Nick Tan could see the front line from the roof of a bombed-out building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
“Half the stairs were blown out,” he recalls. “But [guides] took me to the roof, and from a distance I could see the black smoke of the frontline positions. We even saw some fighter jets flying overhead to go bomb them. It was a wild experience.”
Tan, an American in his thirties who works in tech, is one of at least hundreds who have bought into the emerging market for war tourism in Ukraine. His self-described “obsession” with the war led him to trawl Reddit forums, where he found a local guide offering a taste of the action. He swiftly wrote a will and flew to Poland, before travelling to Kyiv by train.
Tan’s guide took him to towns north of the Ukrainian capital that were devastated in the early months of fighting, including Bucha where hundreds of civilians were killed. He saw burned Russian tanks and a bridge that was destroyed to slow the invaders’ advance. The American admits to “morbid curiosity” about massacre sites, but his guide steered him away from them.
Most local people Tan met during that trip in late 2024 were happy to share their stories, he says. But on one occasion, a man in Kyiv approached him angrily as he took photos of a bomb site. His guide says the man thought it was “disgusting… to come here and just take photos of all the destroyed things that he holds dear”.
Tourism in Ukraine has been devastated by the war. Just 2.5 million foreign visitors arrived in 2025, compared with more than 16 million a year before the war, according to official statistics. Most arrivals are “foreign delegations, volunteers and journalists”, according to the state agency for tourism. Foreign governments advise against non-essential travel to Ukraine and insurers won’t provide cover.
What remains is a darker, more controversial form of tourism. The top attraction for Kyiv on TripAdvisor is listed as “The Horrors of Ruzzian Occupation,” which offers to show visitors “burned apartment blocks” and “real history about the massacre” in Bucha and nearby town, Irpin.
The experience, which only has five-star ratings, is operated by Capital Tours Kyiv at a cost of $135 (£102) per adult. The company’s manager – and current sole employee – Svitozar Moiseiv, says the “Horrors” tour now accounts for 95 per cent of his business. Several other companies offer similar trips – including Tan’s guide.
The market for dark tourism has surged in recent years as travellers seek out new experiences. One recent report estimated the global value of dark tourism experiences, such as visiting the killing fields of Cambodia or the Pennsylvania crash site of United Airlines Flight 93, one of the four flights hijacked on 9/11, at $34.2bn (£25.6bn) for 2026, and projected this would reach $38.6bn by 2030.
Dr Peter Hohenhaus, editor of the Dark Tourism website and author of Atlas of Dark Destinations, believes we are seeing a “trend to get away from what the mainstream tourism prescribes we do on our travels”. But he adds that some visitors to Ukraine are a distinct category of “danger tourist,” who are seeking out active warzones rather than dark history.
For Moiseiv, the dark tourism tours began when he took journalists to recently de-occupied territories towards the end of 2022 in exchange for gas money. That eventually became a regular offering for foreign visitors, and it now runs once or twice a week. He tailored the experience with input from local residents “to fill it in a way that’s not too traumatic and not too easygoing”.
He says tourists are typically men from the US and Europe. Most are respectful, with just a few “who were looking for adventures and wouldn’t really listen to the story of what happened”. But even they made a contribution, the guide says. Fifty per cent of his income goes to Ukraine’s military.
Moiseiv believes that telling Ukraine’s story to the world is important for maintaining support. He points to large donations from wealthy visitors such as businessmen Richard Branson and Howard G Buffett after they came to witness the destruction caused by Russia’s invasion for themselves. Residents of the towns he tours have also seen the benefits of foreign visitors, he adds.
“People understand that because of foreign help, Bucha and Irpin are being rebuilt,” says Moiseiv, pointing to funding from foreign philanthropists and NGOs. “They understand this is not [done] by the Ukrainian government.”
Local authorities also see value in such tours. Dmytro Hapchenko, managing director of the executive committee of Bucha city council, tells The i Paper: “The more people learn the truth about the crimes committed in Bucha and have the opportunity to see these places with their own eyes, the more difficult it becomes for Russia to deny these atrocities, manipulate the facts and spread disinformation around the world.”
Hapchenko notes “ethical risks” if visitors are insensitive. “Bucha is not an attraction. It is a living city and, at the same time, a place where people were killed, where families lost their loved ones, and where many residents who survived the occupation continue to live today.”
But he adds: “If the purpose is to understand, to remember and to bear witness to the truth, then I believe the value of such visits significantly outweighs the potential risks.”
Ukraine’s state agency for tourism has sought to take control of the emerging field, raising concerns over cases of companies offering visits to torture sites or the front lines. “We don’t want to promote dark tourism,” said Natalya Tabaka, chair of Ukraine’s State Agency for Tourism. “We don’t want to make the trauma of war like a theatre.”
The agency has created its own project, Places of Memory, with memorial sites across the country that aim to tell the stories of the war in a way that is “more responsible and sensitive.”
Tabaka also acknowledges an overlap between humanitarian volunteers and tourists, with many visitors combining these experiences in what she calls “solidarity tourism”.
Tourism even extends to the front line, according to a soldier from Western Europe fighting for the Ukrainian army. “War tourists, we have plenty of them,” he says, describing new arrivals that only stay long enough to secure photos and videos for social media.
But as foreign interest grows in Ukraine’s dark attractions, Moiseiv yearns for a return to the simpler times of guiding visitors around Kyiv’s great landmarks and cultural destinations.
“I feel very tired and drained,” he says. “When you are taking people on a tour where you go from one grave to another, and show broken houses, it leaves an imprint on the mental side. I wish I could come back to what I was doing before.”