Фота: Ксенія Галубовіч.
From the Editors. “Shelter of Memory” is a human stories report by journalist Kseniya Halubovich about people whose lives have been shattered by war. The author travels to eastern Ukraine, to a shelter for elderly refugees near Kharkiv, to hear and preserve the stories of those who have lost their homes, loved ones, health and their footing in life. This is a report about living human pain, memory and hope.
A woman sits on the veranda of a shelter on the outskirts of Kharkiv. Behind her, across the yard, there is a garden. Tomatoes grow in raised beds. Chickens wander between the paths. Somewhere beyond the fence, a rooster is crowing. Everything looks peaceful. Except her. Three villages around her home burned down. Her documents burned with them.
“I had a family: a daughter, a son-in-law, a son, a daughter-in-law, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. They were all registered in the same village, and now they are scattered everywhere. My granddaughter found me and called. She turned on some kind of video link. My daughter is shouting: ‘Oh, don’t cry, Mom, don’t cry! It will all be over, and I’ll come and get you.’ But where am I supposed to be taken?”
She does not know whether there is anything left to return to. She looks me straight in the eye.
“Tell me. What am I supposed to do now?”
I do not know what to say. It seems no one does. For her, every new person brings hope that some solution exists.
Around us, elderly residents sit in the afternoon sun. Some are talking. Others are sleeping. A very old woman with a thin face covered in skin as delicate as parchment sits motionless on the veranda. Dogs lie at her feet. Again and again, she asks to be taken to a shop that exists only in her memory.
“It’s just around the corner.”
Residents call this place “Vialikaya Radzina” (“Big Family”). An abandoned workers’ dormitory on the outskirts of Kharkiv has become home to people who survived Russia’s invasion but lost almost everything. Many arrived wearing only the clothes they had on. Some fled the occupation. Others watched their homes disappear under artillery fire. Some can no longer remember exactly where they came from. But almost all of them still dream of returning home.
When a colleague told me about this shelter, I bought the cheapest train ticket and headed east. The people living here were among those whom, according to Russia’s claims, it had come to “liberate.”
They survived.
Some still remember the Second World War.
The train from Kyiv was old, with rattling windows and Soviet-style open-plan carriages. At one point, it stopped in the middle of nowhere. A few seconds later, an explosion rang out somewhere nearby. No one said anything. The passengers looked at one another, then turned back to the windows.
A woman who saw me searching through my pockets for change to buy coffee offered to pay for me. By then, I had already found the required amount. But the gesture itself made the journey feel less lonely.
The farther east we traveled, the heavier everything around us seemed. The faces of the people were different from those I had seen in Kyiv. We were approaching the front. There was more exhaustion here. More silence.
At the Varazhba station, I saw an old water tower through the window. Part of its roof had been blown off by a drone strike. While the train stood there, the sounds of explosions carried across the plain in the distance. I felt myself becoming increasingly tense.
Only halfway through the journey did I understand why the ticket had been so cheap.
The conductor walked through the carriage, smiling at the passengers. His uniform shirt was unbuttoned because of the heat. He looked like a character from an old film. As if his only role were to make a grim story a little easier to bear.
Air-raid alerts repeatedly delayed the train. Sometimes we stopped in the middle of a forest and waited for the danger to pass.
Mobile service disappeared and returned again. News loaded very slowly. When we were already approaching Sumy, I read reports about people who had been killed and injured in the city that day.
The woman who had offered me coffee got off there. The conductor buttoned up his shirt and shouted after those who were leaving:
“How did you not hear that we were running late? I told everyone! Ah, you had headphones on? Didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything — and in the meantime, you’ve already been run over by a tram.”
The closer you get to the front line, the darker the humor becomes.
A soldier slept in the aisle. He looked like the calmest person on the train. Or perhaps simply the most tired.
A friend met me at the railway station in Kharkiv. Back in 2020 in Minsk, we stood together outside our building and watched buses full of masked security forces arrive during the Belarusian protests. Neither of us could have imagined that five years later we would be sitting in Kharkiv, listening to Shahed drones flying across the night sky over her neighborhood.
The taxi driver could not find the shelter for a long time. The building stood on the outskirts of the city, hidden behind trees and fences. From the outside, it looked completely unremarkable.
Inside, however, it resembled a village made up of people who had lost their own homes. One of the staff members showed me down a corridor with open doors. Along the way, she introduced me to the residents.
No one closed their doors. Some slept after lunch. Others sat by the windows, looking off into the distance. Somewhere, a television was playing quietly. The smell of food still lingered in the corridor.
I suddenly felt nervous. I had come here to collect stories. Instead, I found myself standing outside rooms that contained entire human lives.
The first person I met was an elderly woman sitting alone at a table. Boxes of medicine stood around her. A walker was nearby. Her name was Liudmila Petrovna. She was 83 years old. She had been living here for three years.
“Have you heard of Staryi Saltiv? There was so much suffering there. Some people returned, but others’ apartments are still in ruins.”
That day, I heard a dozen or so place names I had never known before. For the people who live here, these are not simply points on a map. They are places where they built homes, raised children and spent most of their lives. Most likely, most of them will never return there.
