An Un-ordinary Generation
Eight-year-old Ethan remembers helicopters.
One of his earliest memories is visiting a friend with his father who flew them.
“Now nobody can fly helicopters,” he says matter-of-factly.
His younger sister Eva remembers something entirely different. “I remember biting Ethan on the back,” she says, laughing.
They are ordinary childhood memories.
But Ethan and Eva are part of an un-ordinary generation: a generation of Ukrainian children whose childhood has unfolded during war.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ethan was four years old. Eva was two.
Today they are preparing for summer camp while growing up in a country where air raid sirens and explosions from missiles and drones have become part of daily life.
Both children know exactly what an air raid alert sounds like. “It goes off all the time,” Ethan says. Eva hears them at home and at daycare.
When sirens sound during school, Ethan sometimes spends entire days studying in a shelter.
Eva recently had her kindergarten graduation interrupted three separate times within a single hour as parents, teachers and children were forced to move to safety.
They also know things many children elsewhere never need to learn.
Ethan knows how to turn on the family’s backup power system during outages.
Both children know where the safest places are inside their home.
For Ethan, it is the parking garage. For Eva, it is the bathroom because there are no windows.
Their parents, Vlad and Zhanna, sometimes find themselves surprised by what their children consider normal.
One day Ethan was asked to draw his dream home for a school project.
He drew a house. A tree. His family. And an airplane in the sky.
When his parents asked about it, Ethan explained: “It’s our country’s airplane.”
For Vlad and Zhanna, it was a reminder that their son is growing up in a world very different from the one they knew as children.
Their children can identify the sounds of Shahed drones, air defense systems, and missile attacks.
They know about mine safety. They understand shelters, blackouts, and emergency procedures.
“War is not normal,” Zhanna says. “But for many children, it has become normal.”
Yet despite everything they have experienced, Ethan and Eva are still children.
Ask them what they are looking forward to most this summer, and their answers are refreshingly simple.
“The games,” says Ethan. “Games, friends, sweets, and the camp store,” Eva adds.
When asked what would make a perfect day, Ethan doesn’t hesitate. “Being at camp.”
Their parents understand why. Children across Ukraine carry stress that often goes unseen.
Nighttime attacks, sirens, explosions, and uncertainty slowly accumulate, even when families learn to live with them.
But camp offers something different—for a few days, children can put down those burdens and simply be children.
They laugh. They run. They make friends. They hear Bible stories. They learn about a Saviour who loves them.
“At camp they feel accepted,” Vlad says. “They can relax.”
That is why summer children’s ministries remain so important across Ukraine.
For children like Ethan and Eva—the first generation growing up entirely in wartime—camp is more than a week of activities.
It is a reminder that childhood has not disappeared.
For a few precious days, they are not thinking about shelters, drones, or explosions.
They are memorizing Bible verses, making friends, playing games, and learning that Jesus knows their fears and walks with them through them.
And for an un-ordinary generation whose earliest memories are marked by war, something like summer camp becomes a glimpse of the childhood they were always meant to have.