The Lives That War Leaves Behind: Roman Kharchenko and the Animals of Kharkiv
By Matthew Parish
Monday 9 November 2026
In a city that has endured years of Russian bombardment, a Ukrainian family has devoted itself to rescuing creatures that cannot understand the war consuming their world. Their work is a story about compassion, responsibility and the meaning of humanity in circumstances of extraordinary suffering.
War is usually measured in human lives. We count the dead and wounded, the displaced and dispossessed, the children deprived of their childhoods and the families separated by the arbitrary movements of armies. We document the destruction of cities, the collapse of infrastructure and the extraordinary resilience of ordinary people compelled to live through events that no civilised society should ever have to endure. Yet war creates another category of victims, largely absent from military communiqués and international diplomatic negotiations. These are the animals that remain behind when their owners flee, that wander through ruined streets in search of food and shelter, and that suffer injuries they cannot explain to those who might be able to help them.
In Kharkiv, one of Ukraine's most relentlessly threatened major cities, Roman Kharchenko and his wife Valeria Holovanova have dedicated themselves to caring for these forgotten casualties of Russia's invasion. Together they established SvoRa, an animal rescue organisation that began as a family initiative in the early months of the full-scale war and subsequently developed into an extraordinary undertaking involving hundreds of animals. Their story is not principally about the sentimental affection that people sometimes display towards their pets. It is about the decision to accept responsibility for vulnerable living creatures when almost every practical consideration might suggest that such responsibilities should be deferred until more peaceful times.
The origins of SvoRa lie in March 2022, when Russian forces were attempting to encircle Kharkiv and its residential districts were subjected to devastating bombardment. Civilians were fleeing their homes, often carrying little more than they could manage, while the fate of domestic animals became one of the many terrible complications of sudden displacement. Some owners were unable to take their animals with them. Others had been killed, injured or separated from their homes. The result was a growing population of abandoned creatures, dependent upon the intervention of volunteers who were themselves trying to survive a humanitarian catastrophe.
Roman and Valeria began by taking animals into their own home. What might initially have appeared to be a temporary response to an exceptional emergency developed into something much larger, as the numbers requiring care continued to increase. Their organisation was formally registered in August 2022 and, according to its subsequently published accounts, came to accommodate more than 200 animals. These were not merely the cats and dogs that traditionally populate animal shelters. The residents included rabbits, rodents, parrots, reptiles, turtles, hedgehogs, an owl and aquariums containing numerous species of fish. Each required appropriate food, accommodation, treatment and care, and the practical implications of maintaining such an unusual collection under wartime conditions are considerable.
Roman's particular contribution, as described by SvoRa itself, has involved travelling through communities around Kharkiv, rescuing animals, providing food and supporting the family's expanding shelter. Such work is easily romanticised by those who have never undertaken it. In practice, it demands patience, logistical ingenuity and an acceptance that every journey may produce further obligations. A rescued animal is not a completed humanitarian mission. It must be transported safely, examined, fed, treated when necessary and provided with somewhere suitable to live. The work continues long after the excitement of an individual rescue has passed, and every successful intervention adds to the responsibilities of those who undertook it.
Valeria is equally central to this story. A professional background in rehabilitation medicine provided some experience of caring for vulnerable patients, although treating animals presented entirely different challenges. In an earlier profile published by the Kharkiv women's organisation Sphere, she described an episode in which she had to resuscitate a turtle that had nearly drowned. She had not been trained for such an intervention, but the circumstances left little opportunity to seek immediate specialist assistance. The turtle survived. It was a small victory against a background of overwhelming destruction, yet it also illustrated the practical reality of wartime volunteering: people discover that they must acquire unfamiliar skills because there is nobody else available to perform the necessary work.
That same profile revealed a philosophy extending well beyond emergency animal rescue. Valeria's ambition was to establish something she preferred to describe as a home rather than merely a shelter. She wanted a place where animals could live with dignity and where people could learn the responsibilities associated with keeping them. It is an important distinction. Animals are not disposable possessions, to be acquired when circumstances are convenient and abandoned when their maintenance becomes troublesome. They are living creatures whose dependency creates obligations that do not disappear merely because their owners find those obligations difficult.
