Olga Sagaidak on War, Family, and Cultural Survival in Ukraine
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/04/05
Olga Sagaidak is a Ukrainian cultural manager, curator, and art historian who chairs the board of the Coalition of Cultural Actors of Ukraine and co-founded Dofa.fund. Trained in art history, she also co-founded the Korners auction house, where she worked in the art and antiquities market before reorienting toward cultural activism after 2014. Sagaidak served on, and later chaired, the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian Institute from 2019 to 2022. In 2022, she was appointed the Ukrainian Institute’s representative in France and helped launch Printemps Ukrainien, a cultural diplomacy initiative presenting contemporary Ukrainian culture to French and European audiences abroad.
In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Olga Sagaidak about how Russia’s war against Ukraine reshapes family life, gendered burdens, and the cultural sector. Sagaidak describes men’s restricted movement, women’s displacement, family separations, and the strain of prolonged uncertainty. She reflects on artists serving abroad, colleagues fighting at the front, and the postwar challenge of rebuilding fractured professional communities. Drawing on her own family’s experience, she weighs survival, civic duty, cultural resistance, and the risks of occupation. Her reflections distinguish price from value, showing how war makes ordinary things—home, safety, return—profoundly precious to many Ukrainians under extreme pressure.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Are you noticing any trends in how women and men are adapting to the war? Their circumstances are very different. Many men may be conscripted, while some women choose to go to the front lines voluntarily. The contexts are not the same.
The artistic community is also very tightly connected. Many artists know one another. When someone goes to the front line, dies, or leaves the country, it changes the social dynamics and cultural exchange within that community.
Olga Sagaidak: One of the most painful consequences of the war is how it destroys private lives and relationships. Many families have been separated by distance and time. Often, men remain in Ukraine while women leave the country with their children. Over time, they begin to build new lives abroad.
Meanwhile, the men remain in Ukraine. Sometimes relationships survive, sometimes they do not. Four years is a very long time for couples to live apart.
In many ways, men in Ukraine now experience strong restrictions. They cannot easily leave the country. From their perspective, their freedoms are more limited than before. Saying that to a Western audience can sometimes sound politically incorrect, but it is part of the reality people are living through.
Fortunately, I am not a political person. Building communication between the state and citizens in Ukraine requires trust. In the first days of the war, Ukrainians showed enormous trust in their government and institutions.
The decision to close the borders to most men was a mistake. Those who were afraid or determined to leave still found ways to depart, often through money or connections. It was possible for them. Meanwhile, ordinary people followed the rules. But it is war, and when rules are established during wartime, people try to follow them.
In my own family, my husband stayed in Kyiv. He is a professor at the art academy and works as a painting restorer. The first time I opened Le Monde after arriving in Paris, there was a photograph on the front page showing my husband and his colleagues protecting a large museum object. He remained in Kyiv. Because he is a professor, he has a state reservation from mobilization, but he still lives with the understanding that he could be mobilized at any time.
Joining the army was never part of his plan. He is fifty-two years old and not especially athletic or in perfect health. But he is prepared if it becomes necessary. That was his decision. He was able to visit me twice in Paris with special permission because of his limited travel status. However, he never considered staying abroad with us. He always returned to Kyiv.
In our case, we managed to preserve our family. But I recognize that this is not always the outcome. If I had stayed abroad for more than two years, our situation might have been very different.
Many families have been broken apart. I know many couples who are no longer together. I know many children who are now separated from either their father or their mother. I also know women who decided to join the army. In some cases, they experienced discrimination, although this situation is slowly changing.
The Ukrainian army still carries some Soviet institutional traditions, but it is evolving. Today, many more women serve in the armed forces.
Jacobsen: These seem like important concerns about rights and equality. At the same time, people here in Eastern Europe often appear very realistic about life during war. In that situation, survival becomes the primary concern, while other issues become secondary. They are still important, but survival comes first. Is that fair?
