“[This is] my country. … I'm able to help, and I will do it until my last day."

KHARKIV, Ukraine — It’s a brisk Saturday morning when Ukrainian nonprofit Ukraine Alive 2022 and I arrive at one of the city’s largest emergency centers, where 109 emergency workers are themselves in dire need of help after nearly two years of Russia’s full-scale invasion following two years of Covid.

Founder Boris Pakhol, PhD, says his goal is to be able to support every emergency worker in Kharkiv with food and other supplies to help them get through the war. “It's more than 3,500 people who immediately react when something’s wrong, when the bombings happen,” he says.

Emergency workers’ salaries are low in Kharkiv and elsewhere in Ukraine. Firefighters, paramedics and doctors make as little as $300–$400 per month, Boris says, with doctors on the higher end of the range. They used to be able to supplement their incomes with side jobs, but now they don’t have time to do that.

Boris, a psychologist, founded Ukraine Alive 2022 after the full-scale invasion started. The Kyiv-based organization relies on help from international partners; but the group is mostly Ukrainians, many with day jobs, who dedicate most of their off-hours to Ukraine Alive 2022 and helping their fellow people. They focus on the hardest-hit regions of Ukraine — the east (where Kharkiv is) and the south — spending countless hours on missile-marked and pothole-filled roads to deliver aid and help maintain morale.

Andrew Maryniv is a lawyer from Kharkiv and now lives and works in Kyiv for the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. He spends most of his off-hours volunteering for Ukraine Alive 2022, often going to bed at 3 a.m. and sometimes later. He relates to the challenges that emergency workers face. “The challenges are every day, all the time,” he says. “Whether it’s war or Covid, they have to do their work. And we are really grateful to those people who are giving such incredible help to all our citizens.” 

Ukraine Alive 2022 leader Stefen Blagovisniy is also with us. He runs two companies — a car rental company and Ukraine’s first electric vehicle charging station company. Like Andrew and Boris, he spends significant time volunteering for Ukraine Alive 2022, ensuring operations run smoothly and that the daunting paperwork required of them is complete and accurate.

Back to the day:

The day didn’t end with the delivery to emergency workers. We then drove to Morovlinka, a small community about 60 miles from Kharkiv, where about 70 people from de-occupied and destroyed communities now live — without resources, work, utilities or basic necessities. “They don’t even have mattresses,” Boris said.

Morovlinka wasn’t occupied or along the frontlines, so people here fall through the cracks. That’s where groups like Ukraine Alive 2022 are also vital. They’re aware of the community because they helped evacuate some of its now-residents from places like North Saltivka, a district in the northeast part of the city of Kharkiv that suffered catastrophic destruction. We deliver food kids and mattresses to the residents, who are grateful to not be forgotten.

After that, we returned to Kharkiv to deliver food kits to 46 internally displaced kids and their families evacuated from Kupiansk, which is 70 miles southeast of Kharkiv and near the border with Russia. Kupiansk was under occupation in 2022, nearly obliterated and is now again the site of intense fighting. These kids experienced unimaginable horrors, and they solemnly wait their turns in the school-turned-aid center.

It’s now well past dusk. This is a “short” 12-hour day for Ukraine Alive 2022. They worked a full day the next day, too, delivering more food kits to frontline communities, before driving back to Kyiv to prepare for the new week. And there’s no end in sight.

When I ask what keeps Andrew going, he says, “[This is] my country. … I'm able to help, and I will do it until my last day. I hope the war will go away … and that we will be living normal lives in our great country.”

You can help Ukraine Alive 2022 by following their work and donating:

• Follow on Instagram: @ukraine_alive_2022.

• Donate: ua2022.org/en.