"It's really scary, but we keep going because people need us." Frontline stories from essential workers

Ukrainska Pravda — Tuesday, 11 April 2023, 18:06

Do you know how a post office operates during a war? How a postman or postwoman delivers pensions to a destroyed building? Or how a manager issues social benefits somewhere near Bakhmut, seeing people who have spent over a year hiding in basements?

What about road builders working on a road at the contact line as Russian forces fire across it? Or evacuation leaders organising transport for hundreds of people in ordinary train carriages?

These people are bringing victory closer with their work, risking their lives every day. They are motivated not by reward or pay rises, but by the people they cannot turn their backs on during this war.

Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia talked to employees of the Ukrainian Postal Service, Ukrainian Railways and the Ukrainian Roads Agency about their genuinely heroic everyday lives.

The postal workers: "I felt scared going into destroyed buildings"

Larysa has been working as a postwoman for the Ukrainian Postal Service, Ukrposhta, in Mykolaiv Oblast for 43 years. Usually, her "clients" are pensioners, as she delivers their pensions to their homes. Larysa talks about them as if they are members of her family, because she has been visiting them at home for many years, chatting to them and sometimes helping them. And they’ve got used to her too. So several times when Larysa wanted to quit her job, it was her clients who persuaded her to stay.

"Today, for example, I brought an extra payment to Andriivna, who is 97 years old. She’s a concentration camp survivor, she has a lot of health problems, and now she can hardly hear. But every time I see her, she smiles," Larysa says.

A Ukrainian Postal Service worker. Stock photo by Getty Images

Larysa has many happy memories from her work. When she looks at multi-storey residential buildings, she fondly remembers each apartment and the person whose pension she used to deliver. Then she adds cautiously that there were many ethnic Russians living in Mykolaiv.

"And one of my Russian ladies, Mrs Valya - she came to the post office recently. She said, ‘Larysa, I'm ashamed that my passport says I'm Russian.’

But probably 80% of the people in Kulbakino are Russians. There’s a Soviet pilot, Mykola Yuriiovych, who is over 70. His daughter lives in Russia; she followed in her father's footsteps and is also a pilot. I once asked him if she ever shoots at us, and he said that she has the right to do so in a war. There are people like that left too," Larysa recounts.

When the full-scale invasion began, Larysa’s main worry was her grandchildren. Her son wanted to go to the front. Larysa reacted emotionally, saying she would go to the front too, but the post office manager turned down her request.

"We have our own front here, a different one: we have to visit people in their homes. At first, I felt scared going into destroyed buildings, but I’ve had to do that twice.

Once I was giving out pensions in one of the buildings. I left, and I’d almost reached the post office when a munition hit the building. The rocket destroyed everything from the third to the first floor. But fortunately, almost everyone had left the building at the time," she recollects.

Mykolaiv after an attack. Stock photo by Gaelle Girbes, Getty Images

The only pensioner who had received a payment that day was injured. She lived on the first floor. Her legs were crushed by a stove, but search and rescue workers came quickly to help her.

Despite regular shelling by the Russians in Mykolaiv Oblast, Larysa has not left and has no intention of leaving. There are no shelters in or near her building. So during the attacks, she takes her documents and goes out into the yard, where she waits for the Russian attack to be over, and then returns to work.

"These people need us"

Anna is the manager of a Ukrposhta branch on the Bakhmut front. The war has brought significant changes to her work, but it hasn't stopped her. Her office is practically on the contact line. In every village on the contact line, there are still pensioners in the basements.

"Working with people is always tough. And now, they are also locked away from the outside world, in emotional tension, with no one to talk to, as if cut off from life. That's why everyone comes and tells us about how they are sitting there, what is happening. There are decent people who are happy to see us. But some come and express their dissatisfaction, and then they apologise, saying they just had to vent," Anna says.

Anna remarks that she has been left practically alone in the Bakhmut central office, which she had previously headed.

