Pavlo Medvid: ‘The Real Strength of Ukraine Is Its People’
An interview with the head of Dnipro’s Centre for Assistance to Displaced Persons and Veterans
By Matthew Parish
Thursday 29 October 2026
Dnipro has become one of the great receiving cities of Ukraine’s war. Situated comparatively close to several of the principal fronts yet remaining under Ukrainian control throughout the full-scale invasion, it has absorbed enormous numbers of people displaced from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and elsewhere. It is simultaneously a military, medical, logistical and humanitarian centre, and the strains imposed upon the city by more than four years of war are visible everywhere.
Those strains were demonstrated with terrible clarity again on 29 October 2026. A Russian jet-powered drone struck the main railway station in Dnipro, hitting a platform where civilian passenger trains were standing and killing and injuring civilians. The attack occurred in the middle of the day, in one of the busiest parts of the city. Under these circumstances, an interview that the Lviv Herald had intended to conduct face-to-face was instead completed remotely.
The interviewee was Pavlo Medvid (Павло Медвідь), director of the charitable foundation Centre for Assistance to Displaced Persons and Veterans (Благодійний фонд «Центр допомоги переселенцям та ветеранам»). His organisation grew directly out of the extraordinary circumstances of the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Before the war Medvid worked for one of Dnipro’s district administrations, dealing with education and social protection. At approximately eight o’clock on the morning of 24 February 2022, he and a small group began organising shelter for people fleeing the fighting. What started with six people improvising an emergency response developed into a registered charitable foundation on 14 April 2022. According to Medvid, the organisation has now provided various forms of assistance to more than 235,000 people.
Its work has also changed profoundly. The immediate necessities of 2022 — shelter, food, clothing and hygiene products — have gradually been supplemented by employment assistance, vocational training, psychological support, legal and social advice, cultural programmes and work with veterans. Medvid describes this as a transition from emergency humanitarian relief towards the reconstruction of individual lives.
The following interview was conducted in Ukrainian. It has been translated into English and lightly edited for clarity, length and readability while preserving the substance of Mr Medvid’s answers.
Matthew Parish: Before the full-scale invasion, what were you doing, and what led you into humanitarian and charitable work?
Pavlo Medvid: Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, I worked in one of the district administrations of Dnipro, where I was responsible for education and social protection. It was work directly connected with people, their needs and their problems. That gave me valuable experience of dealing with public institutions, organising social support and finding solutions to difficult situations.
But 24 February 2022 changed everything.
I remember that morning very well: the fear, the uncertainty and the first reports of Russian strikes. Nobody had any idea what the next day would bring. But I already understood one thing: if we had the ability to help even one person, then we had to do it.
At about eight o’clock that morning, we began organising shelter for people fleeing the war. Families arrived with children, elderly people and pets. Often they had nothing with them except their documents and a few personal belongings. That was when I realised that I could not simply stand aside.
I had never intended to become the head of a large charitable organisation. At first there was simply the desire to help people who needed us. But every day more people arrived, their needs grew and new problems emerged. Gradually volunteering became my life’s work.
Looking back now, perhaps the most important thing this work has taught me is just how strong human beings can be, even in the most difficult circumstances. Charity is not merely about material assistance. It is about humanity, responsibility, trust and society’s capacity to unite for the sake of other people.
Parish: How did the foundation itself emerge from those chaotic first days of the invasion?
Medvid: Our story really did begin in the first hours of the full-scale invasion. At about eight in the morning on 24 February, we opened one of the first shelters in the region for displaced people. We had empty premises available and decided to use them for people beginning to evacuate from Kharkiv and Donetsk Oblast.
We were completely unprepared for the scale of the tragedy.
I remember the first buses arriving. Exhausted and frightened people got off them: small children, elderly people and families carrying their pets. They needed accommodation, food, water and basic necessities, but at that point we had no established system for providing any of those things.
There were only six of us at the beginning.
Then something happened that still impresses me. Ordinary residents of Dnipro came to help. People brought food, baby formula, nappies, clothes and hygiene products. Some offered their own homes free of charge to displaced families. Others simply stayed with us, sorting supplies, preparing food and helping organise daily life.
Within the first few months, dozens of volunteers had joined us. Later we found accommodation for displaced people in a dormitory and converted the original premises into a humanitarian hub. Gradually a system emerged that could assist an ever larger number of people.
Our charitable organisation was formally registered on 14 April 2022.
