Dear friend,
You’ve asked me about life in Ukraine…
It’s not an easy task to describe our routine. Perhaps, some glimpse ofit, some rough draft?
Without any epithets and metaphors.
March 2022 was the time for gradual recovery after February 24th. At least I was finally convinced that
this was a real war.
In the Ministry of Social Policy and asked for a list of all nursing homes in Ukraine. They willingly e-mailed
it to me without comments for none of us had time for long conversations.
I began to methodically call the nursing homes located in the war zone.The geriatric nursing home in
Okhtirka was the second in my list.
Okhtirka is (but not now!) a sweetest small town. I visited it twice before the war to monitor one of local
project developed by a public library. I love libraries with their special atmosphere and the special smell
of books. This one was unusual: there was a big sitting room decorated with nearly half a hundred wall
clocks. Many of them were in working order and ticked incessantly and conscientiously sang every
quarter of an hour.Now this library is smashed by a missile.
But let’s turn to the local geriatric nursing home.
I dialled the number without any hope to have a reply. I knew that Okhtirka was heavilybombed. But the
director of the nursing home replied immediately. Our dialogue was short and to the point:
- How are you there?
- Everything is fine. We are in the basement. All 120 residents and fifty staff.
- In the basement?
- In combat conditions. There is neither lighting nor heating.
- Any food?
- No food at all. No delivery, because the shelling does not stop.
- Can I help you?
- You can. We need cigarettes. Several blocks.
I made a wide remark: food cannot be delivered, but cigarettes can? And cigarettes are not known to be
good for health.
But the director gave a crushing argument: these people used to smoke for 60-70 years in a row. Now,
under the bombs, they can do without food, but can’t without cigarettes.As a non-smoker, I could
neither argue nor agree, but simply transferred a small sum of money to pay for this stupid potion.
A couple of hours later, the director called me again. This time he was less phlegmatic. The explosion
broke the main water pipe and now the basement was flooded with water. Money! Money for urgent
repairs.
The money was sent.
In the evening he called again and reported: - We’re in the same basement. Dark and cold, but dry! And we smoke! And everyone is happy.
I was happy too, but would the donors be amazed, too? I e-mailed a message full of repentance,
honestly described the costs, and prepared for a well-deserved punishment. But the donors consoled me
by saying that the re-education of the inhabitants of the geriatric home was not among their primary
concerns.
One can find dozen sophisticated reasons for this feedback. I only see one – the donors are wise people.
Or let’s say – they are people.
Have a nice and peaceful day!
Regards,
Galina
*****************************************************************************
Dear friend,
Thank you for your message. You know these days the support from our friends gives
us more strength and more hope.
The orcs were thrown away from Kyiv, but the terrible and bloody battles go throughout
the thousand-kilometre frontline. People left their homes, their property, grabbed
children, documents, and a few things and went to the western part of Ukraine. But not
every person could do this. I mean people with disabilities.
I’ll tell you about the evacuation in which I took part online.
My friend from the Ministry of Social Policy called me and asked to help evacuate the
geriatric psychoneurological nursing home. 140 elderly women with serious mental
problems. The institution was located in the small town of Popasna in the Donbass.
Now, this city is smashed. It does not exist at all.
I immediately called the Director of the Department of Social Protection of the Luhansk
oblast and asked how could I help. She asked me to provide food for these people since
they had to travel more than a thousand kilometres by rail. It’s a long way, but in the
wartime, it becomes unpredictably long.
I contacted my friends from the “Slavic Heart” NGO in Donbass and asked to supply
140 old women and staff the food kits. My friends promised to meet them at the station
in Slavyansk with food and water. However, the departure was delayed because the
local section of the railway has already been destroyed, and the five prepared buses
were also destroyed by artillery. Local administration hastily searched for new buses to
bring people to the train. The buses arrived in the Slaviansk railway station at the last
moment, and food kits remained on the platform.
