Olga Sagaidak on the War That Began in 2014, Donbas, and Ukraine’s Cultural Resistance

Olga Sagaidak is a Ukrainian cultural manager, curator, and art historian who chairs the board of the Coalition of Cultural Actors of Ukraine and co-founded Dofa.fund (The Depth of Arts Charitable Foundation). Trained in art history, she also co-founded the Korners auction house, where she worked in the art and antiquities market before reorienting toward cultural activism after 2014. Sagaidak served on, and later chaired, the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian Institute from 2019 to 2022. In 2022, she was appointed the Ukrainian Institute’s representative in France and helped launch Printemps Ukrainien, a cultural diplomacy initiative presenting contemporary Ukrainian culture to French and European audiences abroad.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen asks Olha Sagaidak how Russia’s war, beginning in 2014, reshaped her life and Ukraine’s cultural self-understanding. Sagaidak describes leaving a successful auction-house career after the Revolution of Dignity, then helping found Dofa.fund and the DonKult forum to challenge stereotypes about Donbas. She explains how regional cultural forums linked Donbas, Lviv, Kharkiv, Uzhhorod, and Odesa through shared artistic projects, research, travel, and conversation. The interview argues that Ukraine’s strength lies in multiculturalism, hospitality, and lived connections. For Sagaidak, culture is soft power: difficult to measure, yet capable of turning strangers into a real community across a wounded country.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was your first experience of the war that began in 2014?

Olga Sagaidak: The war began in 2014. Later came what Russia called the "Special Military Operation," which was really an expansion of the war that had already started years earlier. It is important to emphasize that the war began in 2014, shortly after the Revolution of Dignity. Many Kyiv residents were directly involved in that revolution. It took place here, on the Maidan, about a kilometre and a half from us.

The Revolution of Dignity was transformative because it changed many life trajectories, including my own. Before 2014, I was the owner and managing partner of an auction house. My degree was in art history. For twenty years, I sold antiquities and organized painting auctions. My specialization was Russian and Ukrainian painting from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I helped build collections for people connected to President Viktor Yanukovych, and they were among my main clients.

In 2014, I realized that the same clients who paid me had also helped ruin the country. It was a profitable business that allowed me to spend much of my time abroad. In fact, I knew France better than Ukraine. I had never been to Kharkiv or Donetsk, but I knew southern France, Normandy, and Brittany very well. I considered myself an internationalist. I wanted Ukraine to become as integrated with Europe as possible, and we had many business contacts there. At the time, we were trying to build the auction house into a Kyiv equivalent of Sotheby's or Christie's. When I understood that this possibility could be destroyed under Yanukovych, I felt compelled to go to the Maidan.

Then, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, and Russian-backed forces, together with Russian personnel, seized parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. After that, my colleagues and I completely changed our field of activity. We founded a charitable foundation called Dofa.fund (The Depth of Arts Charitable Foundation). The idea came from realizing we knew very little about Ukraine's regions. Ukraine is a large country. It is not as large as Canada, but it is still substantial, and it takes a long time to cross it from West to East. We discovered that we knew almost nothing about the culture of Donbas. So the question became: what role does Donbas play in Ukraine's cultural landscape?

Jacobsen: Is this reflected in Ukraine's lack of a full census since 2001, leaving cultural and demographic data incomplete?

Sagaidak: Yes, I think so. We had never really asked ourselves what Ukrainian culture actually was. Instead, we relied on stereotypes. At that time, there were ten of us, all experts in different areas of art, music, and painting. We sat down together and tried to answer a simple question: what is Donbas culture? Who comes from there?

At first, we could not name anyone. Then we began to realize that many people born in Donbas, a historically major mining and industrial region, had left and become well-known in other cities or even other countries.

At first, we could not remember anyone. But then we began to realize that many people born in Donbas, a historically mining region, had left and become well-known in other cities or countries.

When we began to count, we estimated that there were perhaps twenty individuals who were remarkable not only for Ukrainian culture but also for the wider world. As we continued this process, we realized we were not only losing territory or people in the present. We were also losing part of the Ukrainian identity and culture.

We developed and financed many projects, but the first was called Donkult, the Donbas Cultural Forum. The name combined "Donbas" (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) and "culture," referring to the culture of Donbas. It took place in Kyiv in 2014, at a time when many people in Kyiv imagined Donbas as a region of marginalized people—separatists, drunk miners, and similar stereotypes. That perception was very widespread due to TV.

The forum lasted two weeks and included about one hundred events: music, cinema, theatre, literature, lectures, and discussions.

Jacobsen: Were there particular cultural fields where you saw more production, such as painting or filmmaking?

Sagaidak: It covered a wide range of cultures. It included history as well. We approached culture broadly, although the events were mainly artistic. We had about fifteen thousand visitors during the event.

Jacobsen: That is a large number. Was this the opening year?

Sagaidak: Yes. The event was free for visitors. It took place in a large building that our business partners allowed us to use without charge.

For me, as a manager, it was one of the best projects. At that time, we used money from our business to finance it. We saw that not only our own perspective changed, but that many people also changed their views of Donbas. After this forum, I decided that I did not want to return to business. Initiatives like this were extremely important for connecting Ukrainian regions.

Afterward, we developed a methodology for working with regions. It was unique. We spent two years preparing the next cultural forum between two distant regions of Ukraine. After Kyiv, we organized a forum about Donbas in Lviv. Then we held a forum in Kharkiv on Galychyna (Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions), the western Ukrainian region of Lviv. After that, we organized a forum about the Kharkiv region—Slobozhanshchyna—in Transcarpathia, in Uzhhorod.

