Lost and disoriented, Olena Primak stood at Belgorod's train station, holding tightly to her young daughter's arm. The scorching summer heat and the long journey had left the Ukrainian refugee on the brink of collapse.
"Suddenly, a man with the most generous of smiles appeared," she said. With a gentle countenance, warm eyes and grey hair, the 61-year-old Alexander Demidenko approached Primak, offering to take her bags.
After living more than a year under Russian control in the southern Ukrainian town of Novaya Kakhovka, Primak, a former shopkeeper, decided in June 2023 that she could no longer bear foreign occupation. To get back to Ukrainian-controlled land, she had to cross the Kolotilovka checkpoint, the only passage for Ukrainians returning to their homeland. "Thank God
Alexander [Demidenko] was there to help us at the end of it." Since the start of the war more than two years ago, a discreet network of unofficial Russian volunteers like Demidenko has sprung up helping tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war get out of Russia.
The volunteers, often ordinary anti-war Russians, operate largely through word of mouth and groups on the Telegram messaging app.
This story is from the April 19, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the April 19, 2024 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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