The faces of war

The villages around Kiev and Chernigov are an open book.
They tell all the pain of the Russian occupation: most of the houses burned, bombed or looted. Destruction and death everywhere.
Most of the people fled. Those who remain have nothing left.
Once again we have managed to bring aid directly to the people. We are always surprised in the face of evil and the destruction of war.
In spite of everything, we are here to create bridges where there are no more roads and we are there as a Fraternity.
Among those who no longer have anything, we have met simple people, people like us who unwittingly found themselves at the center of a greater story.
Here are their fragile faces, their daily life changed forever.
If during the occupation there was a war at home to manage, now there is a war that has taken root within lives.

This war has also created so much suffering because Russia and Ukraine are two sides of the same coin

Telling is elaborating, keeping alive, transmitting, letting out the suffering that has accumulated in order to survive

What struck us most of all was the great dignity of the Ukrainian people

There is a strong sense of respect and gratitude here

They are all people who when they tell have clean eyes with a look that is truly moving

Alexander
We collect the story of him in silence in a very humble house.
Alexander is only 63 years old. I was giving him almost 15 more.

When we met him in his house he was lying in bed with his leg bandaged because he and his wife jumped on a mine while they were in the car.
Thank God they survived. As soon as he saw us he stood up and with a grimace of pain he greeted us.
We started talking. He told us a lot of things and the medals he keeps hanging in his room.

When Alexander learned that one of the girls who was with us, Silvia, was having a birthday that day there, he sent his wife without saying anything to anyone to take some flowers that he gave her before we left.

Olga
She let us into what's left of her house. Everything burned, even the car.
She wanted to show us the bunker, where the family had taken refuge during the bombing.

As soon as she entered what was her house she burst into tears: that house no longer existed.
She showed us where the kitchen was, only the fireplace remained standing.

The son and grandchildren survived by a miracle. She was building the new house behind the old one.
Now one is standing and the other is gone. Only burnt pieces of plates and glasses.
 

Olha
You lost two children in the bombing.
Here the Russians bombed mercilessly during the retreat from Chernigov.
A one-and-a-half-ton bomb fell near her house, causing a massacre and a six-meter-high crater.

The volunteers of the associations we have relied on to distribute the aid collect the requests and data of the people.

In the Oblast villages, people cannot afford food or other basic necessities.
Even Olha, seeing us, wanted to tell about herself.

Pavlona
Her home was destroyed two days after she escaped from a bunker in Chernigov. When she returned to the village everything was burnt.
The explosions were so strong that her cows gave birth ahead of time.

Most of the war was experienced by the people who tend to be always the poorest. The evil has really raged on those who were already struggling, who lived in villages, in shacks or in any case in minimal houses.

Anton
When we handed over the aid, Anton hugged us as a sign of thanks, but also for human sharing.
We have received many hugs from people who have lost everything: it is as if communication goes directly from heart to heart

The bullets from the tanks that fired rained on his house, he showed us the pieces of the bombs that fell.
He wanted us to see his house as it was reduced now.

Yura introduced us to his wife, who took us to the bunker where we could also shoot, she showed us where they slept most of the time.
There were the beds, the small kitchen they had set up. Their house had burned down completely, everything was on fire.

Entering the lives of these people with nothing left, the nonsense of war came to meet us with all its impetuousness.

We met so many stories, like Serghej, a 78-year-old grandfather who hadn't stood up since he was thin. He made an impression on me, he had very deep eyes, he practically reached the last to take the package that weighed about 20 kg. We were worried that he would be able to carry it, he looked at us with a look as if to say I can do it.
He grabbed this wobbly package with these dry little legs and headed for the car. In the end we supported it, but this tenacity, this determination, this beauty in the eyes of this people is something truly disarming. They are simple people on whom evil has been relentless, truly evil.
In another house Anton welcomed us and told us: "My house was not destroyed, it was" only "machine-gunned from the outside. It did not receive bombs that would have burned it, but I lost everything. "

He has no more work, no longer has anything and lives with his little girl. After Anton we went to another family. They were cobblers.
Right now they can't do anything of their job and so they too have asked us for help with food.

Upon returning to Italy, we realize the need to create something ongoing for these people. Obviously, policies and governments will have to do their part, but in the meantime there is life that then goes on every day.
We must ask ourselves how to help rebuild in a certain direction also from the point of view of aid. These people, these faces of war must continue to question us.

Eyes that speak

We have brought food where there is no food.
We have traveled to the borders with Belarus and Russia.
Were we afraid?
Sometimes yes. Others don't.
Explosions in the background.
Danger of new attacks.
A life in the balance.
Where anything can happen.
Where to find the strength?
Looking around.
Observing himself carefully.
Scared eyes. Torn apart.
Disappointed eyes.
Eyes hungry for revenge.
Humble eyes.
Eyes exhausted from tears.
Underground bunkers.
Former gyms as dormitories.
Whole houses bombed.
Tanks parked like cars.
What if all this is already normal?
No, it can't be.
No, it doesn't have to be.
War sucks.
Without ifs and buts.

Marco Maccarelli
NP June / July 2022