‘We know the whole Donbass by sight now’

I am a volunteer in the mobile distribution team of the Humanitarian Center “Here to Help” of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. We always went to the contact line delivering the humanitarian aid. It was not scary, but it was quite dangerous because the situation was unstable at all times. We made from two to four trips a week. That is, we were busy almost the whole week.

Every day was memorable, I would say, because it is simply impossible to forget someone else’s human grief, which we saw every day.

I think our trip closer to Pisky touched me most of all. When we saw that some 20, 30 or 40 people lived there in the villages without electricity and without water supply. We were probably the only ones who had contact with the outside world. And their contact was only with us because the place could only be accessed if you have a pass or an entry permit. It was hard to see how people lived year after year and nothing was changing in their lives. And complete devastation around.

Poetically or figuratively speaking, [our visits were] probably a kind of a light in the window because it was a very significant and regular help to vulnerable layers of population.

People were waiting for us. They were smiling and looked very happy. We were pleased to know that. I feel like we know all residents, the whole Donbass, by sight now because over many years of our work faces of those people have become sort of near and dear to us in almost every locality.

Like for everyone else, the war has turned [everything] upside down, I would say. We lived with completely different dreams in mind. Nobody learned to be a volunteer, right? This is a profession that is not taught in high schools.

I have become more open-hearted. I began to attend to other people’s grief, to notice other people’s joys, to share my emotions with everyone. This kind of a warm light in the heart will be until old age, I believe. And we will tell our children and grandchildren how it was because we were immediate participants in all those events.

I dream about peace. To be able to direct our kindness, which we have sown in the hearts of other people and in our own hearts, towards something slightly different. We will have a lot of [volunteering] work to be done towards children, towards protection of animals. And I would not like to recall those hostilities any more.