Being internally displaced themselves, they have dedicated their lives to helping others in the same situation and to people who live along the frontline where shelling and shootouts still occur daily despite the first careful steps of troops withdrawal, prisoner exchange and the first meeting in the Normandy format in 3 years. The team is very motivated and passionate about the work they do. Working for Vostok-SOS has been a rewarding and extraordinary experience both professionally and personally. And so does working in an non-governmental organization whose primary mission it is to help victims of the conflict by delivering humanitarian aid, psycho-social support, legal assistance and organizing educational events, civil society development and capacity-building. Only the unusually large amount of military personnel, a military base on one of the central streets and the fading red letters on almost every building - “ УКРИТТЯ” meaning bomb shelter – make you conscious of where you are. Severodonetsk is quiet and peaceful and doesn’t look like a city in a conflict zone at first glance. The protracted low-intensity armed conflict, largely forgotten outside Ukraine, continues here on a daily basis. 30 kilometers away is a different world: the front-line, or ‘contact line’ and ‘demarcation line’ as it is more commonly called among international organizations. People go to work, kids go to school and the old grannies sell their fresh produce and pickled vegetables on the market because their pensions are not enough to pay their bills, food and medicine. This is the Donbas.īut, even at the end of the world life continues. “Actually, every city here is like the end of the world”, he added after some thought.

“It’s like the end of the world here”, a Belgian freelance journalist said to me. However, despite the lack of comfort, glamour and abundance of offers and activities in large cities, Severodonetsk is a charming town in its own way, with its decaying abandoned soviet enterprises, typical 5- and 9-storey residential buildings lacking maintenance and repair for decades, old trolley-busses and roads in poor in condition. The change could not be more contrasting and were it not for my familiarity with post-soviet societies, I would probably have been appalled or perplexed by many things. From Copenhagen – the capital of the happiest, politically and economically most stable countries on the planet, to Severodonetsk – the administrative center of the most underdeveloped region in Ukraine, which apart from declining industries has been torn by war during the last 6 years.

Project vostok