Ukrainian Artists Lana Chornohorska and Yurii Kostyshyn killed in Action

Lana "Sati" Chornohorskа, 27, a servicewoman from the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, was killed on 1 January after being hit by a Russian drone on the southern front. 

Detector Media reported that Lana Chornohorskа was an artist, cultural figure and activist. She was born in Zaporizhzhia, studied in Dnipro and lived in several cities during her life, including Lviv, Kyiv and Kharkiv. She worked for the Kharkiv-based media outlet Liuk from 2020 to 2021.

Chornohorskа volunteered to support Ukraine's defence after the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion. In 2024, she joined the Udachnyky unit of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, completed training and conducted missions on the battlefield.

Photographer and writer Yurii Kostyshyn. Source: Ira Pokotulo / Facebook

Yurii "Kit Kharakternyk" Kostyshyn, a 48-year-old Ukrainian photographer, writer and serviceman, has been killed in action. 

Since 2023, Yurii's frontline photographs have been exhibited in Ukraine and internationally, particularly solo shows in Lviv, Ternopil, Kyiv and Vilnius, Lithuania.

Photographs by Kit Kharakternyk appeared in #4.5.0., an art book by Inna Honchar, Three Medals in a Drawer, a poetry collection by Valerii Puzik, and A Critic to the People, or Poems of My Childhood, a poetry collection by the late Ukrainian soldier Nazar Mialikhuliiev.

One of Yurii's photographs also appeared on the cover of Ruin, a release by the band Zabavka i Dmytryk.

In 2022, Yurii's work was published in Ybn bld rsn (F**ing Russians), a charity book project by Martin Yakub, and in 2023, in Voices, an anthology of military writers.

He also contributed to the audio collection Unbroken, in which servicemen read Ukrainian poetry. He recited In Black and White, a poem by Yurii Ruf.

Main Image: Lana “Sati” Chornohorska. (Photo: udachniki_uda / Instagram)