Home for Hera. Is there a corner for an IDP family with three people with disabilities?

“For the summer”

“People ask me why I don't like IDPs. Why should I like them? The place is a mess. They let rats and mice in. After them, we have to do such repairs, you can’t even imagine. And now they're also shaming me in front of people. Let them, it's my house, why should I make excuses?” Olha vigorously tells me her grievances against the tenants.

“All of her words are not true,” says volunteer Kateryna Dorosh, who considers the whole story her personal responsibility.

In the fall of 2022, Olha let refugees from Avdiivka into her home in Kropyvnytskyi. The volunteers fixed the house: leveled the floor, installed new doors and window sills, built a ramp, and brought furniture and appliances. The owner received regular payments for rent and utilities.

In the spring of this year, the woman first demanded a rent of 1,500 more and then told the refugees to get out. She said that Avdiivka is already under occupation, so will they live in her house until they die? She has her own plans for the house.

Olha's son went missing at the front, and her husband was diagnosed with cancer. So the couple wants to repair the house and sell it to get money for the surgery.

So it turns out that one disadvantaged family decided to add pain to another disadvantaged family?

“I understand everything, everyone has their own problems, but why solve these problems so rudely, so inhumanly? The owners actually threw the IDPs out on the street, even though they knew how helpless they were. They could have given us at least a few months to find new acceptable housing,” says Kateryna.

After the scandal with Olha, the volunteer moved the Snitkin family to a temporary home, a house that had not been occupied for four years. The squat hut breathes heavily with damp, musty odors, has torn wallpaper and cracks, and shimmers with mold in the corners.

The local hostess let the refugees stay “for the summer”. By the fall they have to move out. Where will they go? It is not known.

Unsuitable living conditions

Arkadii Andriiovych meets me in the middle of the yard of his new home. This is his fifth shelter since the volunteers brought him out of Avdiivka. Volunteers' gifts — a refrigerator, a washing machine, and kitchen furniture transported from Olha’s place — stand in the middle of the yard.

In a new house, cluttered to the ceiling with things, there is nowhere to put them. And how will you connect that washing machine if the house has no water supply or sewage?

There's a water pump in the yard, and Arkadii fills bottles with water from it and carries them to the doorstep in his chair. To carry the bottles into the house, he has to jump two steps, leaning on a stool.

Before we met them, the Snitkins had lived here for several days. The volunteers have not yet installed a summer shower in the yard, so they are still using wet napkins or just a piece of cloth soaked in water.

The most troublesome is the toilet. It's at the end of the garden, and the path to it is rough — Liubov Vasylivna doesn't risk walking on it, even with her son's support. She is afraid of tripping and falling. A wheelchair can't get inside the toilet. So the family is forced to use basins or bags... It's humiliating and unbearable, they share.

There was simply no more food

Arkadii Andriiovych was a heat engineer at the Avdiivka Coke Plant. Liubov Vasylivna taught history at school. Oleh, who has been disabled since childhood, worked at the enterprise of the Ukrainian Association of the Blind.

In retirement, the couple went into business and had their own outlets in the local market. They had a two-room apartment from the factory, Arkadii Andriiovych's parental home, and garages with cars and mopeds. They were not in need.

But after 2014, life went downhill. The business began to go into decline, and due to constant stress, Liubov became almost completely blind. And in August 2021, Arkadii had his leg amputated. He was unable to apply for a disability group and a wheelchair.

To make life easier, the man moved from a five-story apartment without an elevator to his parents' house and learned to get around on stools. His wife and son stayed in the apartment.

And after February 2022, life became very difficult.

“The shelling was constant, there was no water, no electricity, no communication. For days I did not know what the situation was with my wife and son on the other side of Avdiivka. At the end of June 2022, Hera (the shepherd dog — ed.) and I had already eaten all the food. We even finished the nuts from three years ago. We were tearing cherries from the tree and eating them,” Arkadii Andriiovych says.

When there were no more cherries, the man called a hotline.

“Volunteers came to us and brought us dry rations. Hera and I had a snack right away. They offered to evacuate us to Pokrovsk. I agreed to go. Otherwise, Hera and I would have either starved to death or been killed by something. There was an unexploded shell sticking out of the ground in my yard. And the next one could have exploded,” he recalls.

On June 24, 2022, volunteers took the man and his shepherd dog out of Avdiivka. The day before, he was able to contact his son for the first time in many days. He was stunned by what he heard.

A shell hit the entrance next door to theirs, and the house became uninhabitable. Volunteers took his wife and son to Selydove and settled them in a dormitory.

The evacuation bus with Arkadii was traveling to Pokrovsk via Selydove. However, he could not stay with his family or take his wife and son with him — there was simply no time to negotiate and coordinate between the evacuation groups.

From Pokrovsk, Arkadii Andriiovych was taken to Dnipro, where he was helped to get a disability group, fed, and provided with a wheelchair. In August 2022, he and Hera were reassigned to go to Kropyvnytskyi, as Dnipro was already overcrowded with refugees.