Nobody knew the phone number of the nursing home Director. I had to find the phone
number of the train staff Chief and he helped me to contact the Director. He said the
older women were too exhausted to think of any food, but would soon be hungry. I
assured him that plenty of food would wait for them when the train passed through Kyiv.
In the first months of the war, groups of volunteers were at every railway and bus station
in Ukraine. Our good friends worked at the vast Kyiv railway station and I asked them to
help. The train was unscheduled and had to arrive in Kyiv at night to replace the
locomotive. We were already waiting for it with the food kits.
The train chief called me closer to the night and said that the locomotive would be
changed at Kozelets station near Vinnytsia, meaning they would not be in Kyiv.
The second batch of products could not fall for the destination. Of course, there were
hundreds IDPs and they ate the food, but our old women were hungry!
In complete despair at midnight, I sorted out the phone numbers of all my friends and
acquaintances. The last hope is the Union of Ukrainian Women in Vinnytsia. I called
nearly in tears: girls, please, help to feed 140 exhausted old women! I describe the
whole situation in most picturesque colours. They tell me this is not a problem – they will
do everything.
I called the nursing home Director, but had no answer. So, I had to call the Chief of the
train. He told me two things: 1) the Director’s phone discharged 2) the train wouldn’t
*****************************************************************************
Dear Friend,
In this letter I’ll tell you about cats.
Why cats? One of my friends, now at war against Moscow orcs since 2014, is sure that
after the Victory, military personnel will erect a monument in honour of cats. He says
they deserve it because they share the difficult life in the trenches, console with their
purring, warm with their warmth, and remind them of their homes and family comfort.
Before the Christmas I came to Ivano-Frankivsk to visit the local TLU branch.
Traditionally, the primary monitoring component involves conversations with volunteers
over tea and cakes. As all our volunteers are 60+, their experience and wisdom are
priceless. We speak about what had been done and what will follow.One of the ladies
mentioned that her cat had already returned from the front, and they would celebrate
Christmas together. This amazed me, and I asked them to explain where her cat was.
This is the story our volunteers told me.
Above all, our volunteers are grandmothers who dearly love their grandchildren. Many
have grandchildren already fighting or are about to join the army. The guys often call
them and try not to upset them with their stories and cheerfully say that everything is
just fantastic with them. But one of them said that mice are the only inconvenience in
the war. In autumn, whole hordes of mice appeared in the trenches and dugouts, which
is disturbing and annoying. Evil creatures don’t let him sleep and gnaw on everything,
including Kevlar.
Grandmothers cannot arrive in the trenches on the front line, but they can help from a
distance. Immediately, a casting was held among the best mouse hunters. A strict and
picky commission selected 25 of the most dexterous mousers. The issue of delivering
fluffy troops to the front was resolved very simply: representatives of the local Caritas
organization regularly went to the front line with a load of medicines, food, and other
gifts. The priests from Caritas could not refuse the delegation of worried grandmothers.
The cats safely crossed the country from west to east and arrived at the duty station on
the front line. They faithfully served for almost two months and returned home in full
force with the assistance of the same patient Caritas.
Why don’t cats stay in the army and continue military service?
The answer puzzled me a little:
- They ate so many mice there that they almost became square. After that, they didn’t
want to hunt anymore.
Honestly, I thought that the guys overfed the cats themselves and tried to return them to
the owners alive and healthy not to upset the elderly ladies. The mice were not so
terrible, as the care of grandmothers was pleasant and touching, a reminder of relatives,
home, warmth, and family comfort, about what they defend in the war.
By the way, dear friend, do you have a cat at home?
Regards,
Galina
*****************************************************************************
Dear friend,
For some reason, there is an opinion that with age, feelings become dull, and a person
loses the ability to feel keen and love passionately in old age. However, it seems that
age allows us to accurately determine the circle of people we love wholeheartedly and
deeply.