The greatest difficulties were shortages of resources, our lack of experience in dealing with such enormous numbers of people, constant uncertainty and the immense psychological burden. We overcame those things through solidarity, trust and the support of people who cared.
When people ask me the secret of our resilience, my answer is simple: we were never alone. There were always people beside us who were prepared to help.
Parish: Your organisation was originally the Centre for Assistance to Displaced Persons and the Army. In 2024 it became the Centre for Assistance to Displaced Persons and Veterans. Why did you make that change?
Medvid: From the beginning we worked in two principal areas: supporting internally displaced people and helping the Ukrainian military. During the first years of the full-scale invasion, we supplied military units with necessary equipment, generators, first-aid kits, clothing and other items.
As the foundation developed, however, we began working more extensively with international donors and grant funding. We encountered an important issue: many international humanitarian donors have strict rules limiting or excluding funding for activities connected with supporting armed forces, particularly assistance of a military nature.
That was one reason to reconsider the organisation’s name and positioning.
At the same time, we could see the growing number of veterans and military families in Ukraine who would require long-term support. Returning from war to civilian life is an enormously difficult process. It requires not merely material resources but psychological assistance, employment opportunities, social adaptation and opportunities to participate fully in society again.
So the change of name was not merely cosmetic. It reflected the evolution of the organisation. Today our mission is much broader than distributing humanitarian aid. We want to create opportunities for people affected by the war, help them regain their independence and help them find their place in society.
Parish: What does the foundation actually do today? What are the most urgent needs you encounter?
Medvid: Our activities have changed considerably over more than four years of war.
In 2022, our main task was to provide the essentials: food, clothes, hygiene products and temporary accommodation. Today we devote increasing attention to social adaptation, professional development, psychological support and strengthening communities.
Humanitarian aid remains important. We continue supporting displaced people, large families, elderly people, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. But endlessly distributing food packages cannot solve every problem. People need the ability to support themselves and their families.
In February 2025, we opened our own Support Space in Dnipro. It is somewhere displaced people and local residents can learn, meet other people, receive advice, participate in activities and find new opportunities.
One of our principal projects in 2026 is Together Resilient: Support, Memory, Interaction, implemented with support from the International Renaissance Foundation and Bread for the World through the Laboratory of Resilience 2.0 programme.
One part of that is professional training and economic independence. We provide free manicure courses for internally displaced women. Participants receive practical training and, after completing the course, professional equipment enabling them to take their first steps in a new occupation. By October 2026, three groups had completed the training.
We also provide individual and group employment advice and cooperate with the state employment service.
A second area is psychological resilience and social cohesion. Through our Circle of Women’s Unity, we organise creative workshops involving macramé, Petrykivka painting, traditional Ukrainian crafts and cultural heritage. These are not simply craft classes. Women who have lost their homes, their social environment and sometimes people close to them gain somewhere to communicate, support one another and recover emotionally.
A third area concerns Ukrainian identity. Our In the Footsteps of Generations programme explores Ukrainian history, folk traditions, clothing, culinary heritage and decorative arts.
We also provide information, legal and social assistance. We advise people about matters such as digitising employment records and social entitlements and arrange meetings with lawyers and representatives of public institutions.
Our strategy today is to move from emergency humanitarian assistance towards the comprehensive recovery of the individual. We do not merely want to help somebody survive a difficult period. We want to give that person knowledge, skills, support and confidence in the future.
Parish: Your organisation says that it has assisted more than 235,000 people. How is that figure calculated?
Medvid: First, I should say that statistics are not simply numbers in reports for us. Behind every number is an individual person who needed help.
We maintain personalised records of recipients of humanitarian assistance, including registration lists of people who approached the foundation and received support. This enables us to document assistance, analyse needs, prepare reports and maintain transparency towards donors and international partners.
Our official website currently states that, over more than four years, we have provided various forms of assistance to more than 235,000 people. That covers the period from the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022 through to 2026.
But our work includes many different forms of support: humanitarian, social, educational, psychological, legal and cultural. We maintain separate statistics for 2026 based upon registration data and reports from individual programmes.
I always tell our team that charitable work cannot be judged solely by the number of packages distributed. Sometimes one consultation helps somebody obtain the documents they need. One training course can enable somebody to learn a profession. One meeting can help somebody escape social isolation.
Those results are no less important to me than the overall statistics.