But no one says this out loud.
Later, I found a recent video of Staryi Saltiv online. A school that had been renovated after Russian shelling in 2022 was destroyed again in 2025.
Before the war, Liudmila Petrovna says, they lived an ordinary life.
“Like everyone else.”
In February 2022, she was sitting at the kitchen table when the blast wave blew out all the windows.
“Everything flew onto the floor. My son’s friend came and boarded up the windows. But there was no electricity, no water — nothing. Then I hid in the pantry. I was sitting there on a chair when suddenly, in the middle of the day, it became dark. There was no roof anymore. The antennas, the pipes — everything had been blown away. You could see the sky right from the room.”
Then she tells me about her neighbor.
“There is a woman here who is 93. She walked here from Vovchansk.”
Liudmila was evacuated by volunteers after someone told them that people were hiding in the basement. When they arrived, she was wearing only the clothes she had on.
— “That’s how we live now. I want to go home so badly, I can’t put it into words. It’s good here. They feed us. They wash our clothes. They take care of us. But it still isn’t home. If my legs didn’t hurt, I would go back.”
Liudmila once worked in construction.
— “The whole of Kharkiv Region was mine. I built and built and built. And now I live in a dormitory myself. My son keeps saying, ‘Mom, we’ll be going home soon.’ And I ask: when is ‘soon’? I came here with a cane. Now I can’t even walk with it.”
She points to the walker.
“That’s life. You just keep going until the end.”
At that moment, a cheerful man in a wheelchair rolled into the room. He had lost both legs.
“So, Aunt Liuda, shall we go have a smoke!” Liudmila immediately burst out laughing.
It was obvious that he was one of the most energetic people in the shelter. He looked about fifty. We went outside together.
Dogs ran around the yard among the chickens, a rooster and several geese. Vegetables grew in neat wooden beds. A large covered veranda provided shade from the summer sun, while patches of warm light lay on the benches nearby. Two enormous dogs initially looked intimidating, but they immediately began wagging their tails and inviting us to play. They were sisters. During the war, their owners were forced to leave them behind. Later, volunteers found the dogs and brought them here.
We sat in the sun.
Sergei’s problems began before the war. Working at a factory and being exposed to industrial chemicals eventually led to the amputation of both his legs. He ended up at the shelter after losing the person who had cared for him.
His brother was killed in September 2022.
At the time, they were living under Russian occupation near Hoptivka, a village just 11 kilometers from the Russian border.
“One morning, he went into the forest belt to collect firewood and stepped on a tripwire.”
“I asked the neighbors to go look for him because I roughly knew where he had gone.”
“‘This is the end for me,’ he said. ‘Take care of Sergei.’”
“I can’t even rebury him properly.”
Sergei spent six months under occupation.
Russian soldiers searched basements for people they called “Nazis.” One of the soldiers — a man from somewhere beyond the Urals — spoke more openly with Sergei.
“He told me: ‘We have no choice. They send everyone. Everyone has a family, children, parents. If we refuse, they will suffer. We are all trapped.’”
“I replied: ‘You’re fools. Ukraine had one Maidan, then another. People here resist. You have a different mentality. You call us brotherly peoples. What brothers? It is better to be an orphan than to have brothers like that.’”
Scrolling through photos on his phone, Sergei begins talking about his childhood and old friends.
“I had a friend whom I grew up with in western Ukraine. My parents were from there. Then he moved to Moscow and started teaching me how to live. He was drafted into the Russian army. Now he is gone. His parents don’t even know where he is. He is listed as missing. And once we used to go fishing together. We used to climb over the fence to the neighbors’ place to pick apples.”
He tells the story almost in disbelief, as if he still cannot comprehend the cruel irony of it all.
Almost every family here has someone like that — a former friend, relative or neighbor, someone who believed strangers on television more than the people they had known all their lives.
Sergei arrived at the shelter on December 1, 2023. He does not know whether his home is still standing.
We sit at a table in the yard. Music plays from Sergei’s phone. Dogs come over to be petted. Someone nearby is watering the flower beds. It is difficult to reconcile the tranquility of this place with the violence that brought its residents here.
At that moment, an elegant elderly woman approaches us. She carries herself with remarkable simplicity. It is hard to believe that Nella is already 87.
Her son was killed in the war.
And yet she speaks with extraordinary kindness. In a place marked by so much loss, that kindness seems almost unexpected.
“I don’t know whether people still have a conscience. What even is a conscience anymore?”
“I still have one,” Sergei replies.
Nella smiles and asks whether I can guess where she is from.
“From the best city of all,” she says before I can answer. “From Kupiansk.”
She explains that Kupiansk lies on one of the routes leading to Kharkiv.
“Putin really wants Kharkiv. In 2022, they reached Kuchukivka without a fight. I lived there for six months, and then they brought me here. My son was killed near Izium in September 2022. It was these boys who prevented the occupation from reaching Kharkiv. They defended the city and died there.”
This is not the first war of her life.
One memory from the past has stayed with her forever.
