Anna Conkling

Anna Conkling is a New York journalist based in Berlin. Her work focuses around finding unique angles about the war in Ukraine that highlight the people who have been caught in the war. 

Atmos •

The Women Documenting Russia's Ecocide Crimes - Atmos

The attack on the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023 came as a shock to Ukrainians, who had been plagued by a brutal war for over a year. Located in southern Ukraine, the dam had long been thought to withstand almost anything—only to crumble under the weight of relentless Russian bombardments. As the dam’s reservoir drained in the days that followed, unstoppable floods consumed residential buildings, destroyed ecosystems, displaced thousands, and killed dozens of people.  Today, the attack is deemed the...
The Telegraph •

How Ukrainian geeks are making gullible Russians pay for the war with a dating scam

A group of Ukrainian scammers called the Monetary Army is using fake dating profiles to defraud Russian men out of thousands of pounds, with some of the profits funnelling into Kyiv’s war effort.Alongside the dating profiles, the scammers use illegitimate websites and cryptocurrency transactions in a business that allows them to get rich quickly while avenging themselves on Moscow’s citizens.The Monetary Army was born in 2020, when young Ukrainian tech-workers took advantage of surging dating ap...
The Daily Beast •

Frontline Ukrainians Fear New Aid From U.S. Will Be a Disaster

KHARKIV, Ukraine—After months of infighting on Capitol Hill, President Joe Biden has finally been able to sign off on a huge new $61 billion military aid bill for Ukraine. Delays to the bill, which got bogged down in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, were widely blamed for impacting Kyiv’s ability to defend itself from Russian advances. After its passage last week, some members of the House waved Ukrainian flags while others cheered in celebration that Ukraine will soon receive...
The Daily Beast •

Popular Psychics Predict How the War in Ukraine Will End

KOSTIANTYNIVKA, Ukraine—In a large bedroom in eastern Ukraine, a woman in her eighties wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe hunches over a table by her bed. The room is filled with icons of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and Saint Nicholas, figures she believes protect her against evil curses and the dangers of the war. The woman fixes her stare at the table, which she has filled with playing cards, ranging from the ten of clubs to the queen of hearts. She looks at me and says, “You need to leave Ukra...
The Daily Beast •

Terrifying Poison Threat Makes Ukraine Soldiers’ Lives Hell

KUPYANSK, Ukraine—Ukrainian troops in Kupyansk are running low on ammunition and weapons as they fight to remain in control of a city that doesn’t even want to be saved from the Russians. In this eastern town, soldiers say that they are afraid that pro-Russian civilian collaborators might help to poison, bomb, or otherwise kill them because they believe that life under Vladimir Putin’s occupation would be better than living in a free Ukraine.Located in the eastern Kharkiv region, Kupyansk was on...
The Daily Beast •

I Was Used as a Propaganda Tool by Russia

KYIV—A Russian soldier was pointing a gun at her head from behind the television camera. The film crew had come from one of Moscow’s state-owned TV stations and Olena Yahupova had no choice but to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. The footage of Yahupova saying that she was an extremist who had helped the Ukrainian military try to fight the occupation of her town, Kamianka Dniprovska, was broadcast across Russia by RIA Novosti as supposed proof of the nefarious means of the Ukrainian
The Daily Beast •

Kids in Occupied Ukraine Forced to Join Russian War Effort

Russia’s military is recruiting children and teens in occupied territories of Ukraine into its Young Army program. This seeks to brainwash, militarize, and even force them into contributing to the Russian war effort against their own country, according to non-governmental organizations monitoring the group’s activities. Through social media posts and sources on the ground in occupied regions, the NGOs have tracked the formation of the militarized children’s program, which they fear is intended
The Daily Beast •

Ukrainians Invent Homemade War Machine to Gun Down Russians

KUPIANSK, Ukraine—In an old garage workshop outside Kupiansk, a unit of soldiers is turning to the past in their search for weapons to fight off Russian soldiers. One inventive unit is modernizing old Soviet-era KS 19 anti-aircraft guns and turning the antiquated machines into fast-moving weapons of destruction that can be used to target dozens of Russian soldiers at a time. With an ingenious act of improvisation and some commercially available tech, they are turning the Kremlin’s history agains
The Daily Beast •

Russian Home Invaders ‘Stole’ the Lives of These Families

Residents of occupied regions of Ukraine expected the worst when Russian soldiers seized control of their towns. While those who could flee left in the early days of the war, many homes and properties sat empty, waiting for the day that the owners could return to the lives they had left. But they had not planned for Russian soldiers to use their homes as military bases—or auction off their land to the highest bidder in Vladimir Putin’s home country. While Ukraine’s fight to reclaim territory r
The Daily Beast •