Parish: Demand presumably exceeds what you can provide. How do you decide who receives assistance?
Medvid: We try to make our work as transparent as possible and to give people equal access to information about available assistance. We use an online registration system.
Whenever humanitarian assistance arrives or a new programme opens, we publish information through our official Telegram and Facebook communities. People complete online forms, providing the necessary information, and we then prepare registration lists.
That helps us systematise applications, avoid chaotic distribution and plan according to the resources available.
The situation remains particularly difficult for elderly people, people with disabilities, large families, single parents and displaced people who have lost both their homes and stable sources of income.
Unfortunately, needs considerably exceed our resources. Sometimes we receive hundreds of applications for a limited number of humanitarian packages. We simply cannot always help everyone who approaches us.
That is one of the hardest aspects of charitable work because behind every application is a person hoping for support. We therefore constantly seek additional resources, partnerships and new donors.
It is very important to me that when someone comes to us for help, above all they feel that their dignity is respected.
Parish: Are there particular people you have helped whose stories have remained with you?
Medvid: There are thousands of stories from these years. Some are impossible to forget.
I remember an elderly couple from Bakhmut. Fleeing the fighting, they were forced to hide in a cemetery for an entire day. Afterwards they walked approximately 40 kilometres to reach an evacuation bus to Dnipro.
Think about that. These were people who had spent their lives building a home, working and raising children. Suddenly they had to abandon everything and walk into the unknown simply to survive.
Stories like that make you think differently about the meaning of the word ‘help’. To somebody looking from outside, a humanitarian package may just be a list of groceries. To somebody who has just escaped shelling, it also means discovering that they have not been abandoned.
Another story is particularly close to me. In April 2022, a woman arrived in Dnipro from Berdiansk. At first she came to our foundation because she herself needed help. Later she decided to join our team and help other displaced people. By 2024 she was working for our organisation.
For me, that is one of the best examples of how assistance can change somebody’s life. A person who once needed support herself subsequently becomes somebody supporting others.
We can help journalists speak to people with experiences like these where those individuals give their consent. Their privacy and their right to decide whether they wish to discuss what they have experienced publicly are fundamental to us.
Parish: Your organisation now specifically includes veterans in its mission. What do you see as the greatest difficulties facing Ukrainian veterans returning to civilian life?
Medvid: I believe the return of veterans to civilian life will be one of the greatest social challenges Ukraine faces.
Military service, combat experience, injuries, the loss of comrades and prolonged exposure to danger can profoundly affect a person’s physical and psychological health. But returning to ordinary life can itself be extremely difficult.
A person has to adapt again to a civilian environment, find employment, restore social relationships, rebuild family life and deal with treatment, rehabilitation and social-security issues.
Society itself must also learn how to interact appropriately with veterans, without stereotypes, prejudice or excessive paternalism.
Our foundation supports veterans and military families through the programmes and partnerships available to us. We organise information and social events, facilitate access to advice and work with civil-society organisations and specialists.
Employment is particularly important. Through our cooperation with the state employment service, we are developing advice that helps people navigate employment and professional development. With partner organisations, we also arrange psychological activities and training intended to strengthen emotional resilience.
We do not attempt to replace specialist medical or rehabilitation institutions. Our role is to provide an accessible point of support, help people find the services they need and create conditions for social integration.
Veterans deserve more than society’s gratitude. They need genuine opportunities to live full lives. The best expression of respect for a veteran is not merely saying thank you; it is creating the conditions in which that person can fulfil his or her potential after military service.
Parish: Some of your programmes involve Ukrainian culture, language and traditional crafts. Why are these things part of humanitarian work?
Medvid: For me, cultural and educational programmes are much more than interesting ways of spending free time.
We work with people forced to leave their cities, homes, friends, jobs and familiar social surroundings. In many cases displaced people lose not only material possessions but also their sense of belonging to a community.
One of our tasks is therefore to create an environment in which people can once again feel that they are needed, make new friends and rebuild social connections.
Our In the Footsteps of Generations programme, supported in 2026 by the International Renaissance Foundation, involves meetings about Ukrainian history, culture, traditions, folk art and national identity. We discuss historical events, traditional clothing, vyshyvankas, folk customs, culinary heritage and decorative arts.
Petrykivka painting has a special place because this unique Ukrainian artistic tradition originates here in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Participants come from different parts of Ukraine. At one meeting devoted to Ukrainian cuisine, for example, we had people from six different oblasts. Each person brought something from their own region: family recipes, memories, customs and traditions.
