Sofiia Khodieva (Saf Homin) on War, Identity, and Resilience in Ukraine
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/12/29
‘Saf Homin’ is a Ukrainian independent journalist, documentary photographer, and VR storyteller whose work centers on the human experience of war. A non-binary creator and Fulbright Scholar, they navigate Ukraine’s highly gendered linguistic and cultural landscape while documenting underrepresented LGBTQ communities and the country’s shifting political and social realities. Now an MA candidate in Photojournalism at the University of Missouri, they blend international perspective with firsthand experience of trauma, displacement, and blackout reporting. Through multimedia projects, Homin offers nuanced, dignity-focused narratives that challenge simplistic coverage and call for a deeper, locally grounded understanding of wartime Ukraine for global audiences.
In this conversation, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Ukrainian journalist Sofiia Khodieva, known as Saf Homin, about their award-winning work documenting the war. Khodieva discusses independence in journalism, creating a VR film, and navigating Ukraine’s dignity-based culture. They describe burnout, PTSD treatment, and the challenges of reporting during blackouts while also covering queer communities that remain underrepresented in Ukrainian media. Jacobsen explores Western misconceptions about Ukraine, linguistic constraints around gender, and the limits of identity-based coverage. Khodieva emphasizes resilience, complexity, and the need for deeper, locally grounded reporting beyond narrow political narratives and high-profile interviews.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You just won an award. What is it? What does it mean to you?
Sofiia Khodieva/’Saf Homin’: It is an award from foreign press correspondents in the USA for my journalism, both for my Ukrainian and international journalism in the US. This type of recognition means that I am on the right track. It is sometimes very discouraging to see everything happening, and awards like this tell you to go on.
Jacobsen: In independent journalism, there could be three categories. You have the Kyiv Post, an institution. You have Kyiv Independent—more independent (breaking from Kyiv Post), but it is an institution. You have a whole slew of people like you and me who are independent journalists. It is a precarious lifestyle, but the intellectual freedoms are wider. What do you think are the benefits of these intellectual degrees of freedom in war?
Khodieva: I have always wanted to tell the story of Ukraine abroad and report for foreigners. I needed to tell the story without putting my voice into it. I work in a very different discipline from just writing texts or essays. I made a VR movie, and the scene that helped me make it was being independent and not leaning into the constraints of an editorial board, in my photo stories and photo essays, which can be the same thing.
Jacobsen: When I talk to Ukrainians, there are two things; two parts of this. One crucial part is that it seems to be a dignity-based culture. It was called the Revolution of Dignity on Maidan. That is an essential characteristic because a good part of what I like about Ukrainian culture, particularly when I argue with journalists, is that debates in private can get heated over what we mean by West, East, journalists, and so on. Many critical points are brought up. Part two, to that point, includes concerns about key aspects of the war in Eastern Europe. Western Europeans are sentimental. Eastern Europeans, particularly men, are very sentimental; how ever they may present. It is essential when covering the war to cover both: the story of the person and how it feels to be in the war, because one out of four people will know someone who has been in the war, have someone who has been in the war, or have lost someone in the war. So what does the war mean in terms of your own narrative? How does it feel? Third part: we have phrases like “all that glitters is not gold.” Not everything that is money-based is worthwhile—family, community, dignity. What Ukrainian aphorism characterizes that to you? So story, feeling, aphorism.
Khodieva: Let us start with the aphorism. We have such a saying. It says, “Not everything is gold that shines.” So it is similar. My personal narrative is unique because I am non-binary and I represent the queer community, and it is still tough to be queer. The Ukrainian language is very gendered, so if you are non-binary, you have different pronouns and use other forms.
For me to be able to work in Ukraine means sometimes putting my identity aside and communicating with people not my own age, for example. It also gives me access to the queer community, and I covered nonbinary people in Ukraine and interviewed them because we are heavily underrepresented in Ukrainian media. So I thought: I am going to be my own media. That put me on track to cover these stories here as well.
Jacobsen: What was the story? The story just covered—half of it—how it feels to be in the war. This is more about being Ukrainian. Because American media here leads with identity, right? This is four percent of the world. So this is a small echo chamber. Moreover, when we are talking about media, that is what it is: an echo chamber. A lot of the rest of the world has identity, but they do not lead with identity first. They have different sensibilities about how they characterize themselves. There are other ways to do it. It is not correct or wrong; it is a difference.
Khodieva: I agree that the culture in Ukraine is very much about dignity and doing everything with dignity. That definitely resonates with me. When the war started, I was an editor of a newsfeed. I was writing news about the war. Before that, I covered politics and all sorts of things. Everything that was thrown at me, I was writing for the feed.
When the war began, I had to leave the newsfeed because I burned out from the amount of fragility and horror. So many people are affected. That is why I decided to become a photographer: I saw how images spread and how quickly they work. Then I started doing international projects and telling the story abroad.
Having spent a small quantity of time away and gone through some PTSD treatment, I understand the amount of trauma that comes with working in Ukraine and being Ukrainian. I feel a lot of respect toward Ukrainian journalists who keep working during blackouts. As someone who has worked during blackouts and been in different regions and had to adapt, documenting trauma while being affected by that trauma is very hard to do.
Jacobsen: The other thing that comes up in private arguments is—putting it in the most neutral terms—the relationship between internal domestic Ukrainian media and external Western media. The other kind of media would be Kremlin-based, so obviously, the propaganda is what it is. In terms of Western coverage and in terms of Ukraine itself, what are the things they get right, the things they get wrong, and the things they miss entirely? That is the neutral way to say it. You can imagine how these arguments go.
Khodieva: That is interesting, because I am preparing a video on YouTube about misconceptions about Ukraine, so I am deep into the topic right now. A lot of historical facts about Ukraine are informed by Russian interpretation, and you can go in many directions with that when interpreting Ukrainian history—especially Kievan Rus, which is a predecessor of Ukraine and Russia, but not Russia as it is now, and Crimea, and all of that. So yes, the resilience of Ukrainians is something the media gets right.
They focus a lot on how we stand and how strong we are. However, we also have many internal arguments, especially over corruption and internal issues. The war does not stop any of these processes. Arguments are an ingrained part of our culture. Protesting, for example, as well. I see a very humanizing angle in Ukrainians and how resilient we are, but at the same time, it is a bit primitive to show us only as that. It would be interesting to see deeper coverage with more local context, not just Zelensky-based interviews.
Jacobsen: Have there been any ironic areas of your work where being non-binary has actually helped you? Something almost Monty Python-esque where you think, “Okay… that was unexpected.”
Khodieva: I have been misgendered a lot and still am, so it is always a game of presenting. The most significant part of it is getting access to people from my own community and getting to know them. It is not easy to do in Ukraine. Generally, misgendering and misalignment with what is expected of you—and acting more on a masculine spectrum while looking feminine—is what confuses people. However, it creates a very different approach, I guess. However, it is not very clear.
Jacobsen: Wittgenstein had this phrase about the idea that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. I think he meant “world” in the German sense of Weltanschauung—our worldview, our phenomenological and qualitative experience of the world. If we cannot express something in language, we cannot think about it in specific terms. When I ask whether you are ‘feminine non-binary’ or ‘masculine non-binary,’ there is a limitation in Ukrainian that you would not necessarily have in a hyper-flexible clown language like English. English absorbs everything. This is why it is so good at it.
Jacobsen: Any final thoughts based on the interview today?
Khodieva: It is good to talk to someone who understands the independent side of things and is all around the place. It is really lovely to meet you.
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