They’re referred to only as “the hat-wearers”: an isolated, peaceable community of staunchly traditionalist Christians living on the banks of the Dniester River in western Ukraine, so austerely modest in their principles that they don’t even give themselves a name. Add it to the long list of things they’re content to live without, from electricity to motorized vehicles to a physical church. (Indeed, the colorful caps and headscarves they’re required to wear seem an atypically indulgent detail by comparison.) But while living in strenuous isolation from modern life has its benefits in times of war, the shockwaves running through Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion must ultimately reach the hat-wearers too — and the resulting tensions between past and present, between isolation and solidari

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