One of our accountants, a girl in her early 20s, was very devoted to her family,
consisting of her grandmother and her brother, one year younger than her. Parents
divorced a long time ago and created new families. The kids were raised by their
grandmother.
The brother went to the front. Colleagues at work raised money and bought him some
absolutely incredible body armour. However, the boy did not take it with him, saying he
did not want to enjoy any privileges and advantages and that his bulletproof vest would
be like his comrades. He hugged his grandmother and left for the war.
What about Grandma? Saying goodbye to her grandson, she did not shed a tear and
blessed her boy. She carried the discarded body armour to her bedroom. She answered
the rare phone calls from her grandson cheerfully and even light-heartedly, not to upset
the boy. But she almost stopped smiling. She cried and prayed a lot. She died of a heart
attack two months later.
The command gave the boy a vacation to attend the funeral. He arrived tired and crying
but healthy, strong, and mature, without a scratch or bruise, not to mention wounds.The
following day he returned to his motorized rifle brigade.
War hurts and kills young men and also their grandmothers and mothers. Even if they
are far from the front line, with all their heart, they are there, next to their boys.
And I wish you, dear friend, peace! Peace above all!
*****************************************************************************
HI, dear friend.
It’s me again.
The tragedy that engulfed the whole of Ukraine as a result of the destruction of the
Kakhovka hydroelectric power station brought us a lot of grief and pain.
You know from the news programs that vast agricultural areas are flooded, very fertile
soils. More than 80 settlements were destroyed. The left bank of the Dnieper, which the
Russians now occupy, suffered much more. But they do not save people, and we are
not allowed to.
So far, we cannot assess the extent of our losses. We only know that most of the dead
are elderly and people with disabilities. They are the most vulnerable. But we don’t know
the number of dead yet. Many dogs have died. They were faithful watchdogs, tied to
their booths and guarding rural estates. There they remained. Many cattle died because
they did not fit in the rescue boats.
Rescuers, professionals, and volunteers from all over Ukraine went to this region. There
are also dead among the rescuers. Rescued people are resettled in their homes,
sanatoriums, and hotels, but people refuse to go far from their destroyed homes
because they want to return and restore everything. Rescued cats and dogs are
transported throughout the country and distributed to those ready to « adopt » them.
Social networks are filled with requests to find relatives, friends, and lost cats and dogs.
In the small town of Oleshki, all the animals in the local zoo died. The town is on the left
bank, occupied by the Russians, and the zoo staff was not allowed to go there. Only a
few birds survived. There were no ferocious predators in the zoo, but there were an
affectionate donkey and a pony, several raccoons, macaques, and some other animals –
favourites of the local children. The answer from the zoo staff, « Help is no longer
needed, » brought tears.
With private donations from friends, our « Age Concern Ukraine » was able to buy three
drones and handed them over to the National Police. With their help, police are looking
for people in remote villages and farms. Nobody expected such a gift from us, but it was
possible thanks to my friend from the USA, a former Kievite.
The Dnipro, one of the most potent European rivers, washes away crops, cemeteries,
houses, mines, and ammunition, mangled cars – and carries it all into the Black Sea.
But we must endure and defeat the orcs. We have no choice.
Much love!
Galina
*****************************************************************************
Dear friend,
I was on a business trip in Mykolaiv. The city is mutilated, exhausted, but steadfastly
holding on. The pragmatic townsfolk don’t glaze broken windows but patch them up with
shields as the orcs keep shelling the city.
The purpose of the trip was monitoring: to visit nursing homes that received
humanitarian aid from WJR. So, we visited four institutions.
Driving on absolute off-road was worth it: we saw people doing their job in difficult
conditions, where not « screaming poverty, but modestly silent poverty » reigns. The staff
do their best to brighten up the lives of their residents for mere pennies. Well-groomed
orchards, vegetable gardens, flower beds, rose gardens, kilometres of ropes with drying
linen, linoleum clean to shine and torn to pieces, snow-white curtains, etc. The food
was no frills but plenty and fresh.
