Stories that you confided to us

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Stories that you confided to us

About the Museum

The Museum of Civilian Voices is the world’s largest collection of stories from civilians who suffered from Russia’s war against Ukraine

Our mission

The mission of the Museum is to collect, file, categorize and share the stories of Ukraine’s civilians for better understanding of life amid the war in the name of a better future

Our objectives

To be the world’s largest archive of Stories told by Civilians who suffered from hostilities in Ukraine

To create a reliable source of information about the life of Civilians amid the war told in the first person

To become a unique psychotherapeutic project that will be contributing to the psychological well-being and mental health of Ukrainians traumatized by the war through sharing of their stories

Our collection

From the first days of the war in 2014, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation deployed its Humanitarian Center Here to Help in order to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Donbass. Thanks to its activities, the Center helped to save three and a half million people. Many of those people shared their stories with the Foundation.

The Foundation became a holder of thousands of stories from Donbass civilians and put them together as a unique online museum. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Museum has become a chronicle of tragedies of all the Ukrainian people.

All the stories posted in the Museum of Civilian Voices were told by their authors in the first person and reflect the opinion and experience of a specific narrator. They were collected and published with the permission of their authors. By publishing the stories, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation Charitable Organization is not responsible for the accuracy and/or reliability of the content of the stories and individual judgments expressed by their authors. All rights reserved.

Our slogan

Preserving the past and the present for a better future

Our team

About the Museum

Iryna Blazhan

Programme and Project Director, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation

About the Museum

Andriy Mishchenko

Project Manager
The Museum of Civilian Voices
founded by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation

 

About the Museum

Olga Guk

Chief Project Editor, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation

 

About the Museum

Oksana Boyarynova

Programme and Project Manager, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation

Awards and premiums

Testimonials

Many thanks to those who have been working on the project. This is a very ambitious initiative, almost unprecedented for our country.

Speaking in a global context, there are very few examples to follow. A thousand collected stories  is a very big source of data and already a great success.

The goal is very noble, so I wish you every success.

Anton Drobovych

Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory\Remembrance, 2020

Frankly, I am fascinated by the Foundation's idea to create such a museum and to make the voices of civilians heard. This is a very important project.

We hear the civilian voices to pass them on to future generations.
So that they understand what a nightmare an armed conflict can be.

I believe that this museum has an enormous potential.
My impression is extremely positive, I am amazed at the magnitude of work and I wish you every success.

Pablo Mateu

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Representative in Ukraine

The Museum of Civilian Voices is a very ambitious project, which belongs to the future.

It is hard to deal with memory. No society can talk these grievous traumas through without the support of the government and private initiatives. Especially if you remember that our traumatic factor, the war in Donbass, is still ongoing.

This is one of the most difficult cases to deal with. The magnitude of this mission is incredible.

The Museum of Civilian Voices is unprecedented. The endeavour to create such a museum is breaking a new ground right now.

Anton Drobovych

Director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory\Remembrance, 2021

The Foundation pursues a very important mission. Civilians living in the conflict area deserve to be heard. Their testimonies will help study this conflict.

Alex Lenaerts

Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Kingdom of Belgium to Ukraine

War is such a thing that every cell in your body wants to forget, because it’s painful. But, if we forget it, chances are it will never end. And it can happen again.

The mission of the museum is to let everyone, no matter where they are, hear the stories of these people. For everyone to remember what we have been through. For everyone in their place and in the role to think what they can do to stop this. To think how they can help those people supported by the Foundation all these years.

Musa Magomedov

Member of Parliament of Ukraine 

This museum is absolutely exceptional in the Ukrainian context. The country earlier saw some isolated polls and in-depth interviews conducted by researchers, but their findings did not often become public.

This is a lifetime opportunity to speak about the war not from a rostrum with high-flown rhetoric at congresses of political parties, but to speak about the war with the locals who endured it in 2014-2015 and are living in it right now.

These witness accounts are not made “40 years later”, but “here and now”. This is the history of our time, being written right now.

Yevhen Monastyrsky

Historian, an IDP from Luhansk, consultant of the Museum of Civilian Voices

About the Foundation

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is Ukraine's biggest private charity. Today, the Foundation implements three large-scale programmes: Rinat Akhmetov - Saving Lives, Rinat Akhmetov – Here to Help, and Rinat Akhmetov for Children.

Rinat Akhmetov – Saving Lives This programme includes the Fighting COVID-19 in Ukraine project.The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is implementing one of the biggest assistance projects in the fight against coronavirus in Ukraine. The initiative pooled the resources of the Foundation and all Rinat Akhmetov's businesses operating under the umbrella of SCM Group.Sourcing more than 200 cutting-edge ventilators to public hospitals was a linchpin of the project helping the country fight the pandemic.

On the initiative of Rinat Akhmetov, the Foundation had earlier implemented a project, 200 Ambulances for Ukraine, as part of its Rinat Akhmetov – Saving Lives programme. Over a record time of just six months, the organisation provided 200 off-road ambulances with the cutting-edge equipment to public hospitals across Ukraine. Of these, 22 vehicles were equipped with neonatal incubators and ventilators.This is the biggest donation of one philanthropist to the Ukrainian healthcare system over the entire period of independence. 

The Rinat Akhmetov for Children programme brings under its umbrella a dozens of projects ranging from the rehabilitation of injured children to the fight against orphanhood and its implications. These include medical assistance, surgery, special medical equipment, innovative implants, physical/psychological rehabilitation, medical examination, and adoption assistance. The project has helped almost 10,000 children find families!

THE RINAT AKHMETOV FOUNDATION

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