He and his wife sleep in the basement of a billiard club with five other families. “We could hear the sirens in the basement. The first, three or four weeks, we heard them about six, seven, eight times per night.”
Restaurants, cafes and bakeries in Kyiv have been preparing about 10,000 meals every day for the army, hospitals, orphanages and elderly since the war started. Pavlenko helps out in the day at a kitchen that cooks 250 meals daily for the military and police.
In his spare time, he helps his friends who are fighting in the war get hold of equipment.
“When we first arrived, the situation was horrible,” said Oleksandr Shostak, Pavlenko’s friend from the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Force. “We had problems with night fights because we could not see (the Russian forces). We need some drones to perform scouting and thermal scopes to see the enemy in the dark,” said Shostak. Pavlenko goes online to look for such equipment and arranges to have them shipped from the US and Europe to Ukraine.
Together with his wife, Pavlenko returns to his home twice a day to feed his two cats and dog. “Many times when we were travelling back home to feed our pets, we heard the siren many times. So we rush back into our basement, or hiding place, or back home, just to be on the safe side.”
Pavlenko says he was close to tears when he saw the damage of his city from the war. “I can remember all the spaces while they were in good shape. It’s a heart-squeezing thing.”
“IT’S HATE THAT KEEPS ME GOING”
At a humanitarian centre in Przemysl, Poland, Stefanija Grabowska helps Ukrainians who are fleeing their country. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the photographer and videographer was in Oslo. “I was trying to help from there as much as I could … But after a week, I realised that I wasn’t feeling good by staying far away. I felt like I really needed to do something on the spot and help people, and see that I’m helping them.”
The humanitarian centre is set in a shopping mall. “So it’s basically an empty supermarket, where we try to accommodate people and give them a place to stay for at least one or two nights,” said Grabowska.
According to Grabowska, a constant flow of people arrives at Przemysl from the border between Poland and Ukraine. “So we have people arriving anytime, day and night, from 2am in the morning to 11pm in the evening.”
While helping others, Grabowska worries about her family and friends in Ukraine. “If the war is not over soon, in a week or two, they might be sent to the frontlines to fight.”
She says the only thing she has left inside of her is anger. “I don’t want to be feeling all that hate towards Russia and Russian people. But I think that right now, it’s hate that actually keeps me going.”
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