Ukraine’s ‘volunteer army’ helps rebuild what Russia destroys
Made up of mostly locals and some foreign visitors, Dobrobat, Ukraine’s biggest group of volunteers, steps in to fix war-induced damage. Kyiv, Ukraine – One
Made up of mostly locals and some foreign visitors, Dobrobat, Ukraine’s biggest group of volunteers, steps in to fix war-induced damage. Kyiv, Ukraine – One of the 70 missiles Russia fired at Ukraine in an hours-long attack early on June 15 exploded above Mariya Prokopchuk’s apartment building. It shook the neighbourhood in eastern Kyiv with an ear-splitting boom, but most of its debris fell into a nearby algae-blanketed pond, startling a dozen ducks. The shockwave shattered hundreds of windows in the area, blowing razor-sharp shards of glass or plastic and dust clouds into the apartments. “Three more centimetres, and [the shards] would have pierced my skull,” the doctor told Al Jazeera. She said she “felt no fear” about the blast during the overnight attack that killed five civilians, wounded three dozen and caused fires, including in the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra, a centuries-old Orthodox Christian complex dubbed “Ukraine’s Vatican”. But Prokopchuk was afraid the missing windows would make her first-floor apartment an easy target for looters. Hours after the 4am explosion, Dobrobat, Ukraine’s largest “volunteer army”, solved her problem. More than 100 volunteers arrived to clear the rubble and install temporary window coverings made of honey-coloured board. ‘I got angry’ They came with truckloads of strand board and filled the air with the whizzing of portable, battery-powered saws. “These guys are skilful and try to make things better,” Prokopchuk said sitting at her kitchen table while three Dobrobat volunteers were finishing boarding up her windows. The coverings would make her rooms dark but safe until she gets a government subsidy for new, plastic replacements.
Dobrobat is a Ukrainian abbreviation of “Battalion of Kindness,” and it has more than 55,000 volunteers who have already helped restore apartments and houses for more than a million Ukrainians, according to the group’s spokesman Vadym Severyn. “Irrespective of the amount of work, irrespective of its volume, the number of volunteers at work, the result is always the same – 100 percent of the people who asked for help get it,” he told Al Jazeera, standing outside the damaged apartment building. Despite its rapid-response strategy, Dobrobat dispatches volunteers only after the damaged areas have been cleared of unexploded mines and other hazards, he said. Most volunteers are Ukrainians, and some hopped in their cars or on buses in other regions after hearing about the June 15 attack on Kyiv. But foreigners from three dozen countries have also joined, arriving in Ukraine for months-long stints. One of them is Lars Fersters, a retired blacksmith from the northern Swedish town of Njurunda, who enlisted after learning about the atrocities committed by Russian servicemen in occupied Ukrainian regions. “I got angry, and asked myself, ‘Is there anything I can do’? ” the 70-year-old, clad in an orange-and-white vest, told Al Jazeera standing next to Prokopchuk’s shattered window he was about to fix. Fersters uses gestures and a translation app to communicate with Ukrainian colleagues and residents whose homes he helps mend. Apart from quick repairs including tarpaulin roofs, Dobrobat provides long-term retrofitting. Last year, Fersters worked shoulder to shoulder with volunteers from Canada, China, Israel, and the Netherlands to build an elaborate new roof over the house of a 73-year-old woman in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.
The BriefWire