Protest by pedicure: How nail salons lift morale in Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine: Viktoria Gulieva sat in a hot-pink armchair wearing a denim tube dress over her pregnant belly and her dark hair slicked back in a tight bun. Her white Pomeranian dog perched on her lap. A salon worker delicately painted pale pink polish onto her toenails, which were spread apart by heart-shaped foam separators.

"We do our nails because this is like emotional support for us," said Gulieva, 30, herself a beautician. "We do something to feel better. Because of everything going on, because of the war, we are on an emotional edge. If we get our nails done, we can at least look at our hands, and say, 'Those look good.'"

Paying attention to beauty may seem a trivial concern when the very fate of Ukraine is at stake, with Russia stepping up its bombardment of Ukraine's cities and Moscow's troops grinding forward on the eastern front. But for many women, it is an important ritual of daily life.

The act of keeping up appearances has also become a small way for Ukrainians to show Russia that this war has not broken them.

Even a simple act of pampering can be difficult to carry out. Power outages and air-raid sirens can make it difficult for women to have their nails done -- yet many clearly make the effort.

Cases in point: a surly bank teller with polished tan fingernails punctuated by glittery pale swirls, a friendly waitress with fingernails painted like blue crocodile skin, a government worker in a Kyiv suburb who once attended up to a dozen funerals a day and helped supervise the digging of mass graves but who still sports a perfect French manicure.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian women have adapted. They still wear long shiny dresses in Kyiv, the capital, but with practical shoes, often white tennies -- making it easier to move quickly if an air-raid siren goes off. They tie their hair into complicated updos when a lack of power means no hot water.

A female Ukrainian soldier on the front lines posted her beauty ritual on Instagram: how she braids her long reddish-brown hair, how she does a gel manicure wearing camouflage.

The general manager of L'Oréal in Ukraine recently also described how beauty rituals boosted people's morale, calling it the "red lipstick effect." Even women who have taken jobs in the mines -- because the men who once worked there are serving in the army -- sometimes sport long red fingernails.

"Our women are unstoppable," said Donna Todorova, manager at Kukla salon, where Gulieva had her nails painted.

Women in Ukraine have a reputation for beautiful nails, and the country's nail professionals -- called "nail masters" here -- are coveted hires at salons throughout Europe. Their manicures are often not bland monochromatic nails: Every nail has long been seen as its own canvas, often detailed like a miniature painting.

But after Russia's invasion, nails became something else. Many women decorated their nails with patriotic symbols, painted blue and yellow for the country's flag, or with sunflowers, ubiquitous in Ukrainian fields, or red poppies, officially designated as a symbol of remembrance for the war's dead. A salon called Mimi Miss in Kyiv still advertises on Instagram by saying, "Choose us -- invest in the death of the enemies," next to patriotic blue and yellow hearts.

Fingernails also became ways to identify the dead. A clinic employee killed by missile debris in Kyiv in July was recognised by her pink manicure with the white polka dots, the victim's daughter said. A heating plant operator shot by Russian forces while riding her bike in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in March 2022 was identified by her manicure: four red nails and the fifth, painted white, with a small purple heart bordered in silver.

Back then, when Russian troops pushed toward Kyiv, they took over a beauty salon in Bucha called Profi, near a major intersection and some of the worst carnage. Snipers set up in the salon window on the second floor, shooting at cars and buses, recalled the owner, Iryna Davydovych, adding that her family had stayed in the basement of their nearby home before escaping to live nearby with her mother. The Ukrainian army then pushed the Russian invaders out.

"The Russians left behind destruction and a lot of trash," Davydovych, 54, recalled.

In April 2022, just in time for the Easter holiday, Davydovych and her husband finished cleaning up the salon, and electricity was restored. The business reopened. Davydovych's husband then joined the army. He's still on the front lines.

"Sometimes you sit down and cry," she said. "But in the morning you get up, put on lipstick, go out looking beautiful and water the flowers."

Fifteen people now work at Profi, including four nail masters. Tetiana Kravchenko, known as Tania, is so popular that she is booked up weeks in advance. On a recent Wednesday, she painted the nails of Natalia Fomenko in designs of fluorescent green and black.

"We follow Tania around," said Fomenko, who also brings her husband to the salon. "If she ever goes to Kyiv, we'll follow her to Kyiv." If Kravchenko isn't working, Fomenko added, "it's a catastrophe."

"I'm always here," Kravchenko said, bent over her work.

Now, perhaps in a nod to the third year of the war and to people's moods, the patriotic symbols on nails are rarer. The most popular styles in Ukraine are nudes, French manicures and the occasional bright pastel, nail masters said. Kravchenko said that more women were opting for practical manicures. "Natural -- it's the new trend," she said, waving her hands, which were manicured but not painted.

Still, at Kukla, one 21-year-old nail master -- who decided on her future profession when she was in the ninth grade -- likes to show off her artistic creations, in which she glues delicate butterflies onto fingernails or even pierces them with hoops.

Every customer at Kukla had a war story.

Gulieva's family once owned their own beauty salon, on the left bank of the Dnieper River. In March 2022, a rocket destroyed the salon, shattering the panoramic windows and ruining much of its equipment for hydro peeling and permanent makeup, Gulieva recalled. She fled to Germany, along with her mother, sister and brother. But a few months later, Gulieva returned, against her mother's wishes, to be near her husband, who had joined the army on the front line. Her mother and sister now work in German salons.

Clients sometimes call Kukla to ask about potential cancellations because of power outages or missile strikes, but that rarely happens. On July 8, when missile strikes killed more than 42 people across Ukraine, mostly in the capital Kyiv, workers and salon employees took shelter in a nearby subway station.

"When the air raid was over, the customers returned and the nail technicians continued their work," Todorova said. "As far as I remember, nobody canceled their appointments that day."