Help Alyona support her family in the Donbass

I have personally never thought I would write a post like this!

 

Over the last 8 years, I have learnt how to live with the fact that my parents and the closest family live in the area that used to be home but then has been turned into a buffer zone. I learnt to accept that there was no way for my parents whose passports had a cover with a symbol of unrecognised Luhansk People Republic to get the UK visa anymore and to be able to visit me for any significant event such as graduation or a wedding. I learnt to be creative with the ways to visit parents myself since the borders have been very

restrictive even for the first family line. I have even learnt how to not react too emotionally to the fact that I am very limited with what I could do to change the situation.

 

 

 

 

Last summer I managed to visit my parents' home at Ivanovka - a small village in Lugansk Region, Eastern Ukraine about 100 km from the Russian border. My way to cope emotionally was to walk around with the camera and capture the environment there. As an artist, I am inspired by materials and their texture. Since Donbas used to be a well-developed industrial and coal-mining region, there were plenty of abandoned iron and metal objects everywhere naturally rusted over time. I felt really strange - it was a moment of great stillness along with shocking hopelessness. My mom and dad impressed me that time though with their ability to still hope, love and support each other while doing things to contribute to the local community such as beekeeping, growing veggies, looking after the goats, repairing watches. It was also the last time I saw my brother Illia and we felt lucky to have a chance to get together again.

 

 

 

 

With all that, I cannot just observe the situation anymore. My parents are surrounded by troops and every night they hear horrible sounds of weapons and military exercises for newly arrived soldiers to be sent to the red zone.  My brother Illia is a 30 years old software developer. His reality today is hiding along with his girlfriend in the basement of the Kharkiv building blocks  - the city used to be one of the most beautiful Ukrainian cities that is a strategic target and is almost flattened by tanks. The guns were given there to civilians and even prisoners. We really hope for the Green Corridor to be open anytime soon and there is a small chance that Illia can cross the borders although men are not allowed to leave. The scenario is so unpredictable that decisions have to be made on a daily basis. Evacuation or relocation to a safer place could be one of the decisions that we might need to execute quickly and I do not know that I personally will be able to support this.




I know that ours is just one small story in a vast region, but I want to remind and appeal to normal people - my friends and connections here in Western Europe and North America - that those on the ground in Donbas are regular people just like you. Regardless of your politics, or how you feel about Vladmir Putin. Regardless of the stereotypes, the truth is that they do not deserve to be caught up in this geopolitical mess. All that I wish for is my family to be alive and have the right to be safe which has been taken away with an unbelievable level of violence.