KHARKIV, Ukraine –
With his shadow of a mustache and baseball cap, Bohdan Levchykov would be your typical teenager anywhere if he didn’t embody the tragedy of what has happened to a generation of young Ukrainians after nearly four years of war.
His father Stanislav, a career soldier, was killed defending the country’s second city of Kharkiv just weeks after Russia invaded in 2022. On top of all they have been through, his mother Iryna, 50, was recently diagnosed with stage 3 cancer of the uterus.
Bohdan no longer knows anyone his age in his battered hometown of Balakliia, which was occupied by the Russian army from March to September 2022. It was later retaken by Ukrainian forces, but being only 70 kilometers from the front, is still regularly shelled.