Sagaidak: Yes, I think so. If the war continues, more and more of us may eventually have to take some role in the defence effort. I have even thought about it myself. I am no longer young, so I may not be suited for combat roles. But in the military, there are many kinds of work. Not every role requires being on the front line.
For artists and people working in culture, the war is not necessarily more painful than it is for journalists, scientists, or people in IT. However, artists had one particular opportunity. Many received special permission from the Ministry of Culture to travel abroad and represent Ukraine internationally.
In reality, some artists used that opportunity to remain abroad. One of the major challenges after the war will be rebuilding professional communities that now include people with very different wartime experiences.
Some people spent years on the front line. Others left the country. Their lives have diverged significantly.
For example, in 2024, I organized a forum on cultural heritage and called a colleague who is an excellent architectural restoration specialist. When I reached him, he answered from the front. He told me, “I am currently in a tank unit. I am not thinking about restoration now. I am thinking about my tank.”
People like him have served more than 4 years in the military. They have almost no chance to return to their professional lives unless they are injured or the war ends. It is our responsibility, for those of us who remain in civilian roles, to continue pushing the state to create conditions that will allow these people to return.
But that creates difficult questions. If a colleague who is a theatre director or cultural leader returns from the army, they should take the leadership position I currently hold. That is an existential dilemma.
I don’t know what the right answer is. I am also a mother. My son is thirteen years old. If the war continues, he will soon be sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, and he could eventually be mobilized. I hope very much that the war will end before he reaches adulthood.
Still, we must always think about plan B. My husband and I discuss these possibilities very seriously because we are very close. For example, we sometimes ask ourselves what we would do if Kyiv were occupied.
I know that I could not remain in an occupied city. People like me—cultural activists—would likely be among the first to be arrested or imprisoned under a Russian system. Journalists, especially independent journalists, would face the same risk. We have already seen this in places such as Kherson and Mariupol. Cultural activists were among the first people targeted.
If you do not serve their propaganda system, you become a threat to it. So if I ever saw a real possibility that Kyiv might be occupied, I would have to leave. The only other option would be to join the army—perhaps even in a tank unit.
Jacobsen: The same idea applies here. Not everything that glitters is gold.
Sagaidak: Yes, exactly. Sometimes we discuss this in Ukrainian using two very similar words. One word means price, and the other means value. They sound almost the same in pronunciation. One refers to the cost of something, while the other refers to its deeper worth.
In Ukrainian, we often say that not everything valuable costs a lot of money, and sometimes inexpensive things have enormous value. During war, very simple things suddenly become extremely valuable.
For example, during the two years I spent in France, one of the things I dreamed about most was sleeping in my own bed at home again. My apartment is on Shchekavytsia Hill, one of the oldest hills in Kyiv, where the city’s early settlement began. I live at the very top of the hill in a duplex apartment on the top floor.
When drones fly over the city, they sometimes pass very close to it. From my bed, under the roof, you can hear them clearly as they move across the sky. Even with that risk, I still prefer to sleep in my own bed. In war, simple things like that become incredibly meaningful.
On the other hand, when we left our apartment on February 25, 2022, we had to make very quick decisions. Because of my previous work in the art world, we had a good collection of paintings. But when we were preparing to leave, we took only the essentials—our documents, money, and the car.
I looked at the paintings on the wall and realized we could take almost nothing. We packed only five paintings into the car.
After that, for many weeks and months, I was not in Kyiv, and I had no certainty about what had happened to our apartment or our belongings. In my mind, I said goodbye to everything we owned.
What I missed most was our small country house near Kyiv. It is located in Makariv, in the direction of Bucha and Irpin. During the first weeks of the invasion, missiles were flying over that area because Russian and Ukrainian forces were fighting nearby. Many buildings in the region were destroyed.
Our house stands in the center of the village. At one point, a Ukrainian tank entered our yard and destroyed part of the wall before taking position there. Despite everything happening around it, the house itself survived.
When I finally saw it again and realized it was still standing, I felt incredibly happy.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Olga.
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