Photo exhibition: Ukrainian feminist voices

When the full scale War broke out, conductors of the Kyiv-Rakhiv train spent more than 40 days on tour. The wagons have become their temporary home...

(Photo credits to Viacheslav Ratynskyi)

...The Ukrainian Railway evacuated a total of more than three million people to the west of the country in the first month of the full-scale invasion. From there, many people went further abroad, seeking refuge from the war...

...Sometimes, the train carried five thousand passengers at a time. As they left Kyiv on the morning of February 24, they already heard explosions behind them. Most of these women come from Sumy Oblast. The state border with Russia is more than 560 kilometres long in this region. Women could not go home. Their native towns and villages were shelled. Some were under Russian occupation....

...Almost no one slept during the evacuation. People comforted other people's children when their mothers had lost their strength. They kept children busy with showing cartoons and playing songs on their smartphones.

...On February 24, Russian troops entered the Chernihiv region. That morning, Natalia Pesotska, a teacher at the Chernihiv Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation of Children, went to work as usual....

(Photo credits to Oleksii Furman)

Some of the children are orphans. When the war broke out, most of the children remained in the institution. They were hiding from the shelling in the basement. ..

...Natalia became their closest person. When the local authorities organized the evacuation, it was Natalia, who took the responsibility and went with the children. There was no safe way from Chernihiv already. All road signs were removed to confuse the invaders. Cars were shot...

...Someone was blown by a mine. The journey from Chernihiv to Kyiv usually takes two hours. They drove for nine. The teacher was sitting next to the driver. There were burnt cars on the side of the road. The children were sick, but they couldn't stop.

When they arrived in Kyiv, they boarded a train and set off to the west of the county.

Valeriia Kolomiiets is from Mariupol, Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, she, like thousands of other locals, had no idea that their city would soon be destroyed by the Russians.

Valeriia has two little sons. All the time they have been hiding from the shelling at the cheap soviet residential building basement. She cooked a meal for them on the bonfire right in the courtyard. People hoped everything would end soon. ..

(Photos provided by Valeriia Kolomiyets)

...“It’s not so scary to stay without water, food, or gas but it's terrible to not have any connection. We didn’t understand what was going on. I just knew what I had been seeing through the windows. Buildings were burning. People were escaping with some stuff and carrying dead bodies on blankets”, — Valeriia said.,..

...The woman dared to run away when the projectile targeted their yard.

She put the children in the car and drove off to nowhere. After overcoming dozens of Russian roadblocks and driving through the shelling, they made it to safety. Their block of flats in Mariupol had been bombed.

Inna Adruh is known in Chernihiv for her literary readings and her souvenir shop in the city centre. She could have left by car but decided to stay at home with her husband, parents and 20 cats until the end, until victory. From the first days, she collected animals whose owners were unable to evacuate them...

(Photos provided by Vira Kuryko, photo credits to Serhii Korovainyi)

...During her life under siege, Inna learned to distinguish the sound of projectiles "Hrad" from "Smerch" and mortars from tanks. She used rainwater for washing and cleaning. Clean clothes and washed hair became signs of luxury...

...In her diary, she jokingly described the war as the most effective weight-loss programme. And also for growing up. Especially true for children. Inna's two-year-old godson never cried - not at the shelling, not at the bombing...

...Whenever his mother got nervous, he would hug her and say: "Mom, you're so cute, don't cry."A month later, after the shelling stopped, the women from the municipal landscaping company planted tulips and hyacinths in the city centre.

The woman and the English-speaking man are going up the escalator at the “Shulavka” station in Kyiv. There are many people here. A Labrador breed dog is sitting on the woman's shoulders. She is carrying a plastic box with a turtle inside...

(Photos credit to Oleksandr Khomenko and Viacheslav Ratynskyi )

...The station “Politekhnichnyi Instytut” is also full of people. Two women with walking sticks came to hide during the air raid. The younger one is called Natalya. She is blind. Natalya is accompanied by her mother, Tetyana, 69 years old, who lives nearby...

With the first explosions in the capital, metro stations became shelters for citizens. People arranged places for children and animals from backpacks and camping mats, shared food, read fairy tales and prayed...

For almost a year and a half, the metro has been associated with the cold of concrete floors, but it is perhaps the only place in Kyiv where people can stay safe.

