Meet the people volunteering in Ukraine amid a life of war and air strikes: 'All of society is mobilised'

Keep calm and carry on is Ukraine’s mantra this winter. The nation has been at war for nearly four years and its list of problems is growing almost as rapidly as its exhaustion, but people are determined not to give up. Not that they have a choice.   

While president Donald Trump continues to try and impose a peace deal on the nation, Russia has ramped up drone and missile attacks in recent weeks, many of them targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and causing blackouts just as the freezing winter sets in – temperatures can fall to minus 20.

The Zelenskyy government is also under greater strain than ever after the president’s chief of staff resigned following a corruption scandal. The result is low morale among a people who have already suffered more than most of us can fathom.  

Lviv, a major city an hour from the Polish border, is hundreds of miles from the front line, but has been subject to regular air attacks since the war started, leaving its population exhausted. Iryna works in the city’s visitor centre.

She says: “In Ukraine, we don’t have any places that are 100% safe. When you’re walking around the streets it seems OK, like regular life, but it’s not. At nighttime the alarms go off and something bad is happening. Even here in Lviv we have strikes from Russian rockets. When you see people on the street they might be smiling and trying to live a normal life, but inside you don’t know what people are feeling.” 

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She’s right. Walking around Lviv, you’d almost be forgiven for thinking there isn’t a war on, so normal do things look. But even a fleeting conversation with a local often turns into a discussion about how exhausted they are, their worry for family members on the front line, and how they’re constantly spinning lots of plates.  

I meet Marta from Building Ukraine Together, a volunteering network supporting reconstruction and humanitarian work across Ukraine. Today, she’s collecting a people carrier full of Christmas presents from UK charity Ukrainian Action for children in Zaporizhzhia, Eastern Ukraine, who are currently studying in basements because of the relentless bombing there.  

“I have conversations with people who ask me, ‘How do you live in Ukraine in wartime?’” she says. “And I reply that I’m better off than people in Kyiv, which is attacked every day, but people in Kyiv say they’re better off than those in Zaporizhzhia who are attacked every day by drones, but they say they’re better off than people on the front line.” 

Volunteering has become a big part of daily life. With men aged 25 to 60 conscripted, supporting the war effort and keeping essential services running requires all hands on deck.  

“We’re always trying to do more to help, to do all we can to invest ourselves into victory,” Marta explains. “Day to day, people live their usual lives: working, getting the kids to school, cooking dinner, but people are giving their free time to volunteering to help people and with rebuilding. All of society is mobilised and ready to help each other.” 

Read more:

• Ukraine war two years on – graffiti left by Russian soldiers has a dark and sobering message
• ‘This war broke our life’: Children left stranded in Ukraine without parents due to UK visa changes
• Andrey Kurkov: ‘Ukraine is a very democratic country with a good pinch of anarchy’

People seem unfazed by their expanding workloads; they know doing more is essential for maintaining any semblance of the normal life which everyone craves. Even where changes are needed, Ukrainians try to keep them unobtrusive.  

Outside most buildings, sandbags only cover basement windows; historic statues are caged in chicken wire so they’re protected from bomb debris but can still be seen; generators needed to keep bars and restaurants open when the electricity grid goes down are hidden by neat wooden cases or Christmas trees. 

What there can be no disguising is the emotional wrench every family is undergoing, as nearly everyone has close relatives fighting on the front line or members who have left the country to find safety elsewhere.  

Violetta Melnychuk was visiting a friend in Portugal when Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Her trip was only meant to last a week but she’s never returned to live with her family in Ukraine full time because of the war.  

“It was really hard, I was between two fires with the war and my relationships, but I decided to stay [in Portugal] and just see what happened,” she says. 

A tour guide in Lviv, she used her skills to set up a similar business in  Lisbon. Now, she lives between the two cities, which is tough when her family are subject to air alerts and she’s not there.

“It’s difficult. I’m an anxious person and at the beginning of the war I became super anxious. When there’s an air alarm my mum calls me, and I cannot fly, I don’t have a time machine. I torture myself thinking about whether to buy tickets so I can be here [in Lviv] within 24 hours, but my mum says no.

“You start to fantasise a lot, it’s very busy and it never stops. It can be a curse sometimes.” 

Separation anxiety is common among Ukrainians who’ve left the country, particularly men who can’t come back to visit as 22- to 60-year-olds aren’t allowed to leave Ukraine once they’ve re-entered because of conscription rules. 

On the Polish border I meet Ivan, a 27-year-old tour guide from Ternopil in Western Ukraine. He’s lived and worked abroad for 10 years – long before the invasion started – but can no longer travel back and forth to see his family.

“If I go to Ukraine right now, I will go directly to the battlefield, which is a very hard choice,” he says. “In the future I will go back to Ukraine, maybe if Putin starts his aggression again because he will always want to grab Ukraine. If that happens, I understand that there will be no other way but for me to join the army and I will not flee this time, I will be prepared.” 

A few weeks ago, a building in central Ternopil was hit by a Russian missile, killing 38 people and making Ivan want to go home more than ever: “Sometimes my mother comes to visit, but that’s a special occasion. Right now, I just want to go to Ukraine, to visit my grandmother, to visit my home, to be together. I hope that maybe next year I’ll be able to do that.” 

Ukrainians are already thinking about life after the conflict – one of the few things that sustains people. With peace talks ongoing, is Ivan hopeful the war will end in 2026? 

“If you speak to anyone on the battlefield, they will tell you that there are no signs of peace right now, only more missiles hitting Ukraine every day,” he says. 

Marta agrees: Ukraine wants peace but it needs to have a say in any deal, which seems unlikely at the moment. She says: “History shows us that if you want to rebuild and prevent future conflict, you need to involve both sides.”  

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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