Vitaly has spent a few 12 months within the horror of conflict, since final February the Russian invasion of Ukraine started. This week he has returned to Spain to spend the top of the 12 months along with his household, after greater than 300 days with out with the ability to see them wherein he has devoted himself to serving to his compatriots with all of the means at his disposal.
This has been his predominant goal all through this time, to help and assist his family and friends in Kherson with meals and medication, one of many cities that has suffered essentially the most from Russian bombing.
“Every day I left at eight within the morning and devoted myself to distributing the help,” he says. Aid from donations from Spain, or that he himself purchased in supermarkets, in order that the aged round him wouldn’t put themselves in danger by going out into the road.
Although at first he did it alone, he was quickly joined by different volunteers, permitting them to assist greater than 100 households per week.
“I used to be afraid of disappearing”
Now, removed from the catastrophe of the conflict, Vitaly admits that every time he left dwelling “I used to be afraid of disappearing, that they might arrest me and never be capable of notify anybody.”
“At occasions we risked our lives, there was quite a lot of danger,” he admits. The volunteer remembers one of many worst moments, as soon as they had been coming back from distributing and the Russian authorities stopped them and stripped them bare on the highway the place they searched them and saved them for an hour till they allow them to go. “They thought the tablets had been medicine,” he explains.
He additionally remembers a few of his disappeared colleagues, considered one of them “the one who made the bread, spent two weeks in jail and there are different volunteers who’ve disappeared and we nonetheless do not know something about them,” he says.
“Help is now extra crucial”
His actions have made him a hero for many who know him and though he claims to be very comfortable in Spain, along with his mother and father and seeing his household sleep peacefully, removed from the horror of the bombs, he admits that he needs to return to assist as a result of he is aware of what is occurring there.
That is why he’s on the lookout for a technique to proceed serving to from right here. “All collectively we will do it and now it’s extra crucial than earlier than as a result of persons are working out of their houses,” he says.
Vitaly says that the shelling is now fixed, “evening and day” and he remembers these moments because the worst he has ever skilled. “You’re all the time conscious, when you’re consuming dinner, in the event that they knock in your door, if they arrive after you, it’s extremely harmful,” he says. After 42 hours of journey in automobiles and buses, and a ten-hour flight, Vitaly breathes straightforward in Alicante, however with out forgetting what they’ve left there.