I’m looking at a large notice board headed “Your ideas for your city”. It’s covered with hundreds of blue and yellow slips of paper – all handwritten notes from people who have fled the Russian-occupied Melitopol district in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, detailing their hopes for their native region after it is liberated from Russian forces.
“Build cycle paths”, “Create a memorial avenue for the fallen soldiers from the Ukrainian Armed Forces”, “Invest in a municipal theatre”, “Build a recycling plant”, “I want a McDonald’s”, “A cherry festival”, and hundreds of other dreams. Some of the notes read more like a cri de coeur than a plan for action: “I want the Russians to leave the city as soon as possible”, signed “Halyna Ivanivna”. Or: “I want all those bastards deported from my native city.”
You can find this notice board of ideas in the city of Zaporizhzhia, at Right Here – a space where people from Melitopol and its environs, which have been occupied by Russian forces since early on in the full-scale war, can get various types of aid and assistance. Right Here has been open for two years.
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Дошка “Твоя ідея для твого міста”
Alina, 25, has received legal advice and mental health support here on several occasions. Today she is here with her four-year-old daughter to collect humanitarian aid. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, she lived in a village in the Melitopol district, and fled to Zaporizhzhia in 2022.
Alina is a trained pharmacist, but she can’t get a job at a pharmacy because she has no one to look after her daughter while she’s at work. Kindergartens and schools in frontline areas don’t offer in-person teaching, so Alina gets by working remotely as a translator and editor.
Alina’s four-year-old daughter is terrified of explosions and thunder
Alina has been thinking about finding a child psychologist because of her daughter’s fear of loud noises. “When she hears thunder, she screams and drags me into the hallway – let alone explosions,” Alina says as she waits for her turn.
It’s hot and sunny outside, but no sunlight reaches inside the building. The windows have been boarded up since Right Here’s premises were damaged in a Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia on 6 April.
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Despite her work and childcare troubles, Alina is more at ease in Zaporizhzhia than anywhere else, in large part because she’s still…
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