Artioum skateboards in front of the M. F. Sumtsov Kharkiv Historical Museum in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Ukrainian skateboarders take back their streets

Photographs by Robin Tutenges
Story by Kyle Almond, CNN
Published July 27, 2024

The streets of Ukraine are scarred by war, but that isn’t stopping many young skateboarders from doing what they love to do.

For them, skating is a much-needed escape.

“It’s a way of feeling alive, even when everything around you is falling apart,” Vasilkan, a skateboarder from Odesa, told French photojournalist Robin Tutenges.

Tutenges visited Ukraine in May 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion. While other photographers focused on the war effort, he wanted to document the country’s youth and how they were coping.

Young men climb a fence to find a new spot to skateboard in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Aleksandr skates past anti-tank barricades that are covered under a tarp in Kyiv.

He quickly formed a strong connection with some skateboarders he met.

“We grew up with exactly the same (skateboarding) culture,” Tutenges said. “We watched the same YouTube videos about US skateboarders, about French skateboarders, so we had a lot of things to talk about.”

Tutenges, 28, hadn’t skated in a while, but he started again in Ukraine. He went back in 2023 and spent time with skateboarders in the capital of Kyiv as well as in the cities of Dnipro, Izium and Kharkiv.

Mitya, a professional skateboarder, joined the Ukrainian military after Russia invaded his country in 2022. “The only thing I knew about the army was when I was a kid playing soldier,” he said.

“I was a child when the invasion started,” Artem said. “I had to leave my parents for the first time and take responsibility for other people close to me.” Amid chaos and anguish, skateboarding became an escape.

“Mentally, it’s hard to live here,” a teenage skateboarder named Konstantino told him. “So we skateboard to free ourselves and heal ourselves. We go out into the street every day, as if it were our medicine.”

There’s also an element of defiance there.

“By going out and still living,” Tutenges said, “even if the situation is very difficult, it’s like a way to take control of the situation. To say, ‘No, even if there is war, I will still have my youth.’ … If they don’t enjoy their life at this age, they will feel like the Russians won in some way because they took control of their youth.”

In Kharkiv, the square of the Lysenko National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater used to be packed with people. Now it is mostly empty because of the war.

Young skateboarders spend a day together in Kyiv. They often receive notifications on their phones carrying bad news from the front lines.

Many of these young Ukrainians had to grow up fast because of the war. Some saw their schools destroyed and their studies come to an end.

“They’ve had to take on a lot of responsibility, take care of family members, take on multiple jobs,” Tutenges said.

Most of the skateboarders he met knew nothing about war or how to fight. But they support their country 100%, he said, and try to support the war effort in other ways.

“Maybe it’s a video to talk about the situation. They use the skateboard as their weapons to (educate) the generation around Europe and the world,” Tutenges said. “It’s a good way to keep talking about Ukraine.”

A group of skateboarders watches a video of a trick one of them had just filmed in Kyiv. Dima, a skateboarder from Odesa, said they share the videos online “to reach young people who look like us and show them our daily lives and the war in Ukraine.”

A high school gymnasium is damaged in Izium. Without school, skateboarding has been a way for many young Ukrainians “to socialize, to meet people, to learn about life, to make connections, to make mistakes, to grow,” photojournalist Robin Tutenges said.

Tutenges spent a few hours on the front lines with one professional skateboarder, Mitya, who joined the civil defense force on the first day of the Russian invasion. Mitya’s call sign, “Skaters,” is written on one of his bulletproof vests. On his arm is a tattoo that says “sk8 or die.”

“I had to give up skateboarding for a while,” the 22-year-old told Tutenges. “I miss it terribly.”

The war has brought much of the country together, and Tutenges said he also noticed a “huge solidarity” among the skateboarders he met. While he was in Kyiv, skateboarders there opened up their homes to some skateboarders from Odesa, which was being heavily bombed at the time.

Konstantino has a hole in his T-shirt from a skateboarding fall. “If we don't skate now, when will we be able to?” he told Tutenges. “We can die at any moment.”

Artioum shows off a tattoo that refers to the famous skateboarding magazine Thrasher.

“Before the war, skateboarders in Kyiv weren’t as close-knit as they are today,” skateboarder Sasha told him. “Everyone had their own team, their own group, and we didn’t necessarily mix.”

Now they’re united with a common purpose.

“Skateboarding is a way to take back their life and to take back their streets also: ‘This is my street. This is my neighborhood. This is my country,’ ” Tutenges said.

Elia, left, and Éric grew up together. They watch skateboarding videos together, but a moment of relaxation is often spoiled by air raid sirens or notifications from the front lines.

Young skateboarders walk in front of anti-tank crosses in Kharkiv.

Through September 22, Tutenges’ photos are part of an exhibition at the Musée Régional d’Art Contemporain (Regional Contemporary Art Museum) in Sérignan, France. He made many of the images panoramic so that they would be long like a skateboard.

He said skateboarding can teach valuable lessons about resilience — something that he has seen in many of the Ukrainians he photographed.

“Skateboarding can be very tough sometimes,” he said. “You can break your legs, your ankles. You can get injured. You learn how to suffer and stand up and do it again.

“This mentality helps them go through this war. They have suffered. They lost people. They had to leave their homes. But they are still standing because of this mentality: ‘I will stand again.’ ”