"While we were working in Bakhmut, I didn’t allow women who have children to go [and give out pensions – ed.]. They offered to, they insisted, but I wouldn't let them go, because each time I didn't know how the visit would end. There were 25 of them, and now there is no one because they all left. I didn't hold anyone back, because I understand that everyone has a limit to their fear. And it’s almost impossible to find someone new in a war zone," she explains.

A ruined building in Bakhmut. Stock photo by Getty Images

Delivering pensions in an active war zone is dangerous. So Anna works with the military administrations and volunteers, and together they manage to get people together in a certain place at a certain time.

"We had an experience when we agreed with the village heads, who are just pensioners. They said everything was fine. But you can only gather a crowd of 150 people in a place that is really quiet.

For example, in Siversk, there is not a single intact building left. People are living in basements and bomb shelters. I’m not a local and I don’t know where they are hiding. So we agree on a day and place with the administration. There are five distribution points in Siversk, which we visit on different days," she explains.

Anna said that once she had to work under fire.

"There were only two people left in the queue; we were standing behind some buildings. Suddenly a projectile struck an area right behind a five-storey building. That building essentially protected us. We were really scared, but we carried on, because the people needed us.

They look forward to us coming, because we bring essentials as well as money. They are currently being given humanitarian aid – food – but sometimes they want a little sweet treat – a cookie or some sweets. One woman asked us, ‘Do you have any halva? I was really craving it’," Anna recalls.

She adds that she also brings people newspapers, so that they can find some information there – otherwise they have no access to news, and no means of communication.

Little extras from Ukrposhta. Stock photo: Getty Images

The railway workers: "Up to 400 people were crowded in a 36-seat train carriage"

Alina and Oleksandr have been working on Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways) evacuation trains since the first day of the full-scale invasion. They arrived in Kyiv on 24 February 2022 on different trains, but both were preoccupied with delivering the terrible news of the Russian invasion to their passengers.

"I didn’t want to upset them, but they found out the news themselves on the internet as we were approaching the capital. I myself didn’t know what to do, or how my parents were doing back in Kherson. I remember my inner panic, which I had to suppress; order in the carriage begins with the conductor.

A girl in one compartment was crying; she was from Kherson, and her parents were there too. I calmed her down. I contacted my relatives, and they helped the girl’s family evacuate," Alina says.

She adds that she volunteered to work on the evacuation trains because she wants to help people. She has been a conductor on trains evacuating civilians from Kryvyi Rih, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk Oblast, among other places. Those trains were shelled more than once.

"For example, when the Russians were attacking Zaporizhzhia, the train driver had to speed up while passing over the bridges. Of course people were asking about the black smoke outside, and why the train was going so fast, but I managed to calm them down; later I made them tea.

Another train was shelled, the carriages halted, and the passengers lay on the floor and stayed there until us conductors were told that the threat was over and we could continue our journey," she recalls.

Stock photo: Getty Images

Passengers on the evacuation trains often try to reciprocate Alina’s kindness and care by giving her chocolate, and socks to keep her feet warm.

"I remember one young helper from among the passengers. She was a five-year-old girl, she followed me everywhere and was always trying to help me. She kept offering to make tea, to collect or return the bedlinen, even to pick up rubbish. The other passengers were laughing affectionately, and saying that she would make a good conductor," Alina says warmly.

Oleksandr is from Kyiv. He was a train conductor when the full-scale invasion started; within a few months, he was the manager of an evacuation train.

"There were a lot of people on the 24th [February 2022] and they were all frightened; it was really crowded. Everything seemed chaotic and unclear. We didn’t know how to evacuate up to 400 people in a 36-seat train carriage," he says.

Oleksandr adds that at the beginning of the invasion, the following rule was in place when an air-raid warning was issued during an evacuation: passengers would leave the train and head for the shelter, and would have 15 minutes to return to their carriages. Oleksandr noted that there was no panic: people took their pets with them to the shelters, but left their luggage on the train.

"We are still afraid, because every time you are on a train, you have no idea how an attack or a journey will end. Once the Russians were shelling us, so everyone lay on the floor and the train drove very slowly with the lights off. There weren’t many passengers on that train, and most of them were guys travelling from Rakhiv to Kyiv to join the country’s defence forces.

