I never planned to become a tour guide in Kyiv. Yet from 2016 to 2022, guiding international visitors through my city became one of the most meaningful chapters of my life, a time I still remember with warmth and love.
I was incredibly fortunate to find work that I genuinely enjoyed, and that also became my profession and source of income.
Looking back now, I realize that becoming a guide was neither a whim nor a coincidence. In many ways, it was a natural result of everything that had interested and shaped me over the years.
I had loved history since my school days. As I grew older, that curiosity expanded to geopolitics and to a broader interest in how the world works. I was fascinated by other countries, their cultures and ways of life, while learning English opened an entirely new world to me.
I was born and grew up in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. When I was a teenager, the Soviet Union, a country of fifteen republics that had seemed permanent — collapsed, and almost overnight I found myself living in an independent, sovereign Ukraine.
Then, during my student years, Ukraine went through the Orange Revolution. Less than a decade later came another defining moment: the Revolution of Dignity.
Both would profoundly influence the way I understood my country, my own Ukrainian identity, and eventually the path that led me to become a Kyiv guide.
It Started with the Orange Revolution
In 2004, Ukraine witnessed its first peaceful revolution, known as the Orange Revolution. As a student at that time, a vanguard of the revolution, I actively participated in demonstrations in my small native town.
One day, I went to the capital, Kyiv, to Independence Square ‘Maidan’ to join the biggest venue of the ongoing demonstration against the pro-Russian president.
I will never forget my first impression of standing in Maidan with thousands of like-minded people surrounded by dazzling snowfall. The fiery orange emblems of revolution and democracy, flags and banners, shone like rays of hope, breaking through the glistening snow.
That was a heartbreaking moment for me. I wanted Ukraine to be part of the European family and to cut the Russian imperial dominance forever. At the time, I could not have imagined that this would not be the last revolution I would witness.
The Revolution of Dignity
Nine years later, in 2013, I was working in the banking sector when Ukraine entered another defining period: the Revolution of Dignity, also known as Euromaidan. This time, the consequences were far more tragic.
Seeing people dying, being killed, and tortured just because they wanted to live in a country where democracy, rights, and laws work broke my heart. I felt my Ukrainian identity more strongly than ever.
I wanted people around the world to know about Ukraine and why Ukrainians fight so bravely for their independence. I knew that there might not always be a way to help or save anyone, but I was also seeking empathy and understanding.
I can’t say exactly how or when, but at some point, the idea came to me to start giving tours of Kyiv to international visitors.
I could share my knowledge of the country’s history and the capital’s cultural landmarks, while also conveying something more important: what Ukraine truly is, who Ukrainians are, and what shapes the way we live and see the world.
Becoming a Kyiv Tour Guide
In December 2016, Best Kyiv Guide website came to life. At the time, I was working full-time in IT, having changed careers after leaving the banking sector following the Revolution of Dignity. I started the project as something I could develop in my free time alongside my regular job.
I immersed myself in Kyiv’s history, reading extensively and attending lectures and seminars by experts on the city’s history and archaeology. The deeper I went, the more captivated I became.
Every new street, building, historical detail, and hidden story made me see Kyiv differently. I was discovering the city I had lived in all along, and falling in love with it in a completely new way.
Six Years of Guiding Kyiv
What began as a side project gradually became my full-time profession. As bookings grew and I gained more experience, guiding took an increasingly important place in my life.
From 2016 to 2022, I welcomed travelers from all over the world to Kyiv, and no two tours were ever the same.
Different visitors noticed different things, asked completely different questions, and often made me look at my own city from perspectives I had never considered before.
Those years taught me far more than Kyiv’s history. Guiding taught me how to explore a place: to look beyond the obvious attractions, search for the stories behind them, and notice the small details that give a city its character. I still travel that way today.
How many wonderful people I met during all those tours! Many of my former guests stayed in touch long after their tours ended.
Then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic closed borders around the world. Almost overnight, my bookings disappeared. For a while, I experimented with virtual tours, and by 2021 I was making plans to develop Best Kyiv Guide further as international travel slowly began to return.
I thought the most difficult period for tourism was finally coming to an end. I was wrong.
In January 2022, my former tourists started reaching out to me, warning that Russia would invade Ukraine and that war was imminent. They urged me to leave Kyiv immediately.
Like almost all Ukrainians, I couldn’t believe that war was truly possible. “Russians would never do that,” I tried to convince myself, pushing away the thought of the most dreadful event imaginable: war?
A few weeks later, on the morning of February 24, everything changed. That morning began the next part of my story.