Ukrainians are holding on to life with all their might. Despite everything, people in the war zone try to live a normal life and support each other. Shops are perhaps the only oases that remind of pre-war life. “I want a store coffee!” is a phrase Viktoriya Kondratenko, a saleswoman at the Viktoriya store, located in the active combat zone in Velyka Pysarivka, the Sumy region, often hears from community members.
Get a grip on yourself
Psychologists say that in order to maintain your psycho-emotional state during the war, you must transfer old habits to a new life. A local resident with a cup of coffee near a retail outlet is like a litmus test of the situation in general: it means that everything is okay! Coffee from a vending machine is a really saving habit for many people who have stayed in Velyka Pysarivka. They are as if at home, in a familiar place, but under new conditions, because Russia’s full-scale invasion divided the lives of borderland residents into before and after.
Where to go?
Viktoriya Kondratenko, 41, who works as a shop assistant, is one of the few who has never traveled anywhere. She’s a mother of three children aged 21, 18 and 13.
“We took our daughter and sons to Kyiv, and my husband and I stayed at home,” she says. “Where could we go? Everything we’ve earned over the years is here. And we both have jobs. And evacuation is not so easy. It costs a lot of money to rent a house, and everything there is not ours.”
Shelter behind a refrigerator
Is it scary to work in the center of the village, which, although turned into ruins by the enemy, is still constantly under fire? Very! But what can you do? When it’s very loud but hits somewhere farther away, Viktoriya and her colleagues keep standing behind the counter. If explosions are very close, they hide behind refrigerators in the store. Not a single glass in the store has survived. And not only glass!
“Once, a blast wave tore a metal grate out of a window and broke it in half, we were almost killed,” Viktoriya shares the details of her challenging life in the border zone with Russia.
When explosions subside, the saleswomen come out of their shelter and continue working. In fact, the store runs on a generator. That’s why they don’t hear any explosions because of its roar. When shells explode somewhere nearby, or something worse falls, their friends warn them by phone.
Buyers
Despite the mass evacuation, about several hundred people remain in Velyka Pysarivka. Most of them are elderly people. And they all need a retail outlet in the village, because they still must buy food and other basic necessities. Besides them, there are also people who left the village but visit their homes to cultivate their gardens and clean up their yards.
During the war, every day can be your last. You can’t postpone your life any longer. Viktoriya says that people have started to buy things they used to do without, even though they really wanted to. After the terrible events in the spring, the locals reconsidered their priorities.
“Now people take whatever they want, at least a little bit,” says the saleswoman. “Because they realize that it’s pointless to save money: life can end in an instant. So you have to live today, because tomorrow may not come. It has become popular to drink coffee in a store. There are people who don’t drink it at home in the morning, but ride their bikes to the store to drink it here! It’s a ritual for them, without which a day doesn’t start!”
For a coffee and a friendly chat
Viktoriya has some regular customers: “I want to have coffee at your place!” And then the coffee-making process turns into a kind of psychological support session, during which the woman listens to everything people are concerned about.
But life is such a thing that today you help everyone, and tomorrow you will need help. That was also the case with our heroine.
“I recently buried my father-in-law,” says Viktoriya. “His death was a real stress for me: I lost a dear person who never called me daughter-in-law, only daughter. In fact, my husband’s father lived in Luhivka, but once something hit his yard, and the debris flew at him! He felt bad and had a stroke. We called an ambulance, he was transported to Kyrykivka, and then taken to intensive care. Later, we took our father to Velyka Pysarivka, so he died in front of my eyes and in my arms. He was 68. I don’t remember how I got back from the cemetery, but then I felt very sick.”
A life-saving pharmacy
Viktoriya says she survived that severe stress only thanks to pharmacist Oleksandr Myroshnychenko, who provides medicines to people in Velyka Pysarivka, although his pharmacy has already been shelled three times. Recently, right next to it, an enemy shell burned down a car with a soldier who had stopped by to buy some medicines. Another soldier was seriously wounded. This time the Russians destroyed the pharmacy completely. Now it is located close to Viktoria’s store, in the building the community offered to the pharmacist.
The woman was at work when she felt that she was ‘flying away’. With the last of her strength, she called Oleksandr, described her condition, and he brought all the necessary medicines immediately.
“But for him, I wouldn’t have survived!” says the saleswoman. ”In fact, everyone in Velyka Pysarivka is grateful to Oleksandr for not abandoning us and not leaving us without medical care. What would we do without him?”
The last hope
The enemy mercilessly shells Velyka Pysarivka with various types of weapons, including KABs (powerful Russian bombs weighing 500 kg). Drones are especially dangerous. You don’t even hear them approaching – an explosion follows immediately.
Evacuations are ongoing in the village. But there are still people who live in the active combat zone upon signing a waiver of evacuation.
Because of the harsh wartime conditions, Viktoriya’s store is often the only place where people can buy bread and other basic necessities. They have this opportunity thanks to Viktoriya Kondratenko, who still lives here. No wonder the locals call this heroic woman their last hope.
Without a home
“Now I’m homeless too,” says a woman sadly after an enemy drone hit her house.
It all happened at night, when she and her husband were sleeping. By some miracle, they managed to wake up and run outside. Since firefighters are not allowed to go to the active combat zone, they had to put out the fire themselves. Fighting the fire with buckets is useless. Therefore, they only had to accept the situation and watch the tongues of flame devour everything they had gained during their entire lives.
Viktoriya and her husband managed to get some of their belongings out of the smoke-filled house, but they still have nowhere to put them.
Viktoriya, who always helped everyone, now needs help herself. All night the woman tried to do something, to save something, and in the morning she just sat down near the ashes and burst into tears.
The war took away her home, but it didn’t take away Velyka Pysarivka’s last hope for coffee, which gives people at least some sense of normalcy amidst the hell.
This coffee is what keeps Viktoriya from evacuating. She says she cannot leave her people, for whom she is an island of stability in the maelstrom of war. While her husband is away on a business trip, she lives all alone on Prykordonna Street, which is constantly under fire. Recently, an explosion blew off the roof of her neighbor’s house and smashed the windows.
Viktoriya falls asleep and wakes up thinking that she has nothing to lose. The house cannot be returned or rebuilt, but she doesn’t think about itself. Her children are settled, there is something to eat and drink. Although potatoes are not very good this year, she has dug up some. She has somehow repaired the summer kitchen and stays there until the morning when she has to go to work again. And so every day, each time exposing herself to the danger of not only being under fire, but also being attacked by drones, which fall on the small Velyka Pysarivka several dozen times a day.
Take care Viktoriya, we need your coffee. And you. The main thing is you!
Author: Oleksiy Pasiuha
*All photos are provided by the author.
Supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.