Ukrainian soldiers relax in saunas set up by former Berkeley resident

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Two combat medics relax in the sauna at a Repower retreat in the Carpathians. Credit: Olha Satina/Repower

Editors’ note: Reporter Cecilia Nowell traveled to Kyiv, Kharkiv and a small village in the Carpathian mountains near Uzhhorod to report this story.

Roman Zukh rests on his stomach on the wooden bench as Petro gently beats two bundles of birch leaves across his back, gathering the warm air of the sauna as he massages Roman’s tired body.

In just a few days, Zukh will be back with his battalion on Ukraine’s frontlines, where he works as a combat medic in the battle-weary Donetsk region. But for now he is safe and warm — receiving a traditional venik treatment from a local bath master at a recovery retreat for frontline medics. He’ll return to the sauna every night of the 10-day program, the experience reminding him of quiet days with his wife and children before the war.

“When I go to [the frontlines], we don’t have sauna,” Zukh says in English, referencing his position in the Donetsk region, and then clarifying, “We have, but not good.” He and the other men in his battalion have built a sauna to warm up after long days, but it can’t compete with a real facility.

The time Zukh and the other 42 frontline medics attending this retreat in Ukraine’s quiet Carpathian mountains are able to spend in the sauna is funded by Sauna Aid, an international charity dreamed up by former Berkeley resident Mikkel Aaland and supported by a range of Bay Area saunas.

Combat medic Roman Zukh (left) relaxes in a chan, a Ukrainian hot tub. Credit: Olha Satina/Repower

When news of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine reached Aaland nearly four years ago, he felt like he was witnessing the beginning of World War III. A longtime sauna enthusiast, who’d grown up with a sauna built by his Norwegian father in his family’s Livermore living room, Aaland’s brain immediately flickered to ways the world’s sauna community could help. He found himself remembering the quick action of the Japanese Sauna Society, which had erected a tent sauna after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 for families to decontaminate and later relax. He wondered, as civilian infrastructure including bathhouses in Ukraine came under fire, if volunteers with the Helsinki-based International Sauna Association could extend a similar gesture to Ukraine.

In November 2022, Aaland would arrive at the Ukrainian border with the first of many saunas that the newly founded Sauna Aid would donate to support frontline and refugee communities. Since then, Aaland and his colleagues have developed a guide for bath masters on dealing with trauma, led workshops for refugees, transported saunas to the frontline city of Kharkiv and funded sauna retreats for combat medics like Roman. Their aim was as much to provide a safe space for impacted Ukrainians as to share the health benefits of sauna, which can reduce anxiety and help with sleep.

“Any situation where it’s appropriate for a mobile sauna unit to come in, we want to be there,” said Aaland. “There is no war in sauna.”

Sauna Aid immediately received widespread support from Bay Area saunas, Aaland says, including San Francisco’s Archimedes Banya, Alchemy Springs and Dolphin Club, and the East Bay’s Albany Sauna.

Located along Solano Avenue, Albany Sauna has displayed a Ukrainian flag outside its white stucco entrance since February 2022, and hosted periodic fundraisers for Sauna Aid, including one in September. The pre-World War II Finnish sauna is emblematic of an oft-forgotten golden era of Bay Area saunas that Aaland explored in his book about global bathing cultures titled “Sweat,” which he wrote while living in Berkeley in the 1970s, but that he says took a hit in the 1980s and ’90s during the city’s HIV/AIDS crisis.

Freddy Adams, whose family has owned the Albany Sauna since 1977, said she understands Sauna Aid’s mission: Like so many parts of being in the sauna, “it’s about safety.”

A retreat in the Carpathian mountains

Initially, Sauna Aid focused its work on transporting mobile saunas from Sweden, Austria, Slovakia and elsewhere in Europe to Ukraine — including a tent sauna for the city of Kharkiv, a container sauna for frontline soldiers, mobile saunas for the cities of Kupyansk and Kherson and a wooden sauna for a sports center in Staryi Sambir.

“On the frontline, soldiers generally sit in the trenches for 24 hours, and then they switch out,” Maksym Bondarenko, a member of the Kharkiv city council who volunteered to help ensure the donated saunas safely crossed the Ukrainian border, said through a translator. With strikes on local power infrastructure, it can be hard to find a hot shower during their breaks. “So it’s really great to have this thing because you can get warm over there super fast.”

Combat medics at a Repower retreat in the Carpathian mountains enjoy tea between sessions in the sauna. Credit: Olha Satina/Repower

Soldiers who “saw too much horror in the trenches, end up in the sauna, in the warmth, close [their] eyes, and there is no war,” he said.

In 2023, Sauna Aid connected with Repower, a Ukrainian charitable organization hosting psychological recovery retreats for frontline medics, predominantly in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark.

“They would cover the cost of borrowing or renting the sauna, or many times are finding the sauna,” said Sebastian Lindstrom, Repower’s head of international cooperation. “Then they would check in their network of sauna masters to find people who can come” and “do sauna rituals in the evening.”

In July 2024, Sauna Aid sent a mobile sauna from Sauna og Sønner to Repower’s program in Denmark, staffed by SaunaGus masters Jens Bach and Anette Larsen. In September 2025, it lent a mobile sauna from Mobile Bastun and tent saunas from Bast Sauna to the group’s retreat in Gothenburg, Sweden, alongside the support of bath master Kim P. Penderson.

At Repower’s first retreat on Ukrainian soil, hosted in the Carpathian mountains this October, Sauna Aid covered the cost of a hotel’s sauna and local bathmaster Petro.

“It was the first time when I experienced this with someone who knows what they are doing,” Yaroslav Havrylyuk, a 28-year-old combat medic who attended the retreat, said through a translator. Although Havrylyuk had grown up going to the sauna, he’d never received a venik treatment from a bath master. “This is the best feeling I’ve ever had in a bath for all my life.”

A combat medic uses a venik to massage his partner in the sauna at a Repower retreat in the Carpathians. Credit: Olha Satina/Repower

Before the war, volunteer medic Olga Priymak used to go to the sauna every week with five of her closest friends in the frontline city of Sumy. She’s kept up the tradition for 17 years, despite the war, but only two of those friends remained in the city. At Repower’s October retreat, she went to the sauna every night.

“It’s not possible to visit the sauna every day in Sumy,” she said through a translator. “There’s not many saunas left.”

After the long days of psychological workshops, hikes and art classes in the Carpathians, Priymak said she couldn’t go without the hot sauna air to relax.

“When you’re in the sauna, you’re disconnected from the outside world,” said Lindstrom, who advocated for Repower to add a sauna component to its psychological recovery program. “It’s a very precious reminder of what life is about. To be with your chosen family.”

Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting and translation. This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

Ukrainian soldiers relax in saunas set up by former Berkeley resident

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