The angel's name was Katia

“When the evacuation train from Dnipro was being unloaded in Kropyvnytskyi, someone took a photo of Arkadii Andriiovych and posted it on the Internet. He was so lonely on that platform, so desperate.

I am an animal rights activist who has taken many animals from the frontline areas, so I was impressed by this situation: an elderly person with a disability evacuates and takes his dog with him, and does not leave her under fire.

I found out that they were accommodated in our local homeless shelter — it was the only place where he was allowed to keep the dog in the room. He did not want the dog to live on a chain or in an enclosure,” says volunteer Katia.

First, she brought Hera food, then organized surgery for her (the dog had to have a tumor removed), then treated her stitches and gave her injections.

“I felt awful about the conditions in which an elderly man with a disability had to live in the shelter. The shower was on the second floor, so Arkadii Andriiovych could not get to it on his own. The windows did not protect him from the winter cold. And the contingent... I decided to find him some other place to live,” the woman says.

For him not to feel lonely, the volunteer transported Liuba and Oleh to Kropyvnytskyi, who were being evicted from a temporary dormitory in Selydove.

At first, they also settled in a shelter for the homeless. In a shared room for a dozen people, Liubov Vasylivna was almost the only woman. Arkadii Andriiovych could not take his family to his room: it was narrow, and one more bed would not allow his wheelchair to pass through.

With the help of realtors, Katia rented a house for the Snitkins from Olha.

“I paid for the house and utility bills with my own money. In winter, it was up to 7-8 thousand per month. Although the house was in a very bad condition — with rat holes, no doors, even no steps at the entrance. Its only advantage was water supply and sewage.

My friends and I adapted it to the needs of the family. Arkadii Andriiovych took care of Olha's two sheep and her dog. Relations with the owner were generally normal.

I agreed to pay more when she wanted to raise the price in the spring, just to avoid tormenting the elderly with moving. But there were ultimatums and nitpicking, and no one wanted to negotiate with me,” says Katia.

Goddess Hera

After all the wandering and troubles with Olha, Katia decided to buy a house for the Snitkins, so that no one could throw them out on the street. They need a house so that Arkadii Andriiovych can go out freely and Hera has a place to run around. And if not in Kropyvnytskyi itself, where housing prices are quite high, then in a place where there will be doctors, social workers, and pharmacies.

The Snitkins' total pension is less than 16 thousand hryvnias. If they pay the rent there will be nothing left for three sick adults to live on. If they had their own place, they could at least pay the utility bills.

It's not an easy task, but Katia doesn't give up: people have responded to her appeal, and so far they have managed to raise more than 140 thousand hryvnias.

“Social services have repeatedly offered to place the family in boarding houses. There are special institutions for people with disabilities, for IDPs. But Arkadii does not want to, because Hera will not be able to live with him in those institutions,” the volunteer explains.

The dog has been living with the man for 11 years since she was a little puppy. He even agrees to return to the shelter for the homeless, just not to part with her.

“Hera is very sensitive. When the shelling started in Avdiivka, she would run to me even from the street, and lie down on the couch next to me. I would cover her with my body, and she would cover me. We would hug and lie there until the shelling stopped. That's how we saved ourselves,” the man says, his voice beginning to tremble.

How long is temporary?

An old walnut tree outside shades Liubov Vasylivna's room. The sun doesn't come through the small dusty window at all. As she talks to me, she turns on a flashlight, and with the remnants of her eyesight, she can see its light.

When I ask her to take a photo, the woman anxiously fixes her freshly dyed hair. It turns out that Liuba took the henna sachets from home and dyed her hair herself.

“I don't want to ask Oleh, it's hard enough for him. He can't see the products in the store, he can't choose and weigh them, and the sellers are often hard to reach. I ask him to fight for housing, but he doesn't know how. Arkadii recently went to the Administrative Services Center (ASC) and registered us as IDPs at this new address, and now a social worker will come to visit us here, so it will be a little easier for Oleh,” the woman says.

“In Avdiivka, we had a renovated apartment with good appliances. We lost everything. I couldn't have dreamt this in a bad dream. And when will we be able to return? I don't expect anything anymore, I don't hope for anything,” she laments.

Arkadii Andriiovych applied to the Kropyvnytskyi ASC for compensation for his lost home. He was told that as long as Avdiivka was occupied, it was out of the question because it would be impossible to determine the extent of the damage to the house. Snitkin saw a drone video on the Internet: the area where their apartment was located was destroyed. But this is not enough.

Arkadii Andriiovych also wants to go home. And even buying a house, which Katia is talking about, seems to him like an episode from someone else's life. Just another transit stop on the way home.

You can help the Snitkin family get their own home by donating to the account of volunteer Kateryna Dorosh: 4731 2196 5259 9055, PrivatBank.