Decks and Dilemma: Sve Yurchenko
On skateboarding and watercolour painting, and working on the frontline of a war
Decks and Dilemma is a series of articles focused on skateboarders who are living through world changing events from wars to social unrests. The reason I wanted to write this article series was because of a brief part of the documentary, Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator1, where some of the interviewees talked about the rise in popularity of skateboarding in the 1980s, in the context of the politics and social scene at the time which was conservative with the image of Ronald Reagan defining those conservative forces.
I was always interested with skateboarders not just because of the cool factor but also because many of them would consider themselves as being outcasts or rebels in the sense that they are against any form of authority the most common one of them being the police but also the government as well. Usually supporting either progressive and left wing candidates and causes or some supporting the politically uncorrect right in Donald Trump or abstaining from the system altogether. Even then, like everyone else skateboarders exist in the same political context as everyone else, especially for those who live in extremely turbulent regions of the world. Hope you enjoy this series.
There are many cities that are considered home for skateboarders, whether if it’s near the beaches of Los Angeles, or the city streets of New York City and Tokyo, to the skateparks of Montreal and London. Yet skateboarding has also been popular beyond North American and Western European cities, one of those cities and countries is Kyiv and Ukraine.
While the invasion by Russia in February 2022, has been the main reason for drawing eyeballs to Ukraine, the country has a culture that has survived many centuries under both Russian Imperial rule and Soviet rule prior to its independence in 1991. Since the invasion, the country has embraced its culture, ranging from the work of it’s poets artists, and musicians.
Even skateboarding is seen as an outlet for many Ukrainians to express themselves. One of them being, Svitlana Kurchenko, a watercolor artist and skateboarder from Kyiv, who is currently volunteering for an NGO in Eastern Ukraine, where we talked via computer, near the frontlines of the invasion.
Growing up and getting interested in Skateboarding
Born in 1988 in the small town of Yuzhnoukrainsk near Ukraine’s capital and largest city, Kyiv, Yurchenko described her life as normal as any other kid as she grew up at the time. Growing up at a time when Ukraine had become one of the newest countries in the world, after the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 where the Russian language and culture was still influential at the time. Outside of the classroom, she found fun from various activities ranging from running in her apartment block to playing dodgeball at her school. At that time while many in the West were introduced to the newest technology of the home computer, Svitlana did not have access to it up until she was 12, although her brother was more interested with it than she was.
Her first experience of witnessing skateboarding was seeing kids skating on the national monuments which she thought was strange. “Why would you spend all day jumping around on these monuments.” as she reminisced from her residence in Kramatorsk, a city that is near the frontline fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops. Yurchenko also recalled how skateboarding was something that was taken up by kids who either had a beer in one hand or a cigarette in their mouth while doing these tricks.
She instead decided to take up longboarding which she used as her mode of transport and loved the overall convenience that it provided. For her, longboarding provided her a small community in Kyiv which felt like a family to her. Even using it when she was travelling around Europe.
It was at that same time when she was in Berlin that she traded her longboard in for a skateboard, after skating with her longboard in a skate bowl, she and her husband at the time immediately went to a skate shop and bought a skateboard. After that experience she would skate in various skateparks taking on rails and trying to do kickflips.
Aside from skateboarding, another passion she has is watercoloring citing the influence of the paintings from her pictures from her parents along with the interesting designs and shapes that came from doing it. “It was interesting, I didn’t know how people invent something, and how they come up with something new.” she said.
Political upheaval and the war
Around the same time when she started skateboarding, Yurchenko would also experience the difficult period in the early to mid 2010s in the country. First with the protests that took place in Kyiv’s Maidan Square in 2013, when over a million people turned out to protest against the Ukrainian President at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, over several issues, mainly, Yanukovych’s decision to reject a trade deal with the European Union (EU) over doing one with Russia, but also Yanukovych’s record over corruption and human rights.
For Yurchenko, it was the first time she gotten involved in politics latter that got her to protest as she was reluctant to protest at first given that she wanted to understand more about what the protests were about.” When the protests first started, I remember that a lot of people went there to see what was going on, for me I didn’t want to go because of that, I wanted to understand if I am going to protests, why was I going and what was my purpose there. ” she explained.