Ella is from the Zaporizhzhia region. She was staying with friends in Kharkiv when the war started. After several days and nights in a bunker under bombardment, Ella decided to leave the city. She spent two days on the road to the west of the country before reaching Lviv...

(Photo credits to Danylo Pavlov)

...In the first days of the full-scale invasion, the Lviv railway station became a place of concentrated confusion and pain for tens of thousands of women. Until recently, they had homes, jobs and plans...

...And suddenly, they had to stand in the cold in line to move towards the unknown. Before they were preparing food in their own kitchens. And within a few days, they were offered free hot food in the square in front of the station...

...Volunteers and doctors were constantly on duty here. Volunteer Ira said one of the mothers let her hold a five-month-old baby because she was having a panic attack.

Residents of Izium call life under the muzzle of Russian machine guns "7 months of hell". The city used to live in constant fear, waiting for liberation...

(Photo credits to Viktoriia Roshchyna)

...The search for missing persons and the exhumation of the bodies of the murdered are still ongoing. People talk about the terrible actions of the Russian military with the living and the dead...

...Hanna Obushenkova and her friends-volunteers took people away from the occupation. On April 16, 2022, the Russians shot a convoy of civilians. Two of Hanna's friends died. Nothing was left of the car. She herself was seriously injured. Doctors saved Hanna´s life. There were three bullets in her body...

...Before that, she had been taking people out for a month. Even after the injury, Hanna has not stopped volunteering and organizing hot lunches for the locals. She has two children and is helping to bring the town back to life for their sake.

Halyna Almazova is a professional racing driver. Since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014, she has commanded a group of medics from Viterets. The group has been evacuating soldiers from the front lines and providing them with first aid...

(Photos credit to Serhii Korovayny and Serhii Morhunov)

...Sometimes she would drive the same ambulance to pick up a deceased serviceman from the front lines, take him to a morgue in one of the peaceful cities in Donbas, and then bring him home to the gates, where the relatives would collect the coffin.

Halyna is now at the front lines. In April 2022, after the start of the Russian full-scale invasion, she voluntarily joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and received the rank of junior lieutenant...

...Since then she has been holding the position of a deputy commander of the Dyke Pole special forces battalion, operating in various areas of the front. The soldiers of her unit took part in the liberation of the village of Ivanivka in the Kherson region and also helped to de-occupy the Kharkiv region — Bairak, Balakliia, Nova Husarivka, Shchurivka, Vilkhovatka, and Kupiansk.

Halyna says her job is to provide first aid and medical evacuation of wounded soldiers from the combat zone.

Midsummer 2022. There are vegetables, fruit, and the sound of children's laughter in Ilona’s garden. Looks like there is no war but only before the first explosion.

During the day, the family lives in the basement because of the constant Russian shelling...

(Photos credit to Danylo Pavlov)

...Every evening, Ilona takes her daughters, two-year-old Zlatoslava and six-year-old Myroslava, and loads them into a van with their basic belongings and food. They sleep in a field where the Russian shelling does not reach...

...Dad turns on the heating in the car and puts mattresses in the back where mum and the children will sleep. The man lies down on the front seats. They will return home in the morning. There are dozens of such family cars in the fields at night. But this is no guarantee of safety...

...A few months later, at the end of September, the Russians bombed the village even more intensively. Problems with light and water began. The family decided to leave the hell that used to be home.

Kateryna Gaidai unloads the boot of the car. There are large parcels containing the most essential items. They are for lonely old people who cannot flee during the war. Some are very attached to their homes. Others find it difficult to evacuate because of their health. They are cared for by the Ukrainian Charity Foundation “Starenki”...

(Photos credit to Oleh Samoilenko)

Kateryna met the team in 2021 during the pandemic. At the time the foundation was looking for volunteer drivers to deliver groceries to the elderly people. She joined to help. Later, Kateryna became manager and now she coordinates the workers and volunteers. During the full-scale Russian invasion, the big problem is to find people who have not left the city, have cars and are willing to deliver aid. Many girls without cars apply...

...Each parcel weighs 10-15 kilos. In addition to the products, the parcels contain warm items such as blankets, bed clothes and slippers. When there was no light because of rockets, they added torches and thermos flasks.

Once the trip had to be canceled because of Russian shelling. Some of the oldest grandparents say that they have never seen such a war.