The most important results cannot be measured by counting classes or objects made. They are changes in people.
Women who previously barely spoke to anybody begin forming friendships. People who had become socially isolated after displacement find a new circle of friends. Participants start attending other events, supporting one another and becoming active in the community.
Dnipro lives with constant air-raid alerts. There are explosions, emergency electricity cuts and many other difficult circumstances. Yet people continue coming to us to learn, create things and spend time together.
To me, that is genuine Ukrainian resilience.
Preserving culture, historical memory and the Ukrainian language is also part of rebuilding our society.
Parish: How do you see the respective roles of Ukrainian volunteers and international supporters? Has foreign humanitarian assistance changed since 2022?
Medvid: I would not rank Ukrainian and foreign volunteers by importance. Each plays an irreplaceable role.
Ukrainian volunteers are physically present every day alongside the people who need assistance. They understand local circumstances and the needs of their communities, and they can react quickly to emergencies.
During the first days of the full-scale invasion, ordinary residents of Dnipro made it possible for us to receive displaced people. They brought food, clothes and baby supplies and helped accommodate families. Some Dnipro residents gave their own apartments, free of charge, to complete strangers.
I will never forget that.
At the same time, international assistance has enabled us to expand our work considerably. I particularly want to mention our friends in Sweden, including Boban Petrovski, Olga Podushkina and other benefactors who have consistently supported Ukrainians.
Their assistance has provided medical supplies, hygiene products, nappies, equipment for people with disabilities and other necessities. During one recent humanitarian distribution alone, more than 50 families received nappies for their children.
These people live far from Ukraine but continue to remember our war and help individual families.
International assistance has changed since 2022. Initially, much of it concentrated upon emergency needs: food, clothes, hygiene products and temporary accommodation. Over time, longer-term programmes involving psychological support, social integration, professional training, employment and community development have become increasingly important.
We are also experiencing declining resources and donor fatigue. The war has continued for years, other humanitarian crises have emerged elsewhere in the world, but the needs of Ukrainians have not disappeared.
That is why international solidarity remains critically important. Ukrainian volunteers sustain the daily work on the ground, while international partners allow that work to become larger, more effective and more sustainable.
Parish: Where does the foundation obtain its money, and how important is financial transparency to you?
Medvid: We have several principal sources of funding: international grant programmes, support from businesses in Dnipro and assistance from private benefactors elsewhere in Europe.
International grants enable us to implement larger and longer-term projects, maintain systematic operations, employ specialists and organise educational and social programmes.
Over the years, we have worked with organisations including the International Renaissance Foundation, the East Europe Foundation, BGV and Crown Agents. In 2026, one of our important partnerships has been the Together Resilient: Support, Memory, Interaction project, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation and Bread for the World.
Local businesses in Dnipro also play an important role. I am sincerely grateful to entrepreneurs who continue supporting us despite the difficult economic situation. Private donors elsewhere in Europe, particularly Germany, are also extremely important.
In 2022, much of the assistance arrived spontaneously. People brought food, clothes and other necessities and made charitable donations. Today our work is much more systematic. We prepare budgets and grant applications, maintain financial records and report to donors.
Financial stability nevertheless remains one of our greatest challenges.
As the head of a charitable organisation, transparency, accountability and trust are fundamental principles for me. We publish reporting materials on our official website and are open to cooperation with international partners, journalists and benefactors.
Parish: How large is the organisation today?
Medvid: In the first months of the invasion, dozens of people became involved. They included businesspeople, journalists, displaced people, pensioners and people from many different professions.
Today the team is smaller but considerably more professional and structured. The foundation has five members of staff, with another 15 people involved as volunteers.
A modern charitable organisation is not merely about handing out humanitarian packages. It involves project management, financial accounting, grant reporting, donor communications, logistics, organising events, managing registration data and constant communication with the people receiving assistance.
Partnerships are also extremely important. We cooperate with local government, public institutions, the employment service, educational institutions and other civil-society and charitable organisations.
We work with the Dnipro City Employment Centre, for example, to organise employment and professional-development advice. In 2026, we signed a memorandum of cooperation with the University of Customs and Finance.
We also participate in advisory bodies, including the Council for Internally Displaced Persons attached to the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Military Administration. This gives us an opportunity not merely to help individual people directly but also to participate in discussions about the systemic problems displaced people face.
