Stuck in Milan after fashion week, Ukrainian models help war effort any way they can
- Unable to return home, a number of Ukrainian models in Italy’s fashion capital have turned to volunteering to help their country against Russia’s invasion
- ‘If necessary, I would join the army,’ one says
Ukrainian model Bogdana Didenko Nevodnik was in Milan for fashion week when Russia invaded. Unable to return home afterwards, she now sorts aid parcels in the Italian city for her war-torn country.
“I felt it was a bit stupid, unreal, to be on the catwalk when people are dying. I was ashamed and had the feeling that the spectators didn’t really care,” the 22-year-old says.
Every time air raid sirens sound at night in the river port city of Kamianske, her home, Didenko Nevodnik is woken by a smartphone app set up to warn her. She lives the war minute by minute, from a distance.
At first, her instinct was to “return by the first train or bus” to her home, just upstream of the central city of Dnipro. But she was dissuaded by her husband, a young surgeon in Ukraine, and her family.
Now, her long, dark hair tied at the nape of her neck, she works long hours alongside some 20 other volunteers, sorting through aid packages left in the small courtyard of the Ukrainian consulate in Milan.