Fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, particularly in the Karkhiv region. And if most of the Russians who are opposed to this war have given up saying so publicly, because of the repression, others have decided to bring aid to the Ukrainians who are victims of the conflict. In Belgorod, a city of 300,000 inhabitants located 20 kilometers from the border, Nadezhda, a young Russian woman, launched a chain of solidarity.
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Nadezhda is in his car. Head to one of the checkpoints on the border with Ukraine, where she has to pick up four women who want to flee the fighting. For a few weeks, this photographer no longer works. Nadezhda dropped everything to devote herself to helping Ukrainians. Food collections and evacuations that she finances with money she receives from all over Russia, and even from abroad. “At first I just wanted to help friends, a married couple and their animalssays Nadezhda. I started a collection on Instagram. I recorded a video, and it went viral. Two days later, I realized that it was not only my friends, but also 72 others who needed humanitarian aid.”
The photographer multiplies the collections of food, medicine, her apartment is filled with bags, parcels and 25 volunteers support her. Among the people she is helping is Lioudmila, a resident of a village in the Kharkiv region taken over by Russian forces a month ago. This retiree could no longer stay at home. She has just crossed the border as fighting rages in her village. “We were used to no longer having any lightsays the Ukrainian. I’m an old school person, I had supplies of sugar and semolina.”
“I didn’t miss anything but the last few days were really scary. It was flying, it was popping, it was rumbling so much I was scared.”
Lyoudmila, Ukrainian refugeeat franceinfo
Lioudmila is going to sleep at Nadezhda’s, while waiting to leave, perhaps, for Germany, to find the rest of her family. Nadezhda’s phone keeps ringing. “After helping one, I couldn’t refuse the others… And now when I call a woman and tell her that her son is alive, and I hear that cry from the bottom of my heart, I think to myself that one, two or three days without sleep is a small price to pay for those few seconds of happiness.” We asked Nadezhda what she thought of this war. She didn’t answer us, except that she had turned her life upside down.