However, Yurchenko stopped going to the protests as the frequent news surrounding them had overwhelmed her. As she tuned out of the news, the political situation in the country had worsened as on March 18th 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and a month late, war broke out in Eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian army and Russian backed separatists. While Yurchenko had some knowledge of what was happening, the war in Eastern Ukraine was distant to her as it was faraway from where she lived.
For the next few years until the full scale invasion, Yurchenko tried learning about what had led to these events, even if it was complicated for her while also living her life as she continued traveling, painting with watercolours and skateboarding. One of the most notable moments in her life came when the most famous skateboarder, Tony Hawk liked and reposted a video of her doing a kickflip and later following her on Instagram. “I was absolutely shocked that he reposted me, I saw small skate pages reposting at as well, and many people were following me because of that post.” She happily explained.
Those interests would later be halted once the full scale invasion took place, at the time, Yurchenko was with here friends in Germany having feared that something big was going to happen. Her fears were proven to be true as she received notifications and calls on her phone that Russian tanks and troops had entered on to Ukrainian territory.
With her then husband walking on foot from Kyiv to the border, her animals which she own living in Kyiv, and the overwhelming emotions over what was happening she headed back to Ukraine. They would volunteer for a few days in the city of Uzhorod and later head back to Kyiv to get her animals back. She would spend the next few months doing volunteer work helping with putting supplies in boxes for refugees and soldiers on the frontline.
Working on the Frontline and what it means to be Ukrainian for Svitlana Yurchenko
Through a friend, Yurchenko would later volunteer with an NGO organization called Base UA in October 2022, as she wanted to help with efforts in the frontline. The organization helps provide humanitarian aid and evacuations of civilians in frontline towns and cities. Yurchenko says most of those that are still in the frontline villages are elderly people. She noted that “For them it’s really complicated to leave as they have never left the places they live and have a close attachment to where they live.”
She also said that for many of them, they can not believe that there are people who could help them as they fear of being left behind. “Some of them even wait for when the Russians to arrive, although it is not all of them, sometimes they don’t care about the politics they just want to live their lives.” Yurchenko added.
In terms of her pride in being Ukrainian there has been a shift for Yurchenko. Before the invasion, I knew I was Ukrainian but I was more of a cosmopolitan person who wanted to travel and live abroad but now, I can not see myself moving to another country or place. She continued saying, “I think [Vladimir] Putin has done a lot for Ukrainians to understand that their Ukrainian, because for many years, the Russian language and culture was prevalent throughout the country and no one realized that it was strange. Since the start of the Invasion, many people have switched from speaking Russian to Ukrainian, as we have been through this common struggle with each other. ”
As patriotism has risen since the war, many Ukrainians have also loathed not just Russian leaders and military for the war, but also the people as well. For many of them they view, many of the Russian public from soldiers to the everyday person as being complicit to the war in their country. This was seen most recently with the controversial screening of the film, Russians At War, which many Ukrainians have criticized the film for being overtly propagandistic and providing a sympathetic view of the Russian soldiers.
“While I understand how many Ukrainians feel towards Russians, I do not hate every Russian… I would not want Ukrainians to keep their hatred for many years to come.” Yurchenko expressed. She hopes that her fellow country men and women that after a while can still interact with Russians. She added that “If were stuck with these feelings, this war could happen again.”
With that being said, Yurchenko wants Russians to understand what happened and what is currently happening in her country along with the effect that their silence has had on this war. She further added, “If I were to talk to someone who are guilty of war crimes and people who went to this war to kill because they believed that, I think they cannot change and get the punishment that they deserve.”
While Yurchenko continues to do her work of helping civilians living near the frontline, she does still find some time to skateboard and watercolor. “For me, skateboarding, takes away all the things I’m concerned of, I always feel excited when I skateboarding as I am always trying learn something.”
If you want to support Svitlana’s work, check out Base UA’s website and donate there, you can follow her instagram here, if you want to purchase her water colour paintings, click here as well.
The documentary directed by Helen Stickler, focuses on skating career of Mark Rogowski who went by the nickname Gator. In 1992, Rogowski was sentenced to a 31 year to life prison sentence for raping and killing Jessica Bergsten. As of 2024, Rogowski remains in prison after several attempts at granting parole were reversed by the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, citing in 2022, that Rogowski’s inability to understand his actions as being the main reason for rejecting his parole.