Ukraine is one of those countries I wish more travelers had discovered before the world learned its geography for all the wrong fucking reasons.
Because Ukraine can be extraordinary.
Kyiv is a sprawling collision of golden-domed churches, enormous boulevards, underground metro stations and layers of history that rarely bothered removing the previous layer first. Lviv feels completely different, with cobblestone streets, cafés and architecture that could convince you someone quietly relocated part of Central Europe while nobody was paying attention.
Then there’s Chornobyl.
I visited before Russia’s full-scale invasion and walked through abandoned Pripyat, explored the exclusion zone and stood beneath the absolutely enormous Duga radar array, a Cold War monument to the Soviet Union’s apparent belief that anything worth building was worth building fucking gigantic.
Ukraine was fascinating precisely because it wasn’t polished into a tourism product. Soviet architecture sat beside beautiful churches. Incredible food cost suspiciously little. History felt complicated, visible and very much unfinished.
Today, that reality is brutally different.
Russia’s full-scale invasion has brought war, destruction, displacement and continuing danger. This isn’t the moment for edgy battlefield tourism or treating someone’s active war as your adventurous vacation backdrop. Travel conditions and official advisories matter enormously.
But war doesn’t erase what Ukraine is.
It’s historic, beautiful, complicated, resilient and filled with places worth understanding.
Map of Ukraine
Destinations to Explore in Ukraine
Dark Places, Worse Stories
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Travel Guides
9EntriesLatest Destinations in Ukraine
Touring the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone a generation later
Visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone provides a unique opportunity to witness the haunting remnants of a catastrophic event frozen in time, offering a sobering perspective on the consequences of nuclear disaster.
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Chernobyl: Humanity Fucked Around. Reactor 4 Found Out.
I spent years obsessing over the Chernobyl disaster, so naturally my equally questionable friends and I decided to visit. In September 2017, I finally stood outside Chernobyl Reactor 4, photographed the newly covered nuclear disaster, met some radioactive-adjacent wildlife, explored the Exclusion Zone and somehow returned home without glowing. Then HBO made Chernobyl famous and suddenly everyone understood why the hell I went.
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Pripyat: The City That Never Got to Come Home
49,000 people evacuated the town of Pripyat overnight. Visit the abandoned, radioactive ghost town of Pripyat located next to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
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Duga Radar: The Secret Soviet Antenna Everyone Could Hear
Hidden in the forests near Chernobyl is Duga Radar, a supposedly top-secret Soviet antenna nearly 50 stories tall whose infamous “Russian Woodpecker” signal could be heard around the fucking world. I arrived completely unprepared for the sheer scale of this Cold War monstrosity and immediately fell in love with it.
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