Just before the full-scale invasion in 2022, we had been preparing the next forum about the Transcarpathian region in Odesa.

The preparation process for these forums consisted of three important parts. The first was identifying cultural leaders, activists, and progressive, dynamic individuals open to new ideas. We did not want only folkloric presentations. We wanted people who were ready to create something together with colleagues from other regions. We had curators for visual art, theatre, and other fields, and we worked collaboratively to produce the events.

The goal was to produce something new. For example, a theatre play in which the director was from Donbas but the actors were from Lviv, or a symphonic orchestra project featuring collaborators from different regions. We brought these people together and met with them in person. We discussed what was common and what was different between our regions. We discovered something interesting: sometimes the traditions of food, or even recipes, were very similar. The same dishes existed in Odesa and Uzhhorod, for example. They had different names, but they were essentially the same.

Jacobsen: Would you describe this as a process of discovery or a process of rediscovery of the culture?

Sagaidak: Both. For some people, it was a discovery. Many of our colleagues from Lviv said that when they went to Kharkiv, it was the first time they had travelled far into eastern Ukraine. We relied partly on research conducted by USAID in 2014, which showed that only about 25 percent of Ukrainians had travelled within their own country. Only twenty-five percent. Ukraine was still a relatively poor country, and many people had limited opportunities to travel.

For me, this was surprising and somewhat shameful. I had travelled throughout Europe, the United States, and the Caribbean, while many people in my own country had never visited other Ukrainian cities.

We brought cultural workers and cultural managers together. We discussed the program, the differences between regions, and their shared elements. We then discussed how to present these differences, highlight tensions when they existed, and emphasize similarities. We found that in many basic values, Ukrainians are quite similar across regions. For example, family traditions remain strong in most regions.

Take food. Every mother cooks borshch and insists that guests eat more. Hospitality is a very common value. If someone needs a place to sleep, families often offer a place to stay. These traditional values are widely shared across the country.

Jacobsen: Was it good?

Sagaidak: It was excellent. In Ukrainian culture, food often communicates warmth more effectively than speech. Our methodology was to bring people together and encourage them to create a joint product. This usually required three or four visits between the cities involved, along with research into the region. After that collaboration produced a shared project, the forum itself became the visible result, the top of the iceberg. The forum lasted two weeks and included hundreds of events in many locations.

Jacobsen: These seem like huge undertakings. What did you find? Were there geographic unifiers of the culture?

Sagaidak: Yes, many elements of everyday life were shared. Social gatherings, family traditions, and rituals surrounding events such as funerals were very similar across regions. There were also shared traditions inherited from the Soviet period. For example, March 8—International Women's Day—remains widely celebrated. In Ukraine, it is usually not framed as a feminist political day. Instead, it is more of a cultural tradition in which people celebrate women with flowers and appreciation.

On March 8, International Women's Day, it was traditional for every man to present flowers to women. It was almost obligatory—one day, when this gesture was universally expected. There were many shared customs like that. At the same time, there were also clear differences between regions. In the West, there were Catholic and Greek Catholic communities, while in the East, Orthodox Christianity was more common. Language also varied.

There were more Russian speakers in the east and more Ukrainian speakers in the West. Around 2014, there was increasing discussion—often promoted by Russian narratives—that Ukraine was partly Russian and partly Ukrainian. What we discovered was different. Even in cities considered very "Russian," people often spoke a mixture sometimes called "Ukrainian Russian," a blended everyday language shaped by both.

In some places, the diversity was even greater. In several villages around Mariupol on the Azov Sea, people spoke Greek. These communities descended from Greeks who had resettled there centuries earlier after leaving the Crimean region during conflicts involving the Ottoman Empire. Many of them preserved elements of Greek culture and language. In the Carpathian region, many people spoke Hungarian or Romanian. So when someone tries to present Ukraine as a simple two-language country, they miss the reality. Ukraine is deeply multicultural.

At that time, I realized that our real richness lies in this multiculturalism and in tolerance toward different communities. In one village, you might find one street where people mainly speak Hungarian, another where Russian is spoken, and another where Ukrainian is spoken. Yet weddings and celebrations often coincide. Before the war, this diversity was rarely considered a problem.

We eventually organized four forums. It was a unique experience. Each forum brought together about three hundred cultural participants—artists, curators, musicians, and writers. Across four forums, that meant roughly one thousand participants from many regions of Ukrainian cultural life. Because of that network, I sometimes say I am one of the richest people in Ukraine in terms of contacts, messages, and relationships within the cultural community.

My colleague and co-founder of our charitable foundation and I sometimes felt tired or discouraged. She once asked me, "We organize cultural forums, performances, and exhibitions—but does this really help?" Culture operates as soft power. Its effects are subtle and not immediately visible, so it is difficult to measure.

Then came February 24, 2022, the start of the full-scale invasion. After each forum, we created group chats for participants to continue the discussions. Over time, those chats became quiet because the forums ended. But early that morning—around 5:30—I saw those chats suddenly become active again. People from Lviv and Uzhhorod were writing to their colleagues in Kharkiv, Odesa, and Kyiv, asking how they could help. They offered to host people in their homes and asked what support was needed.

For me, that moment was the true result of our work. The connections were direct—person-to-person, peer-to-peer. Those people had become a real community. It was very moving. During those first days of the invasion, many artists from Kharkiv and Odesa were hosted by colleagues and families in western Ukraine.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Olga.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a blogger on Vocal with over 130 posts on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978–1–0692343; 978–1–0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369–6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018–7399; Online: ISSN, 2163–3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719–6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bankat In-Sight Publishing. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20–0708028), and others.