Effective assistance requires cooperation between civil society, public institutions, businesses and international partners.
And I am proud of my team. Behind every project are real people who continue working for others every day, often in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
Parish: Today’s events are another reminder of the danger in which people in Dnipro live. Your own organisation has experienced Russian strikes nearby before. How has that affected your work?
Medvid: Unfortunately, for us the war is not merely something experienced by the people we help. It is our daily reality as well.
Dnipro is constantly threatened by Russian missile and drone attacks. In 2022 and 2023 there were three missile strikes close to our foundation’s premises: in November 2022, August 2023 and on 29 December 2023. Our premises were damaged. Fortunately, nobody on our team was injured.
But every incident leaves its mark.
It is difficult to describe what you feel when you hear a powerful explosion and do not know whether all your colleagues are alive and safe, or whether the premises where you receive people every day have survived.
After each incident, however, we restored our operations and continued helping people.
The difficulties have not disappeared. Air-raid alerts, attacks, emergency power cuts and communications failures have become part of everyday life.
Sometimes it is the participants in our own programmes who impress me most. Imagine a creative workshop. Women are learning Petrykivka painting, talking and sharing their stories. Suddenly an air-raid alarm sounds or the electricity disappears.
Despite everything, people do not lose the desire to meet, learn and support one another. Of course we follow safety procedures and respond to threats, but after interruptions we try to return to our work.
Sometimes I think our visitors give us more strength than we give them.
Our team has also endured enormous psychological strain. Volunteering means constant exposure to other people’s pain, losses, fear and uncertainty. We therefore try to support one another, distribute the workload and remember the psychological resilience of our own team.
But our greatest motivation remains the people who come to us.
War does not put life on pause. People need help every day, and we have to find ways to provide it.
Parish: Dnipro has absorbed very large numbers of displaced Ukrainians. What has this done to the city, and what do displaced people need most now?
Medvid: During the full-scale war, Dnipro has become one of Ukraine’s important humanitarian centres.
The city has received enormous numbers of people from Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and other regions.
Initially, many regarded Dnipro as a temporary place to stay. They expected to return home after a few weeks or months. But the war continued, and for many people Dnipro has effectively become their new home.
That has substantially changed the city. There is greater pressure upon social infrastructure,
healthcare, housing, schools and social services.
At the same time, displaced people have become an important part of the local community. They work, establish businesses, raise children, volunteer and participate in civic initiatives.
We should therefore no longer speak only about providing assistance to displaced people. We must talk about their complete integration into the community.
Housing is perhaps the most urgent problem. Rent is an enormous financial burden for many families, particularly pensioners, people with disabilities and families that have lost stable incomes.
The second problem is employment and economic independence. Someone may have an education, decades of experience and professional skills, yet after being displaced they may have to begin again from nothing.
The third problem is psychological exhaustion and social isolation. Some people have lived in uncertainty for years. They do not know whether they will ever return home, see their loved ones again or have a stable future.
That is why support centres, cultural activities, psychological programmes and opportunities simply to meet other people are so important.
For veterans, accessible rehabilitation, psychological assistance, employment and adaptation to civilian life will remain particularly important.
But I want to emphasise something else. Dnipro is not merely a city that has received displaced people. It is a city in which Ukrainians from different regions are now creating a new community together.
Our task is to ensure that everybody feels fully part of it.
Parish: Eventually this war will end. What happens to organisations such as yours then?
Medvid: The end of the fighting will not mean the end of the work of Ukrainian charitable organisations.
On the contrary, we will face new challenges of enormous scale.
Ukraine will need years to reconstruct destroyed cities, housing, social infrastructure and the economy. But it will not only be buildings that need rebuilding.
We will have to rebuild human lives, social relationships, trust, a sense of security and confidence in the future.
Millions of Ukrainians have experienced forced displacement, loss of property, separation from loved ones, combat and prolonged psychological stress. Those consequences will not disappear the day after the war ends.
Supporting veterans and their families will be another enormous area of work.
I believe Ukrainian volunteering will gradually transform from emergency response into long-term social work, reconstruction of communities, veteran support, education and helping people achieve economic independence. We are already preparing for this.
We do not want people to remain permanent recipients of charitable assistance. We want them to have the opportunity to build their own lives independently.
