Video chat with Russia: Where Ukrainian voices still break through unfiltered

Los iankovers band. Yanko Peñafort is second from the right. Photo: The band's Facebook page

When Yanko Peñafort opens his video-chat app, he does not sit in front of the camera to meet strangers for fun. He wants to encounter Russians: soldiers in uniform, teenagers, men in undershirts. His phone sits on a tripod, the lighting is perfectly set. Gathered around Peñafort, the Colombian with long dark hair, stand his fellow performers: musicians in embroidered costumes from Colombia and Venezuela with guitar, bass and drum.

This time a man in a black T-shirt and silver chain appears. He says he is from Moscow. Peñafort introduces himself as Colombian. Only half the truth – a strategic bit of concealment so the conversation does not immediately end. Then Peñafort takes a breath, and his deep voice sings a Ukrainian folk song. Words about “our glorious Ukraine in distress” hit the man from Moscow.

At first the man nods his head. Then you can see the meaning dawn on him. Surprise, irritation – and suddenly a conversation begins, the kind that is hardly possible in Russia’s public sphere anymore. In a Russian living room, the voice of a Colombian unexpectedly breaks through the front line. Later Peñafort will upload the video. Hundreds of thousands will see it.

In a country where the media can hardly work freely and articles read like Kremlin press releases, anonymous video roulette has become one of the few places where Russians encounter Ukrainian voices unfiltered. The Colombian-Ukrainian musician makes deliberate use of this.

Peñafort, 31, grew up in Bogotá as the son of a Ukrainian mother and a Colombian father. He spent summers in Kyiv. Freedom, he says, meant Ukrainian streets to him back then, not Colombian ones. In Ukraine he stood by the river singing South American songs, while in Colombia he performed Ukrainian folklore. “Before I could speak, I was already playing instruments.” These two worlds shaped his work – until the full-scale Russian invasion.

When the news of the attack reached him on February 24th 2022, he was on stage in Bogotá. He finished his set, then cancelled his tour. Since then, he says, music has no longer been entertainment for him. It became expression, conviction and support.

In Ukraine, folk songs have been experiencing a renaissance since the war began. For many, these songs are a way to make their culture and language visible, a symbol of national identity. In a war that calls their culture and the existence of their state into question, folk music has become a cultural bulwark, a symbolic resistance to the invasion. It is as if Ukrainians are saying: “Now more than ever.”

Videos of traditional dances and songs have spread thousands of times across social media. Peñafort joined the movement and began singing almost exclusively in Ukrainian. His first video-chat appearances were directed at Ukrainians. He wanted to show that “You are not alone.”

His band also re-formed. He sought people who shared his pain. Isamar, a Venezuelan woman, lost her cousin, who was travelling through Ukraine in 2022. A bomb struck him and almost all his companions enlisted afterward. None survived.

Unexpected on-screen appearance

In 2024, the group logged into the video-roulette app again. They selected Ukraine as the target country. But on the screen a Russian soldier looked back. Apparently he was using the app from occupied territory. Peñafort and his band sat before the camera. Silence. No one said a word. Peñafort felt paralyzed and cut the connection. Shortly afterward he decided to do things differently next time: he would not disconnect. He would sing.

The first soldier they played for immediately insulted them. “He behaved like an animal,” Peñafort says. Others reacted similarly. “It’s as if they’re allergic to Ukrainian songs because they believe the Ukrainian nation must disappear.” The aggression motivated him to continue. He selected Russia as the target country.

Some viewers are partly drunk, he says. They do not even understand what is happening. Others think the language is Czech or Slovak.

Once conversations move beyond insults, they often revolve around seemingly trivial matters: the pronunciation of individual words behind which entire worldviews lie. The man from Moscow insists that “Ukraine” can only be pronounced correctly in Russian. The Ukrainian form is a mistake, Ukrainian itself merely a colloquial speech, at best a dialect.

Some react surprised, almost irritated that someone contradicts them. Others try to correct Peñafort, as if they want to restore an order that is never questioned in their everyday lives. The idea that Ukraine has its own culture, its own language, its own identity. In this digital space, that idea meets people in real time who have never heard it or are not supposed to hear it.

Beyond the screen

Only a few ask questions, the kind that are taboo on the Russian internet.

In these fleeting encounters, it becomes clear how deeply the war has seeped into Russian society. Reactions range from aggressive loyalty to routine indifference to those rare moments of doubt that are hardly visible in public anymore. For Ukrainian viewers, it becomes apparent how violence extends beyond the front.

One time, a Ukrainian soldier appeared on the screen: dark jacket, cap, wooden planks in the background. The band plays a song about resistance. The soldier fights back tears. It feels good to know, he says, that people in South America are aware of this war. “I know you from the news,” he says. “They show how you give the enemy a good kick in the ass.”

Karolina Benedyk is a freelance journalist writing whose work has been published in Der Spiegel, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and Tagesspiegel. She recently finished a six-week fellowship with New Eastern Europe as part of the International Journalists’ Programmes (IJP).

activism, internet, Russian invasion of Ukraine, YouTube