NENYA: Reclaiming a Life After War in Ukraine
Displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Yana Smaglo did not merely rebuild her life in Britain. She founded her own business NENYA, worked through loss, responsibility, and an unfinished sense of home.
She had fifteen minutes.
There was no time to decide what leaving would mean, only to move. Explosions had already broken the morning when Yana Smaglo understood that whatever life she had been living, was about to end. Friends were driving west. The city was no longer a place to stay. She left with only what could be carried and what might be needed to survive. “You don’t have time to reflect,” Yana says. “You just do whatever you need to do to be alive.” Nearly four years later, Yana runs Nenya, a fashion distribution company in London which represents Ukrainian manufacturers internationally. What followed her departure has often been framed as rebuilding a life interrupted. She does not describe it that way. To Yana, building a business in Britain was not only about starting again, but about continuing, working through disruption while staying connected to Ukraine.
Before everything changed
Long before the war, Yana had already learned how to build something from nothing.
She studied finance in university, but it was never her dream. “I really wanted to study design,” she says. “My grandma was a physicist. For her, design was not a profession, so finance felt like the practical choice.” She was a strong student. While still studying, she worked as an accountant, later becoming a manager in a financial department.
Fashion, however, never disappeared. “From childhood, it looked like a fairy tale,” she says. “Magazines, beautiful images. It looked like a nice life, and I wanted to be part of that world.”
Eventually, she returned to that dream, to get trained in design and sewing while stepping away from finance as a profession. In 2012, Yana staged her first fashion show with her second collection. She remembers vividly standing alone nervously. “I didn’t know how anything worked, I just brought my clothes and hoped for the best.”
“I didn’t think that collection was my best one, but it was really nice. I still remember people messaging me after the show and all the encouragement,” she calls. “From my young mind at the time, it was the moment of success.”
From there, she built slowly. Collections grew. She reinvested what she earned, took on outsourcing work for independent brands, and learned production by working inside factories.
“It was always small steps,” she says. “But important ones.”
By the time she moved to Kyiv during the pandemic to develop a luxury line, her supply chain stretched across Ukraine and everything was moving forward.
“It was another level for me, another level of expenses and actually designing. Much higher…”
The morning of invasion
All of that disappeared in one morning.
On February 24, 2022, the world woke up to a war in Europe, the largest and deadliest one since World War II. Russian president Vladimir Putin announced what he called a “special military operation”, launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
That morning, Yana woke to the sound of explosions. Her phone was flooded with messages from friends, confirming that the war had begun. She ran to her office nearby, grabbed her laptop, locked the door and returned to her apartment. Shortly after, her phone rang again. A couple of friends told her they were driving towards the border, and she had 15 minutes to decide whether to go with them.
“There was no time to think,” she recalls. “I took documents, money, and my laptop. I also grabbed a couple handbags in case I needed to sell them for cash. And that’s it.”
Almost everything else stayed behind, including her clothes, shoes, furniture, designs, the physical evidence of years of work. At the time, none of it mattered. “When you’re scared, nothing else matters,” reflects Yana, “You don’t think about what you’re leaving, You just need to be alive.”
They drove west of the country, away from the capital. Yana waited for a week, hoping the invasion would end as abruptly as it had begun. It did not. As reality set in, she crossed the border into Poland, then moved through Germany and France. When the UK opened its refugee programme, she relocated again, arriving at the end of March 2022.
Starting from zero
Yana’s first impression of Britain was surreal. “Everything looked like a Harry Potter movie,” she laughs.
She settled first in Huddersfield, then Leeds, before moving to London. The early months were disorientating for Yana. Language was a major barrier and systems were unfamiliar. Renting, healthcare, employment, culture…… nothing worked the way that it did at home.
On the other hand, Yana confessed that safety was surprisingly one of her concerns. Britain, she had assumed, would feel secure. Instead, Yana said she was targeted multiple times in Leeds and London, with several attempted thefts that unsettled her. “I feel safer in Ukraine now than I do in the UK,” Yana says frankly.
Being an immigrant, Yana says, means uncertainty and living between places.“You don’t belong here [Ukraine] anymore,” she reflects. “And you don’t belong to another country. You’re somewhere in the middle.”
Work became a way out of that suspension.
Nenya and working to survive
“I needed money to take care of myself, " she says. “I didn’t have much time to think.”
By spring 2022, she was already working. She started researching the market, bringing stock into the country, and attending exhibitions. “Everything was very fast,” she says. “Task after task.” Later that year in October, the company was formally registered. Yana named it Nenya, a Ukrainian word connected to home and family, as a tribute to her homeland and grandmother who died shortly before the invasion.
Today, Nenya operates less like a personal brand, but a network. Yana stresses that Nenya was never solely a vehicle for her recovery or financial stability. “I didn’t build this just for myself,” she says. “If I only wanted stability, I would have found a job. This was about doing something that still helps my home.”
From the beginning, Nenya was shaped by what she left behind. Production remained in Ukraine and manufacturers continued under wartime conditions.“There are a lot of people behind this,” Yana added. “It’s not just about me.” Nenya currently works with three manufacturing partners in Ukraine, supporting hundreds of workers across their supply chains. Decisions made in London ripple back to the factories operating under air raid alarms.
Yet, the business has struggled recently, Yana confesses. Shifts in global trade and rising costs have forced Nenya to shift away from markets it once relied on. Yana describes the past year as one of the most difficult since founding the company. The work is increasingly demanding, often exhausting. Still, it gives her something to keep moving on.
“It gives you a reason to keep going,” Yana says. “And sometimes, that's all that matters.”
Unfinished
Alongside rebuilding came guilt.
“The first time I felt it was when I was already in England,” she says. “Bars were open. People were having fun. But Ukrainians were still hiding in basements.”
At the time of the interview, Yana was speaking from Kyiv, where she had returned temporarily. It was only a few days after the interview that Russian forces had carried out another overnight strike on the city.
Over time, Yana has accepted that reclaiming does not always mean resolution. “My life now is very far from the life I had before,” she says. “I'm in a different country and who knows if I will ever have something home again.” Living between countries has left her in between —- deeply connected to Ukraine, but no longer living within the daily realities; living in Britain, but never fully settled. “I’m in the process,” she added. “I don’t now.”
Travel is long and safety uncertain, but Yana insists on returning to Ukraine twice a year. “Of course it’s not safe,” she says. “But you never feel so much like you when you’re at home.” Language, shared understanding, and familiar streets, even under bombardment, were the things that anchor her.
Yana does not describe her life now as complete. “My life now is very far from the life I had before,” she says. “I don’t have a home. I don’t have anything.” Reclaiming, for her, remains unfinished.
Asked what the best possible life would look like, she hesitated. “It’s not real, and I don’t think it would be real anymore,” she says. “If I imagine, it would be in Ukraine, with possibilities to travel freely, at home surrounded by my close ones.”
“This would be the best life, to have the opportunity to do whatever I want.” Yana paused and added.
Until then, she works.