“It’s the best way to show people the problem”
Photo: @valerissh/TikTok Before Russia invaded Ukraine, 20-year-old Valeria Shashenok worked as a freelance photographer, documenting the miscellany of daily life in Chernihiv. Scroll back through her TikTok feed and you’ll find gauzy videos of surfers from her European travels, vacation selfies, and dance videos with friends in her hometown. Now, most of those friends have fled Ukraine. “After the 24th of February, everything stopped,” Shashenok says.
Juxtaposing TikTok tropes and trending audio with footage of her destroyed city, Shashenok’s videos have gone viral. While jaded and darkly funny, her footage doesn’t hide the devastation. She says she uses humor as a coping mechanism, but also to make people care. Her TikToks are a way to show the war from her eyes, a reprieve from the bleak news streams in the West. “Everybody cries now,” she says. “If I cry too, it’s not helpful.”Trying to stay fine, but you see the situation in my country.
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