By the way, about food. Every nursing home accommodated residents brought from the
same institutions in the Kherson region immediately after liberation. The Nikolaevites
were shocked as they met the exhausted and emaciated old people. They looked like
prisoners of a concentration camp! Some were led by hand; others were carried on
stretchers. The « liberators, » having seized the territories, did not care about the well-
being or at least the survival of those they declared their citizens. Newcomers began to
nurse and fatten, but not all were saved.
One of the nursing homes in the Mykolaiv region also got in occupation. The director
was horrified to see that his peaceful establishment was surrounded by orcs in Kamaz
trucks with armoured personnel carriers and demanded to surrender. Nowhere to go –
he went to the negotiations.
- Hands up! – yelled the chief. – Who are you?
- I’m the director.
- What director? Director of what?
- Well, this women’s psycho-neurological nursing home.
- What, what?
- Yes, how can I explain to you … In your language – a madhouse.
- Why are you lying! Here look!
And the chief orc shoved a paper map under the director’s nose, where the military unit
was marked. The director thought about it – and recollected! - Yes! Exactly! Was. But I’ve been a director here for 29 years. The psycho-neurological
nursing home is here. There, you see how much laundry is drying on the clothesline.
Women’s clothing.
But the orcs believed the map more and wished to inspect the premises. It was useless
to object. The director only asked them not to yell « hands up! », stomp their feet, rattle
*****************************************************************************
Dear friend,
You’ve asked me about life in Ukraine…
It’s not an easy task to describe our routine. Perhaps, some glimpse of it, some rough draft?
Without any epithets and metaphors.
March 2022 was the time for gradual recovery after February 24th. At least I was finally convinced that
this was a real war.
In the Ministry of Social Policy and asked for a list of all nursing homes in Ukraine. They willingly e-mailed
it to me without comments for none of us had time for long conversations.
I began to methodically call the nursing homes located in the war zone. The geriatric nursing home in
Okhtirka was the second in my list.
Okhtirka is (but not now!) a sweetest small town. I visited it twice before the war to monitor one of local
project developed by a public library. I love libraries with their special atmosphere and the special smell
of books. This one was unusual: there was a big sitting room decorated with nearly half a hundred wall
clocks. Many of them were in working order and ticked incessantly and conscientiously sang every
quarter of an hour. Now this library is smashed by a missile.
But let’s turn to the local geriatric nursing home.
I dialled the number without any hope to have a reply. I knew that Okhtirka was heavily bombed. But the
director of the nursing home replied immediately. Our dialogue was short and to the point:
- How are you there?
- Everything is fine. We are in the basement. All 120 residents and fifty staff.
- In the basement?
- In combat conditions. There is neither lighting nor heating.
- Any food?
- No food at all. No delivery, because the shelling does not stop.
- Can I help you?
- You can. We need cigarettes. Several blocks.
I made a wide remark: food cannot be delivered, but cigarettes can? And cigarettes are not known to be
good for health.
But the director gave a crushing argument: these people used to smoke for 60-70 years in a row. Now,
under the bombs, they can do without food, but can’t without cigarettes. As a non-smoker, I could
neither argue nor agree, but simply transferred a small sum of money to pay for this stupid potion.
A couple of hours later, the director called me again. This time he was less phlegmatic. The explosion
broke the main water pipe and now the basement was flooded with water. Money! Money for urgent
repairs.
The money was sent.
In the evening he called again and reported: - We’re in the same basement. Dark and cold, but dry! And we smoke! And everyone is happy.
I was happy too, but would the donors be amazed, too? I e-mailed a message full of repentance,
honestly described the costs, and prepared for a well-deserved punishment. But the donors consoled me
by saying that the re-education of the inhabitants of the geriatric home was not among their primary
concerns.
One can find dozen sophisticated reasons for this feedback. I only see one – the donors are wise people.
Or let’s say – they are people.
Have a nice and peaceful day!
Regards,
Galina