Another important task will be supporting communities damaged or displaced by war. We have already organised meetings for displaced people from Mariupol, Bakhmut, Volnovakha, Berdiansk and other cities. We have helped them communicate with one another, form initiative groups and discuss establishing civil-society organisations that may eventually participate in rebuilding their communities.
I see our foundation continuing to work with people after the war, helping them recover, learn, develop and unite.
Something extraordinarily important has emerged in Ukraine during these years: a powerful culture of volunteering and mutual assistance. I very much hope we preserve it in peacetime.
A strong state does not consist only of strong state institutions. It also requires an active civil society in which people are prepared to accept responsibility not only for themselves but for the people around them.
I dream of the day when our foundation’s principal task is no longer rescuing people from the consequences of war but helping them fulfil their dreams.
Parish: Finally, what would you like to say directly to Lviv Herald readers outside Ukraine?
Medvid: Above all, I would like to address everyone reading this interview beyond Ukraine.
Please do not forget our country.
For many people around the world, the war has gradually become another stream of daily news reports. But for us it is not television footage or statistics.
It is our life.
It is children studying to the sound of air-raid alarms. It is elderly people who, after decades in their own homes, now have to rent a small room in an unfamiliar city. It is mothers raising their children while their husbands defend Ukraine.
It is veterans trying to return to ordinary life after military service.
It is people who have lost their homes but have not lost their dignity.
We meet Ukrainians like these every day at our foundation. At the same time, we see extraordinary examples of human strength: women learning new professions after being displaced, elderly people coming to cultural events and making new friends and displaced people who themselves become volunteers and begin helping others.
These are the stories I believe the world needs to hear.
International support remains enormously important. We need humanitarian assistance for the most vulnerable, but we also need funding for long-term programmes involving vocational training, employment, psychological assistance, social integration and community development.
Partnerships between Ukrainian civil-society organisations and international foundations, businesses, educational institutions and other organisations are no less important. We are open to new partnerships and joint projects.
After more than four years of full-scale war, I have become convinced of one thing: the real strength of Ukraine lies in its people.
It lies in those who defend our country, those who rescue others and those who, having lost almost everything, somehow find the strength to begin their lives again.
We are enormously grateful to all our international friends who remain beside us. Helping Ukraine today is not merely a matter of humanitarian assistance. It is about solidarity, human dignity and our shared responsibility for a future in which every person has the right to live in safety.
As long as there are people who need our help, we will continue working.
For us, charity is not simply the activity of an organisation.
It is the choice we make every day to remain human, even in the darkest times.
Afterword
There is a temptation, after more than four years of full-scale war, to understand Ukraine through numbers. Numbers of missiles, numbers of refugees, numbers of casualties, numbers of displaced people and numbers of billions of dollars or euros pledged in assistance. Numbers are necessary, but they have a habit of obscuring the individual human experiences they purport to describe.
Medvid’s account suggests another way of understanding what has happened in Dnipro. On the morning of 24 February 2022, six people began improvising a shelter because frightened families were arriving from cities under attack. There was no grand strategy. Ordinary residents appeared with food, nappies and clothing. Some offered strangers their apartments. A temporary emergency response gradually became an institution.
Four years later, the questions are different. The challenge is no longer simply whether a displaced family has something to eat tonight. It is whether a woman who has lost her home can acquire a profession, whether an elderly couple from Bakhmut can construct a new social life, whether a veteran can find meaningful employment and whether communities dispersed across Ukraine can retain enough cohesion eventually to rebuild themselves.
The transformation is significant. Ukraine’s humanitarian challenge is moving, even while the war continues, from emergency survival towards the much harder business of reconstructing lives.
The events in Dnipro on the day this interview was completed underline how incomplete that transition necessarily remains. A civilian railway station could still become, without warning, the scene of death and injury. Air-raid alarms, explosions and interruptions remain features of ordinary existence. Medvid himself describes workshops interrupted by alerts and electricity failures, only for their participants to return and continue painting, talking and learning.
There is nothing abstract about resilience under these circumstances. It consists of people continuing to perform the ordinary acts of civilised life when circumstances repeatedly invite them to abandon them.
Perhaps that is the most important point in Medvid’s account. Institutions matter, money matters and international assistance matters. But the Centre for Assistance to Displaced Persons and Veterans did not begin as an institution. It began when a handful of people in Dnipro decided, on a frightening February morning, that because other people needed help they would provide it.
Everything else followed from that decision.
