SOS Ukraine - assistance for the disabled

They met and fell in love at the beginning of the outbreak of war in Ukraine. He is a pilot of military aircraft, she was a cadre at a large factory. He takes care of a disabled son from his first marriage, she is a single mother raising two daughters.

- I fell in love immediately, but it was not easy to convince her that at our age, during the war, it was still possible to start a new life. Unfortunately, we did not know what was waiting for us...- says 53-year-old Viktor.

Olesia is delicate, beautiful, kind, smiling, and a little shy. She loves to cook, and her apple pancakes are finger-licking. I find them at the kitchen table, they immediately set a plate for me, and of course, aforementioned pancakes on it. Yummy. Next to her sits Viktor, born in distant Kazakhstan, a volcano of energy, funny, smiling, strong, so naturally cheerful (you never know when he is serious and when he is joking), resourceful, the kind of person who, if we get lost in the woods, will build us a house out of a scarf and two sticks, for survival. A pilot of military aircraft (he got his license in the USSR), a truck driver who has experienced more than one thing, seen more than one thing, a friendly chatterbox, but when he shows pictures of Nikopol, from which they escaped, he suddenly falls silent...

A bomb with mallows in the background

- Six kilometers from Nikopol is a power plant, so we expected the Russians to bomb the place. First the power plant was hit, then bombs were falling closer and closer to civilians, and finally the hospital was shelled. Houses, blocks of apartments, schools... Oh, here on the third floor was our apartment where we lived with Olesia and the children - Viktor shows photos of the well-kept block of apartments where they lived until a month ago. Around the block, tall trees (all of them!) knocked down, a salvaged bench, several burned cars, clothes flying almost everywhere, dogs huddling under the stairs at the entrance to the building, and huge, colorful mallows!

- The bomb hit the roof, fell right through the middle of our apartment. We have nothing to go back to.... - says Sasha, Victor's 29-year-old son, who became disabled 12 years ago after jumping into the water.

Imagine a small but strong man who carries the tall Sasha from the apartment on the third floor two or three times a day, drives him to school, to rehabilitation, to the pub for meeting with his buddies and brings him back home, carrying that affable redhead on his back.

- Dad is the best in the world! When things started to get messy at our place in Nikopol, he already had a whole evacuation plan for our family in his head. He prepared everything, packed our evacuation backpacks, but not in a way to scare us, he didn't tell us anything. He knows how to arrange everything. He is not only my dad but also my best friend - says Sasha.

Love military intelligence

And it was this strength of character, stubbornness, that convinced Olesya to him. They met at the factory and the petite blonde immediately caught his eye. But it was not at all that easy to win her heart.

- Olesia worked in human resources, I often visited her but she intimidated me so much that I acted like a schoolboy. I thought to myself that such a beautiful woman surely has a husband, but inside I felt that she was mine. But I knew nothing about her, so I had to gather intel the military way. Over a few days I found out everything about her: where she lived, with whom, what she did after work. I won! Olesia lived with her two daughters and was divorced! So I started the mating dance - laughs Viktor.

They fell in love, they say, in times of pestilence. They moved in together. Their life was normal, like ours. They worked, took care of their three children after work, cooked together, spent weekends at the seaside, and visited friends. An ordinary everyday life until things got dangerous in Nikopol.

Ordinary life

- And our pilgrimage for friends and relatives began. We moved practically every day. As they bombed one neighborhood, we slept at friends' house, as they bombed that one, we fled to our family where it was still calm. And so practically every day until our whole city was already leveled then we decided to leave for Poland. We ended up at the PAY IT FORWARD Foundation. Here we have a roof over our heads, peace, food, friendship, rehabilitation for Sasha, school for Katya. A little more and we will stand here on our own two feet - Viktor declares.

Asked if they miss anything, they answer that they miss their loved ones. But aside from that, do they miss anything else? All four unanimously agreed that they crave Ukrainian bread! Is there something they are afraid of?

- In the store next to the hostel where we are staying, there is a metal ramp for handicapped customers that is not bolted down to the ground, and anyone who drives up or enters it causes it to make a sound like that of a bomb falling in Ukraine and it cuts through the air... I am terribly afraid of that.  I hope that all the worst is behind us, that now it will be a peaceful, ordinary, normal life - says Olesia and puts another fluffy and fragrant pancake on my plate.

