can do all of this together motivates us and doubles the joy of our shared achievements».
Cosmopolitan:
“This is exactly what the ‘Wife of a Veteran’ project by the Kyiv School of Public Administration named after Serhiy Nyzhnyy is about. What started in March 2025 as an educational navigator has grown into something much bigger — a closed ecosystem for its own community. It is a space where nearly 8,000 women are learning to live in a new reality, and more than 2,000 members of the closed community share things that are not usually spoken about out loud. Here, they support one another at every stage. And, sadly, even when someone has to change her status to ‘wife of a fallen Hero,’ in that very moment there are those beside her who truly know how to find the right words (or how to simply stay silently present).
Text: Valentyna Klymenko
Photo: Oleksandr Vansovych
Styling: Olena Karpych
Make-up & hair: Nataliia Podlehaieva and Maryna Vakuliuk”