Every few months, an article runs in a major newspaper under some variation of the headline: “Tourists Flock to Ukraine’s War Zones.” The subtext is usually discomfort — the implication that visiting a place of ongoing conflict is ghoulish, voyeuristic, morally questionable.
I am a Kyiv tour guide. I have been organising tours since before the full-scale invasion, and I have watched the nature of who comes to Kyiv change profoundly since February 2022. I want to say something direct about what I have actually observed.
Who actually comes
“War tourist” conjures an image of an adrenaline-seeking thrill-monger flying into a combat zone for kicks. That is not what I see.
The people who book tours with me are — in rough order of frequency:
Journalists and researchers who want to understand context beyond what their editors assign them to cover. They come on their own time, paying out of their own pockets.
Activists and advocates who are going to go home and write, speak, campaign, donate. They want primary experience to ground their advocacy.
Ordinary people — teachers, engineers, nurses, retirees — who have been watching the news for three years and feel that watching is insufficient. Many of them have already donated to Ukraine in various ways. They want to see.
Ukrainians from the diaspora visiting for the first time since the invasion, or returning for the first time since emigrating decades ago.
Business travellers extending a work trip because they want to understand the place where they’re doing business.
In three-plus years of guiding, I can count on one hand the number of visitors who seemed to be there for the thrill. The overwhelming majority come with the kind of serious, reflective attention that the subject demands.
The economic argument
Here is something the “dark tourism” framing entirely ignores: visiting Ukraine right now is an act of economic solidarity.
When international tourism collapsed after February 2022, it devastated an already-stressed Ukrainian economy. Hotels, restaurants, guides, drivers — entire livelihoods dependent on visitors who stopped coming. Every foreign tourist who stays in a Kyiv hotel, eats in a Kyiv restaurant, and hires a Kyiv guide is contributing directly to the economic resilience of people who are simultaneously helping fund a war effort.
I am transparent about this: up to 50% of what I earn from tours goes directly to support Ukraine’s defense capability. My guests know this. Many come specifically because they want to contribute in a way that is more grounded than wiring money to a charity they don’t know.
The witnessing argument
There is a long tradition of bearing witness to atrocity as a moral act — journalists in Cambodia, novelists at Auschwitz, diplomats visiting Srebrenica. We do not call this dark tourism. We call it the responsibility of documentation.
Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin are not historical abstractions. They happened three years ago. Physical evidence of what occurred there remains. Residents who experienced the occupation are still present and willing to speak. The opportunity to document, to understand, to carry these accounts back to your country and your community — that window does not stay open forever.
When it closes, what remains is photographs and statistics. While both matter, neither is the same as standing on Yablunska Street and talking to someone who was there.
My position
I am not neutral about this war. I am a Ukrainian. I was in Kyiv when the invasion began. I have watched friends lose family members, watched the city I love become a target, watched the country I live in fight for its existence.
I guide tours because I believe that what is happening here needs to be witnessed by as many people from as many countries as possible. Not out of despair — out of the conviction that understanding creates solidarity, and solidarity matters.
If coming to Kyiv and seeing this with your own eyes is dark tourism, then I am proud to be running dark tours.