Mutual Aid Alert for East Ukraine

Since the outbreak of hostilities the dawn of February 24 around Kharkiv, our activity in the city being devastated by Russian rockets from north and east divided into two areas: extraordinary and usual. As part of the first, we delivered and handed out essential goods (mostly food) for free to those who constantly hid at subway stations actually abandoned by the authorities to their fate, as well as to those who rarely receive humanitarian aid because their places are a grey zone or just too remote. We made an average of 1-2 trips per week. Nobody counted the exact number of the audience, but every time dozens of people in need came to us! 

Then the subway began to gradually empty and operates normally since May 24 after the evacuation of people to other cities or their going to apartments. But despite the taking of control by the Ukrainian army over part of the occupied northern settlements (see the map), the city is still the target of daily shelling from the most heavy weapons, as well as its north suburbs. Since May, we visit them much less, due to daily murderous fire from the border and often ban for civilians from entering if they are not residents.

At the same time, we continue regular media activity. In our online newsletter are published more than 20 colorful unique reports about survival of the Kharkiv population in a half-destroyed city, presentations of various volunteer initiatives and coordination of their actions: https://assembly.org.ua/

Now we intend to continue work on humanitarian needs not sufficiently covered by institutional structures, at the same time have plans for some more ambitious steps to develop self-organization, especially through collective restoration of destroyed neighbourhoods (e.g. in last days of the spring we joined a horizontal participatory volunteer network for re-planning of Kharkiv toward decentralization to make it more ecologically sustainable and less commercially oriented). Such things were announced by us before the war and now are many times more relevant than ever. 

Let us know if you want to visit our city. Keep in touch!