“I remember a little of the Great Patriotic War. When it began in 1941, I was three and a half years old. In 1943, we were evacuated from Donbas. My mother stood in the yard, clutching an axe tightly to her chest. I stood on one side of her, and my older brother on the other.”
Her mother needed the axe to survive with her children. A German soldier pointed a pistol at her. He wanted to take the axe. He could have shot her. But he did not.
“I don’t remember his face,” Nella says. “I only remember his greatcoat.”
During the current war, she says, a Russian soldier once demanded her documents.
“I told him: ‘You know, your parents and my parents ate from the same field kitchen throughout the war.’”
Before saying goodbye, Nella asks me for one favor.
“Tell people that Ukrainians live here. We need to live. And we will live. I hope you live to see peace. I don’t have much time left.”
After stories like these, it was hard not to cry. But tears only added another layer of helplessness. So I did the simplest thing I could. I went back inside.
In the common room, there were bookshelves and even a collection of dolls. A woman who looked no more than forty was sitting in an armchair. Her entire family had been killed. After a stroke, she lost her hearing. I gestured to ask whether I could look at the book she was reading. She smiled sadly.
Speaking in a barely audible whisper — because she could no longer hear her own voice — she told me that she reads everything she can get her hands on.
To escape reality.
And once again, I caught myself struggling with all my strength to hold back tears.
On the second floor, I found a room with a completely different atmosphere. Three elderly women were sitting around a table playing cards.
“Whose turn is it?”
“Valina’s.”
“No, I already took that card. Now it’s your turn.”
It was obvious that the game had been going on for a long time.
There was a photograph of a handsome young serviceman on the table. One of the women noticed me looking at it.
“That’s my son.”
Three bouquets of flowers stood beside the photograph. Birthday gifts.
“I turned 85 on Sunday.”
“I’m 91,” the second woman said.
“And I’m 70.”
They laughed.
“We’re all worn out here already, dear.”
“I was born in Russia,” one of the women said.
“And I moved to Ukraine when I was 17. Then I lived in Belarus for a year, and after that I moved to Ukraine.”
She lived in Ukraine for 54 years. Her husband had already died.
“And that’s how I live.”
One of the women recalled watching the Maidan on television. Another began talking about the Second World War. She remembered returning to Kharkiv after 1945.
“There were black hills everywhere. Ruins. Rubble. Then everything was rebuilt. Factories. High-rise buildings. If you worked in construction, they gave you an apartment.”
The women talked at length about life at the shelter. They said the staff treated them very well. The food was good. The beds were clean.
One of the women had lost sight in one eye and could barely see with the other. Another was constantly worried about her son, who was surviving on a disability pension.
They talked about people who had died after arriving at the shelter. About neighbors who never managed to return home. About Kupiansk. About Izium. About Belarus. About Putin and Lukashenka. The conversation drifted along with their memories.
“We don’t know what will happen next. That’s why we play cards.”
When I got up to leave, they wished me luck.
“God goes first. And you — follow Him.”
Before leaving, I looked into one more room. An elderly woman was lying on the bed. She held a small mirror in front of her face and carefully examined her reflection. For a moment, it seemed to me that she had noticed me.
I went in.
“Hello. What’s your name?”
“Alla Aleksandrovna. Do you know my son? Rostislav. Slava.” She had a very calm, beautiful voice. Her face immediately lit up.
“And Marina. She’s the most beautiful — tall, elegant. That’s my family. Uncle Nikolai Andreyevich came to see me from Moscow. My father’s brother. He’s here now… with us.”
She spoke Russian in a very polished, refined manner, like a university lecturer. For a moment, I felt slightly uneasy at the thought that the ghost of her uncle from Moscow was somehow present in the room with us.
Suddenly, she pointed to my T-shirt, which showed Taras Shevchenko in the style of Elvis Presley.
“Is that Shevchenko?”
When I leave, she continues talking to her reflection in the mirror. Somewhere between reality and the past.
Several months later, while working on this story, I asked the shelter’s director what had happened to her son. He had been convicted of high treason. After his release, he sold his mother’s apartment. No one has seen him since.
But Alla Aleksandrovna will most likely never know this.
On the way back, I stopped at a bookshop. A young woman from Donetsk worked there. She had spent much of her life under occupation.
“When there is an unhealthy atmosphere at home, children become quiet,” she said. “The same thing happened to society when the occupation began. It fell silent.”
I had never heard a more accurate description.
In Kharkiv, navigation apps often behave strangely — one of the peculiarities of life in a city living under war. On the way to the railway station, the taxi driver tells me that once the map showed him as being in Madagascar.
“That would be nice,” he says. “There is no war there.”
By chance, I bought a ticket for the children’s carriage of a train bound for Kyiv. Everything inside was decorated with characters from cartoons and fairy tales. Educational games were attached to the walls. Children ran along the corridor while their mothers talked among themselves. The carriage turned out to be unexpectedly cozy. The children laughed. Their mothers spoke quietly. Then one little girl gazed out the window for a long time.
Outside the window, fields stretched all the way to the horizon. She studied the landscape carefully. Then she said quietly:
“Sad fields.”
No one answered. The train continued on its way.