Anastasia Goncharova encountered the full-scale invasion in Cyprus, where she had been working for several years. Without hesitation, she agreed to coordinate the company’s efforts to help the Ukrainian military, and later opened her first collection, which was successful. Since then, she hasn’t stopped, raising around eight million hryvnias, using funny memes, publishing touching posts and spending three hours a day sending personal pleas to support the next collection. Although she had the opportunity to stay, she returned to Ukraine in 2023. She does not think she is doing anything special. She believes that everyone with a Ukrainian passport should help save the lives of the defenders.

Ever since she was a child, Olha Oliynyk has loved helping people, as her father taught her by example. In early 2022, he volunteered to go to the front. After he went on a mission near Bakhmut in August of that year, he lost contact with the company, and today the family does not know what happened to him. Olha often talks to her father in her dreams, which makes her believe he is alive. While the search continues, she helps other soldiers. This is her gratitude for defending the country and a way to calm her soul. 

Leadership skills helped Anastasia Lemba gather more than 20 like-minded people, and together they manufactured and delivered some 3,500 power banks to the frontline in less than a year. The desire to contribute to Ukraine’s victory encourages new ideas and their implementation, and now the foundation’s members are collecting FPV drones. 

During her stay in occupied Kherson, photographer Maria Pulia took pictures of her hometown to record it for history while it was still intact. Taking risks, she photographed a pro-Ukrainian rally while Russian occupiers stood opposite with weapons drawn, and created her own photo project on the unity of Kherson with the whole of Ukraine while enemy military vehicles drove past her windows. Six months later, she decided to leave, and when she read the news of the city’s liberation in early November 2022, she burst into tears on the metro. 

Maria Pulia, a native of Kherson who now lives in Kyiv, has changed her profession and started taking pictures of people three years ago. This skill once helped her to accept her body, and now she helps others to do the same through her photographs. She started her work before the full-scale invasion and continues to do so now, so she has seen a change in the requests for her work.

Yana Bielska often divides her time between two cities: Kyiv, where she has been living for 10 years, and Konotop, in the Sumy region, where she was born and where her parents live. Together they design embroidered clothing to ensure that the Ukrainian tradition of wearing embroidered clothing lives on. Yana dedicates everything she creates to the memory of her husband, Dmytro Shapoval, who volunteered for the army and died for Ukraine in the summer of 2022.

Although Natalia Vasylieva, a native of Kharkiv who now lives in Kyiv, is currently saving up for a car for her brother, who is a soldier, she does not consider herself a volunteer. As a writer and publisher, founder of publishing house «Vidkryttia», she is helping to support and develop Ukraine.

We talk to Natalia Vasylieva about how she came across the news of the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014, how she saw the beginning of the full-scale invasion from the window of her apartment in Saltovka, Kharkiv. Also touch on how she continues to write and publish, documenting military events and providing a literary launching pad for young Ukrainian writers.

At first, no one believed that Nadiya Radchuk from Rivne had the right idea to visit the wounded in hospital. But the 24-year-old president of the Rivne Rotaract Club persevered, and was touched by the gratitude of the wounded. Now, more people are joining the initiative, and Nadiya is looking for ways to expand support for the wounded.

Stella Marchuk, 29, works in IT and devotes her free time to her art, creating souvenirs with her own illustrations. For her, this is the perfect balance, although it took some time to find. In the early days of the full-scale invasion, the artist did not understand how she could make art, but later she saw it as a tool to capture memories and emotions and to volunteer. Now she sends her postcards to military hospitals to express words of support and gratitude for our defence through art, and donates part of the proceeds to the Ukrainian army. 

For Svitlana Pochepets, a resident of Kyiv, the first two weeks of the occupation were the most terrifying in almost two years of large-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. Although the occupiers did not enter the village of the dacha where she lived with her family because of its good geographical location, it was unbearable to leave through a Russian checkpoint, to see the destroyed buildings, the foreign flag and to hear the enemy language.

Vitalii Torchynskyi from Kyiv is an IT professional. Before the full-scale invasion, his hobbies were programming and electronics, as it was both his favourite thing to do and a way to stay competitive on the job market.
Since the start of the full invasion, the volunteer spends all his free time – after work and on weekends – repairing drones. Over the course of a year, he has repaired more than 150 drones.

Dmytro Zinchenko and Anastasiia Aleksieieva live in the village of Ivankiv, which is located in the north of the Kyiv region and was one of the first to meet the hostile Russian troops on 24 February 2022. The couple, who had recently married and returned from a holiday in Sri Lanka, had to survive more than a month of occupation. To thank those who had supported them during those difficult days, they decided to make patriotic foams. Over time, they added foams with paintings by their compatriot Maria Prymachenko to the range to promote her work.

Valeria Pokusa and her husband are originally from the Donetsk region. When the fighting for Donetsk airport began in May 2014, they were forced to leave their home and move to Kyiv. And in February 2022, fleeing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, they left the capital and did not return until the summer of that year.
Throughout this year, the family has been actively involved in volunteer work: Valeriia and her daughter Myroslava bake sweets, which the whole family then sells at a charity fair. 

At the end of May last year, about ten concerned Kyiv residents organised a small fair to help their friends with the next collection. The event was such a success that the initiators decided to continue.

In a year and a half, the team has grown and the now traditional Sunday charity fair on the grounds of the golden-domed St Michael’s Monastery has become a regular event.

“Our names are Mykola and Christina, we are a couple and we are both 29”. That’s how Christina Khoydra and Mykola Vasyuk describe themselves, a couple from Kyiv who dreamed of a honeymoon, but instead have been buying reconnaissance and interception equipment, cars and tactical medicine for a year and a half. They have involved their family members in volunteering and invite everyone they meet in everyday life to join the defence forces.

Originally from Ternopil and now living in Kyiv, Olga Rymarchuk is a 29-year-old IT programmer. In March 2022, she started raising money for tactical gloves for her military relatives and has so far raised nearly £20,000, which has been used to buy ammunition and military supplies for the front line. All she needed to achieve this was an Instagram page, the support of her family, friends, and colleagues, and pictures of her beloved cat, Josie.