Deadly Surprises From Putin Lurk Under These Family Homes

KHARKIV, Ukraine—Massive mine removal operations are underway in Ukraine as the country tries to repair some of the damage from the Russian occupation nearly one-and-a-half years into the war. While Ukrainian officials de-mine entire towns and industrial buildings, some residents have been left with no choice but to clear shrapnel and bombs from their land, risking their lives in the process. As of June 2023, a recorded 540,000 items of unexploded ordnance have been cleared from Ukraine, accor
The Village Voice •

Ukrainian Priests Bring God to the Frontlines

Father Stanislav Ashtrafianv was collecting firewood when a missile barrage began to rain down on him. It was nine days into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, and he was in Cherkasy Lozovaya, a small village in Kharkiv oblast, helping to gather supplies for residents who had remained in their homes. The 56-year-old priest and other volunteers ran to a nearby basement to wait out the violence of the attacks. Fearing for his life, Ashtrafianv grabbed the rosa
The Daily Beast •

Ukrainians Under Siege Are Turning to OnlyFans

Darina Lebedeva lost her job the day before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She was only 18 and felt hopeless about securing a new job with a decent salary while her country was under attack by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Until Feb. 24, 2022, she had worked remotely for a retail website. Like countless other jobs in Ukraine, the work vanished as soon as the first shots of the war were fired. She had roughly $3,000 in her bank account, which would last her only five months. “The war took ev
The Real News •

They were nursing home residents in Ukraine. Then the war began

On March 17, the International Criminal Court announced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova. The court deemed that Putin and Lvova-Belova are “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute),” a
The Daily Beast •

Putin’s War Has Caused a Huge Plastic Surgery Boom in Ukraine

KYIV—Ukrainian surgeons are performing a strenuous new wartime medical procedure: providing facial reconstruction surgery for people injured in Russian attacks. They are teaching themselves to perform medical services they never expected to do, racing against time to decide what can and cannot be saved, working through screams from patients and air raid sirens, and struggling to afford critically needed supplies. One miscalculation might cause irreversible damage. “We never expected such a war
The Daily Beast •

Putin Threatens New Disaster for Soviet Horror Survivors

LVIV, Ukraine—Vladimir Putin has consistently used the oppression of Jews to justify his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While countless Ukrainian cities are burned to the ground, and civilian casualties continue to rise, the Russian president has claimed that his war has been made in the name of de-nazifying the neighboring country. Instead, it has invoked the horrors of World War II into the lives of Russia’s public. Few Jewish communities in Ukraine have been depleted like that in Lviv, the
The Village Voice •

Winter Has Come: Reporting From Lviv as Russia Attacks Ukraine’s Infrastructure

Over the past 10 months, attacks by Russian forces on Lviv have been sparse, nowhere near as intense as those on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, or on the frontlines in the eastern part of the country. But now, after a string of new attacks that left no area of Ukraine unscathed, even Lviv is struggling to provide crucially needed heat, water, and electricity to its 700,000 residents, as temperatures plunge below freezing every day. On November 15, Russia launched approximately 100 missiles at targets
The Village Voice •

Navigating a War Zone: Ukrainian Railways in Conversation

Whether in New York City or on the outskirts of Kyiv, riding a rail line can be maddeningly tedious—lugging luggage, trying to comprehend garbled announcements, rushing to platforms. Trains might not run on time, and once the journey begins, they may move slowly, leaving passengers to wonder if they have made any progress. Engineers sit at the head of the train, tucked away, unseen; conductors move through the cars, collecting tickets, answering riders’ questions. Each day these engineers and co
Glamour UK •

Beauty in the face of war: What Ukraine's beauty industry workers did after the Russian invasion

"Of course, this is not easy; we have to readjust, study local laws, rules, customs, speech patterns, and people's behaviour, and much more to better understand the culture and feel comfortable. During [this] half a year, we got used to our new life, many things became clear and not as complicated as it seemed at first glance. But of course, any change takes time," said Vikhliaieva. Now that the family is settled, Vikhliaieva said that while she misses Ukraine, her parents, relatives, and everyo
The Daily Beast •

Inside the Grueling Mission to Help Russia’s Rape Victims

A network of two dozen organizations has been tasked with the critical role of helping Ukrainians who claim to have been sexually assaulted by Russian soldiers since the start of Vladimir Putin’s devastating war in Ukraine. The network operates throughout the country, often in some of the war’s most dangerous hotspots, and offers anonymous support to anyone who requests help, ranging from sending rape kits to Russian-occupied villages to providing trauma support to survivors of sexual violence.
The Village Voice •

A Soldier’s Life: Conversations Inside Ukraine’s Defense Force

Kydrava did not expect to be stationed on the frontlines of the war. She did not expect that, for five months, she and her unit would be facing constant combat, or that she would never have a chance to catch her breath. The idea of Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the 21st century did not seem to her like something that could really happen. But then that unthinkable scenario became reality—Kydrava has spent the time since the first attacks living at the forefront of Russia’s
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