After three and a half years of war, Ukrainians keep reaching deeper. Music has been a balm – a preserver of culture and provider of spiritual relief. In a Monitor video in late 2022, Jingnan Peng profiled a Ukrainian minstrel whose mission was to buttress Ukrainian resolve, sometimes by singing in bomb shelters. As Russia’s aerial assaults have persisted, reliable safety can be subterranean. (Dominique Soguel joined our podcast in 2023 to talk about schools there that had gone underground .)

Today, Howard LaFranchi reports from Kharkiv . There, a theater’s makeshift, bunkered performance space has become “a holy place,” its stage director says. “Being here allows us to shut the door …,” she tells him, “and to enter a space where we can breathe and renew our faith in love and hope.”

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