Name: Ivona Kostyna
Age: 22
Education: Kyiv High School No. 112
Profession: Chair of the board of Veteran Hub, deputy chair of Pobratymy
Did you know? Kostyna studied in British-curriculum schools in Libya and Nigeria as a child of a Ukrainian diplomat. She graduated in Kyiv, but didn’t apply for college, choosing instead to hitchhike across Europe.
Ukrainian veterans returning home after fighting Kremlin-backed forces in Donbas are often seen as a source of problems or hazards. Ivona Kostyna, the co-founder of Veteran Hub in Kyiv, disagrees. She thinks veterans aren’t a problem, but rather a solution for Ukraine’s future.
“We don’t work with a problem, but with great human resources, whose strong experience and skills can be used in civil life, and from whom we can learn a lot,” says Kostyna.
Kostyna, who is 22 and never went to college, opened Veteran Hub in November to bring together several non-profits helping veterans.
Although Kostyna didn’t serve in the military, she had a traumatic experience of her own.
She was one of about 400 people whom Berkut riot police brutally dispersed on Nov. 30, 2013 in the first days of the EuroMaidan Revolution. The violent dispersal brought more people to the streets and they eventually drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014.
To help supply friends who went straight from Independence Square to defend Ukraine from Russia’s war in the Donbas in 2014, Kostyna organized a fundraising art festival in Kyiv. She brought supplies to soldiers at the war in September 2014 until March 2015.
The fallout of being a part of a close-knit, somewhat isolated community is that it can be difficult to reintegrate into regular society, Kostyna says. The process is exacerbated with personal trauma, like the death of a close friend that Kostyna experienced during the EuroMaidan Revolution. “I didn’t know about traumatism and its psychological effects back then,” she says. “But at the front lines I understood that the stories of soldiers are similar to what I experienced after the EuroMaidan Revloution.”
In 2015, Kostyna joined Pobratymy, a non-profit that provides social and psychological support. She also helped assemble Ukraine’s first team for Invictus Games, a sports competition for injured war veterans. During the spring of 2018, Kostyna ran a media campaign “Thanks to You” that encouraged people to express gratitude to veterans.
Her latest undertaking, Veteran Hub, which brings together eight nonprofits that provide legal, psychological and employment assistance to veterans. Kostyna drafted the project and gathered financial support from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.
“It’s just a start,” she says. “When the war ends, the issues of veterans and their families will be very important for the whole country in the next 20 years.”
