The ongoing war with Russia has had a very dismal effect on Ukraine’s tourism industry, causing some creative guides to entertain some alternative sources of income. One of them is providing tours of recent battlefields and bombed sites to curious Western tourists, often at steep prices.
This is adventure travel at a new high and demonstrates Ukraine is resilience, including in travel and tourism.
One of the tour operators offers excursions to witness “destroyed military equipment” and “the aftermath of missile strikes” near Kyiv for €150 ($158). For €250 ($262), the company organizes tours to the towns of Irpin and Bucha, where visitors can see a “cemetery of destroyed cars” and hear testimonies regarding Russian war crimes.
Furthermore, for an additional fee, WarTours facilitates visits to the city of Kharkiv to the site of a recent Russian missile strike.
Each tour offers encounters with “witnesses of Russian crimes” alongside a “certified guide [who] will provide all necessary information regarding the war.”
According to tour operators, the enterprises are “not about money, but about the materialization of the war,” aiming to “prevent this from ever happening again.” Many tour companies contribute a portion of their profits from wartime tourism to the Ukrainian military.
The Ukrainian government recognizes the value of transporting groups of Westerners to locations associated with Russian war crimes, with the National Agency for Tourism Development offering specialized training for guides and developing “memorial tours” in and around Kyiv.
Certain tour operators charge reasonable fees for their services and refrain from organizing trips to the front lines; however, some companies take a less cautious approach. One company provides a week-long “war tour” priced at €3,600 ($3,777), while others conduct multi-day trips to the region involved in Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive for €3,300 ($3,462).
Since the Ukrainian military launched an unexpected invasion of Russia’s Kursk Region in August of this year, a different company that previously organized tours to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) has declared that it is now accepting reservations for visits to the Kursk NPP, located there.
Even though the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant remains under Russian control, the company says it has begun receiving requests from tourists in the United States and the United Kingdom to visit the facility.
