In Ukraine, summer camps provide kids a ‘childhood during war’
Nikita Sapiha likes to remember that his dad had “golden hands” – he could repair just about anything friends and family brought to him to fix.
He also used those hands to make things. “I learned from my father to work with wood,” says the 11-year-old, sporting a summer-season buzz cut and a Vans T-shirt. Brightening, he adds, “He also taught me to play soccer. He did a lot.”
Nikita speaks in the past tense because his father was killed last September when he stepped on a mine. He had volunteered for the Ukrainian army after Russia invaded in February 2022.
Nikita likes to remember all the good things his father taught him, but sometimes he gets sad when he thinks about what he’ll miss out on. “My father really liked to fish,” he says, “and he always told me that someday he’d teach me to be