Now we can deal with challenges like this better, we follow an established set of actions, but it’s no less scary. The war is still going on, and the Russians deploy all kinds of weapons – you just never know where they will hit next," he says.

The road workers: "About 20 minutes later we realised we’d been on the verge of death"

In late May 2022, once the situation on the Izium front [in Kharkiv Oblast, in northeastern Ukraine - ed.] had stabilised, repairs began on the road between Barvinkove and Lozova. It was known as the "Road of Life" because it was used to evacuate injured Ukrainian soldiers from Kharkiv Oblast, and to deliver food and ammunition to Ukrainian forces in the area. Artem headed a group of workers on the section of the road between Barvinkove and Blyzniuky. Half of the 30-km section was exposed to Russian artillery fire. There were three people in the group besides Artem: a foreman, a mechanic and a motor grader operator [a motor grader is a machine for levelling gravel on the road - ed.].

"These people were responsible for all key areas during the road’s construction. You could call it a voluntary battalion, because the Russians were very close.

We only had 22 trucks available, so we had to carry out the work in stages, like a relay. We worked together as quickly as we could: a truck would deliver gravel, leave, and the motor grader would start operating immediately if it was safe to do so," Artem says.

А motor grader at work. Photo: Artem’s archive

On their third day of work, it was warm and sunny. The road workers were in a good mood, despite the bomb that Russian aircraft had dropped on a village near Barvinkove the night before. The powerful bomb left a crater 10 metres wide and 4 metres deep and had destroyed several buildings; everything around was covered in soil and dirt.

This didn’t stop the road workers: they began sealing the road surface, a laborious process. Then they were interrupted by shelling.

"We heard four separate shots. At first the enemy hit a kilometre or so away from where we were, then they got closer and closer. There were 30-second pauses between the explosions - that’s when the occupation forces were adjusting fire. [Ukrainian] soldiers told us to get out quickly, leaving our work behind," Artem recalls.

He says the third explosion occurred some 300 metres away from where his team had been, and the fourth one just 100 metres away from the motor grader.

"We were lucky that there were a lot of buildings on that street; a garage absorbed most of the impact: it got twisted in a blast wave and was riddled with shrapnel. My ears were ringing and I felt as though my clothes were pasted to my skin.

We were able to get out of there alive and unscathed, but we were petrified. About 20 minutes later we realised we’d been on the verge of death," Artem recalls.

He says delightedly that Ukrainians have started to respect the work of others more. In the past, people would drive over the hot asphalt despite signs telling them not to.

"That didn’t happen during our work in Barvinkove. In fact it was quite the opposite. The military would wait their turn to use the reversible lane, and even tanks drove on the side of the road so as not to damage our work," he explains.

The "Road of Life" in Kharkiv Oblast

The river crossing in Chuhuiv was restored in June. Serhii headed the road works. There were around 10 people in his team: more experts were needed to rebuild the bridge.

They were able to rebuild the crossing in three weeks. During most of this time, the crossing was shelled by Russian forces. Serhii says that his team spent nine working days on the bridge, but due to the shelling they were unable to work a single day in full.

"The weather messed up our plans a few times: rain made the roads unusable and trucks couldn’t get to us. We had to unload them further away and use smaller vehicles, ones that didn’t get stuck in the mud, to move [materials to the construction site]. This meant doing double the amount of work.

But most of the time our work would be hindered by the shelling. Sometimes we’d only be able to get two or three hours of work done before the [Ukrainian] military would say, ‘Time to pack up, the shelling is intensifying’," Serhii recalls.

He adds that many military vehicles used the crossing after it was rebuilt. And one month later, the Ukrainian counteroffensive that saw the liberation of Kharkiv Oblast was launched.

Viktoriia Andrieieva, Ukrainska Pravda Zhyttia (Life)

Translation: Myroslava Zavadska and Olya Loza

Editing: Teresa Pearce