Tania is a pretty blonde and a volcano of energy. She is everywhere and nothing is impossible for her. Armen is her opposite: calm, slow but very attentive. And when he looks at his Tanya, he does it with such love that a person feels as if he is discovering something all over again. They have gone through a lot of difficult moments together but you can still see the spark in their eyes when they look at each other. After 33 hours of difficult travel from Ukraine, they ended up in a safe place under Foundation's care.

33 hours to freedom

Tanya opens the door to a hostel room. A person immediately feels like crossing the threshold of their little new world. Such wonderful energy flows from Tania.

- Zachadzicie budcie dobre - says Tania in Ukrainian, but immediately switches to Polish, a little broken, but understandable. From the bathroom on an orthopedic, clumsy and uncomfortable wheelchair emerges Armen - a large, heavy, friendly man, who squeezes your hand so warmly that your knuckles crunch ;)

They met at work 16 years ago and have been inseparable ever since. Together from previous relationships, they have three daughters and one grandchild. They make a wonderful, loving family. They treat their arrival in Poland as a salvation which saved their lives. They ended up under the care of the PAY IT FORWARD Foundation literally at the last minute. They came from Dnipro near Zaporozhye in Ukraine where the bombs fall every day. And having no shelter, they waited out the shelling under the table.... Their journey to Poland lasted 33 hours!

- It's impossible to express our gratitude to the Foundation and all the sponsors, thanks to whom we can be here, in peace, without alarms, without bombing. It's amazing that we wake up and hear nothing but the usual sounds of life: bus riding, a cyclist, a dog barking. It's wonderful! 33 difficult hours of the journey to freedom. Thank you! - says Tania.

The bear will sit

Armen, with his strength of calmness, has overcome many adversities. A difficult divorce, separation from his children and an accident just two years ago, after which everything changed...

- I was driving a car. Suddenly, from the opposite direction, as if from nowhere, head-on, another car emerged, going straight at me. Wanting to avoid a collision, I drove into a ditch. I lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital without feeling my whole body. My world collapsed once again but I didn't give up. I knew I had someone to live for. For Tanya, for the children. Practically from the first day I began to fight for my ability, because it is necessary first to arrange everything in my head, then in my legs," says this large, strong man, but his chin is shaking...

Doctors gave him virtually no chance that he would ever even sit up.
- They said Armen would be like a plant.  I said to myself: My bear, maybe he won't walk again, maybe he won't carry me in his arms anymore, as he often did until now, but he will sit! And so it happened. They found a clinic in Ukraine that made for him a cast of the fifth vertebrae which Armen had lost due to the accident. Rehabilitation, the persistence of both of them, their determination and hard work but most of all - love, led to the fact that today Armen is sitting and has functional hands.

- We used to work a lot before the accident. Constantly, just work and work. We didn't notice when the day was passing. Always in a rush. Now we live more slowly. Before the war we traveled a lot, we enjoyed life, differently than before the accident, everything has changed and we are the only ones still together," says Tania.

Room with a view

Today it is she who carries him, literally, in her arms. Without access to specialized equipment to help Tanya with daily activities around her husband, she has developed a system of carrying Armen which saves her spine. She is also the one who finished her studies in Ukraine and is a certified rehabilitation therapist. All for this loveable "bear".

- The war took us by surprise.Not only mentally but also physically. We live in a tiny house in the suburbs, without a basement and therefore without a shelter. We survived all the bombings at home, lying flat on the floor, under the table. Bomb alarms sometimes lasted all night. So I would crawl out from under that table to bring something to eat... War is  a terrible thing" says Tania.

At the hostel, Armen had a choice of two rooms: with or without a specialized orthopedic bed. He chose the one without.

- I am grateful for everything but a room with an orthopedic bed means separate sleeping for us, and we have always slept together, even, or maybe especially under that table during the bombings. It brought us together, closer than before. Thank you for the room with a view of freedom... - says Tania and strokes Armen's cheek affectionately.