Kyiv, Ukraine — One of the 70 Russian missiles fired at Ukraine during a multi-hour attack in the early hours of June 15 exploded above the apartment block of Mariya Prokopchuk.
The blast shook the neighborhood in eastern Kyiv. The shock wave shattered hundreds of windows, sending shards of glass and plastic like razor blades into her apartment. “Just three centimeters more and a fragment would have pierced my skull,” the doctor told Al Jazeera.
Prokopchuk feared the missing windows would leave her ground-floor apartment an easy target for thieves. But just hours after the 4 a.m. explosion, Dobrobat, Ukraine’s largest volunteer group, solved her problem. Over 100 volunteers arrived to clear debris and install temporary plywood window covers in a honey color.
Dobrobat spokesman Vadym Severyn said the group has more than 55,000 volunteers and has helped restore apartments and homes for over a million Ukrainians. “No matter the workload, the result is always the same — 100% of those who ask for help receive it,” he said.
Dobrobat only sends in volunteers after damaged areas have been cleared of mines and other hazards.
The majority of volunteers are Ukrainian. Some drove cars or took buses from other regions to Kyiv after the June 15 attack. But foreigners from 36 countries also join, coming to Ukraine to work for months.
Among them is Lars Fersters, a retired blacksmith from Njurunda in northern Sweden. He decided to join after learning about Russian soldiers’ atrocities in occupied areas. “I got furious and asked myself: ‘Is there anything I can do?’” the 70-year-old said.
Less than 100 meters away, an American volunteer was cutting wide boards. Jason Hercula, 37, a hairstylist from North Carolina, said he sold blood plasma to buy a plane ticket to Poland, then took an overnight train to Kyiv.
Dobrobat is just one part of a much broader volunteer movement involving millions of Ukrainians. Volunteer groups provide civilians and soldiers with almost everything far faster than state agencies. They fundraise for drones, body armor, night-vision goggles, medical equipment, prosthetics and more. They evacuate the elderly, children and pets from front-line areas, and rush into liberated zones to give immediate support.
Even Ukrainian schoolchildren volunteer: making trench candles from tin cans, cardboard and wax, assembling drones, and weaving camouflage nets to hide trenches and roads from Russian drones.
The speed of volunteers often cannot be matched by state agencies stuck in bureaucracy and often criticized for corruption. “If we work with volunteers, the job gets done,” said one soldier who identified only by the call sign Baloo. “If we work with the state, the chance is 50-50.”
