The Ukrainian skatepark sanctuary on the frontlines of war

It’s mid-after­noon on Fri­day, May 30, and Pavlo Ihnatenko stops mid-sen­tence and picks up his lap­top. ​“Stop, one moment – lis­ten,” he says to me, on the oth­er end of the line. He takes me out­side of the room that he is seat­ed in next to trans­la­tor Stanislav and skater Bohdan, out into the open air, and points towards the sounds of air raid sirens and shells hit­ting the ground nearby.

“Life has changed pret­ty dras­ti­cal­ly – a lot of peo­ple moved away from town, a lot of peo­ple have died dur­ing the war,” he says. ​“And we live each day as our last, because we don’t know if we will wake up tomor­row morning.”

The trio are call­ing from Kry­t­ka, an expan­sive indoor skatepark set in an abon­doned fac­to­ry in Okhtyr­ka, a small city in east­ern Ukraine set just around 50 kilo­me­tres (31 miles) from the bor­der and front­lines of the war with Rus­sia. Pavlo heads up Street Cul­tures Okhtyr­ka, a non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion that runs graf­fi­ti work­shops and skate class­es, and cre­ates spaces for young peo­ple to express them­selves and find community.

Pavlo had always been inter­est­ed in skat­ing as a sport and cul­ture, binge-watch­ing skate videos in the ear­ly days of the inter­net, while also ingest­ing ref­er­ences from Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion chan­nels such as MTV around the turn of the cen­tu­ry. ​“We were amazed by the cul­ture of the South­bank in Lon­don, and we just want­ed to make space for peo­ple to come,” he explains. ​“I’m not a skate­board­er at all, but I was real­ly influ­enced by skate cul­ture after see­ing it on TV – we had no infra­struc­ture for skate­board­ing in our home­town at all, but while grow­ing up and see­ing and con­sum­ing all of this media, we were inspired by it.”

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Kry­t­ka first opened in 2023, after a labo­ri­ous eight-year long process that took years to gut and clean out the fac­to­ry space before they could even begin con­struc­tion. The idea to build it in the first place came along a decade ago, when Pavlo first met Bohdan, who would skate around the city using cheap, brit­tle boards that he bought from super­mar­kets, before he began to trav­el 100km to the city of Kharkiv, where the near­est ded­i­cat­ed skate shop exist­ed to pur­chase parts to make his own boards.

Of course, its build­ing process was dis­rupt­ed first by a glob­al pan­dem­ic, and then Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022. The land­scape of life in the city – par­tic­u­lar­ly for young peo­ple – changed overnight, as peo­ple either fled west or out of the coun­try alto­geth­er. Accord­ing to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), as of Feb­ru­ary 2025 there were 3.7 mil­lion inter­nal­ly dis­placed peo­ple, while there were 6.9 mil­lion record­ed refugees across the world.

“When a lot of peo­ple start­ed leav­ing in 2022, it felt like every­thing was frozen in time – like our soci­ety had frozen,” Bohdan recalls. ​“But we did not lose hope, we even par­tic­i­pat­ed in the inter­na­tion­al Go Skate­board­ing Day dur­ing the Russ­ian inva­sion. But in 2022, after that day, a lot of peo­ple were mov­ing away because it was insuf­fer­able stay­ing in the city. We had con­stant bom­bard­ments from mis­sile and drone strikes.”

Hav­ing done much of the ground­work before the inva­sion, the final push came with the help of a short win­dow of fund­ing com­ing from the USA that allowed them to gath­er the mate­ri­als to bring their visions to life. ​“Every bolt we turned was like a small resis­tance,” says Pavlo. ​“Some days we worked in silence, under shelling, with­out pow­er. But the space grew, and with it, so did our hope.”

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Before the war, a small but bur­geon­ing elec­tron­ic music scene exist­ed in the city, and nat­u­ral­ly Pavlo was a reg­u­lar at par­ties. But the attri­tion of young peo­ple leav­ing the city, plus the dan­ger of hold­ing raves with­in a war­zone, has put brakes on the cul­ture. ​“We have a say­ing in Okhtyr­ka, that it’s a lit­tle Bris­tol of Ukraine,” Pavlo says. ​“We love a lot of break­beat, we love indus­tri­al tech­no, drum & bass, and graf­fi­ti cul­ture.” 

“We had a dis­so­nance, because peo­ple were dying and we were hav­ing a par­ty,” Pavlo says. ​“It was this con­stant fight with our soci­etal norms, but we had a drum & bass DJ who we invit­ed, Igor Zadorozh­nyi, who is a war vet­er­an, and he said: ​‘Fuck it, let’s just have it. You don’t know where or when you will die. You don’t know when any­thing will hap­pen, Just fuck it. For­get about it.’”

To this day, music remains an impor­tant part of Krytka’s DNA. Along­side the half-pipes and ramps, the space also has DJ equip­ment, which its young peo­ple are encour­aged to use. Fast breaks often blare out of the room’s speak­ers while skaters attempt kicks and var­i­als, and small-scale gath­er­ings are held there where peo­ple can get togeth­er and dance. Next to the skatepark are rows of ping pong tables, while Kry­t­ka also has table foot­ball and a bar.

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With access to skate­boards being lim­it­ed in Okhtyr­ka, Street Cul­tures pro­vide them for free so any­one can pick one up and try to pull a trick. But most of all, it’s a place where young peo­ple can go to skate, as well as hang out with their friends in a safe set­ting. For a short peri­od of time, they can insu­late them­selves from the hor­rors of the past three years, and counting.

“It’s more than a skatepark, and it’s more than skate­board­ing itself,” Pavlo explains. ​“It’s a cre­ative space where you can just walk in there and express your­self in any kind of form you want – you can do a live event there, you can paint in there, if you have a strong desire just to play table ten­nis and speak with peo­ple, you can do that. It’s about meet­ing peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and creativity.”

Street Cul­tures are cur­rent­ly putting the final touch­es on a short doc­u­men­tary, which cap­tures the skaters, musi­cians and friends who put Kry­t­ka togeth­er. Their hope is to show the film at screen­ings around Ukraine, before tak­ing it to Euro­pean film fes­ti­vals, though they antic­i­pate leav­ing the coun­try will be difficult.

It’s a por­trait of resilience, set direct­ly in the mouth of war. ​“The film is about peo­ple, and com­mu­ni­ty – the skatepark is just a metaphor,” Pavlo says. ​“We had this whole com­mu­ni­ty that was built around the skatepark, and we want­ed to inspire com­mu­ni­ties in oth­er towns and cities, to take inspi­ra­tion and move for­ward. Cul­ture isn’t only about tak­ing, it’s about giv­ing, mov­ing for­wards and evolving.”

Fol­low Street Cul­tures Okhtyr­ka on Insta­gram.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

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