SvoRa's work has also extended beyond the animals in its immediate care. In a 2023 description of its activities, the organisation reported assisting approximately 20 other shelters across Ukraine and proposed developing temporary accommodation for animals belonging to people forced to leave the country. International animal rescue volunteers have also identified SvoRa as an important partner in Kharkiv. Such cooperation matters because Ukraine's animal welfare crisis is not a series of isolated emergencies. It is an interconnected problem involving evacuation, transportation, veterinary medicine, food supplies, accommodation and the limited resources of hundreds of volunteer initiatives. No single household, however determined, can resolve these difficulties alone.
There is another dimension to this work that is often overlooked. Animals have become important companions to Ukrainian soldiers, particularly those living for extended periods in difficult and isolated frontline conditions. Cats and dogs sometimes attach themselves to military personnel, while soldiers provide food and protection to creatures that might otherwise perish. Valeria has previously spoken about the emotional significance of these relationships, describing animals as a connection between soldiers' immediate circumstances and the peaceful lives they hope eventually to resume. The benefits of such companionship should not be exaggerated into a substitute for professional psychological care, but neither should they be dismissed. Affection, routine and a sense of responsibility towards another living being can retain considerable importance in environments dominated by fear and uncertainty.
Nevertheless, the morality of animal rescue during war raises difficult questions. Ukraine faces enormous demands upon its humanitarian resources. Children need medical treatment, displaced families require accommodation, wounded soldiers must be rehabilitated and elderly people struggle to survive in communities where ordinary social services have been disrupted. Against this background, it is reasonable to ask whether money spent feeding abandoned animals might sometimes be better directed towards people. Those engaged in animal rescue should not be exempt from the responsibility to consider how scarce resources are allocated, and compassion alone cannot resolve every conflict between competing needs.
Yet the question becomes misleading when it assumes that the welfare of human beings and animals must always be mutually exclusive. Many volunteers are motivated by particular experiences, skills and emotional commitments. Someone who is willing and able to rescue abandoned dogs may not necessarily be equipped to undertake battlefield medicine or the evacuation of vulnerable civilians. Moreover, helping animals can also help people. Rescuing a family's pet may remove an obstacle to evacuation, offering assistance to an elderly person who refuses to leave without a beloved companion. Taking responsibility for a soldier's animal may relieve an immediate practical burden. Supporting the animals of displaced families can preserve relationships that retain profound emotional importance after the loss of almost everything else.
There are practical limits, of course, to what voluntary enthusiasm can accomplish. A shelter accommodating hundreds of animals represents a substantial and continuing financial obligation. Food, medicines, veterinary services, heating, water, sanitation and appropriate accommodation must all be provided. Different species require different environmental conditions, making an organisation such as SvoRa particularly challenging to maintain. Electricity interruptions present a further danger, especially where temperature regulation, lighting or specialised equipment are necessary for animal welfare. Such concerns become especially acute during the Ukrainian winter, when the consequences of failures in energy infrastructure may be severe.
These difficulties have informed the family's plans to establish dedicated shelter accommodation and develop a more reliable electricity supply. SvoRa's published account in July 2025 described the construction of additional facilities and outdoor kennels, together with fundraising for solar panels and battery storage. The proposed investment in energy independence is not merely an environmental aspiration. In a country where Russian attacks have repeatedly targeted electricity infrastructure, resilience in the provision of power is an essential component of maintaining responsible care for animals that cannot simply be left to fend for themselves.
The position of Roman and Valeria also illustrates a wider feature of contemporary Ukrainian society: the extraordinary extent to which the burdens of public welfare have been absorbed by private individuals and families. Across Ukraine, countless people have transformed their homes into humanitarian depots, their vehicles into evacuation transport and their personal savings into emergency relief funds. Many continue to raise children, support relatives and confront their own private anxieties while assuming responsibilities that would ordinarily be distributed across established institutions. Their contribution is remarkable, but admiration should not obscure the pressures such arrangements impose. Volunteers remain human beings with finite resources, personal obligations and a legitimate need for privacy.
It is important, therefore, not to turn the lives of people such as Roman and Valeria into an excessively romantic narrative of unlimited self-sacrifice. Their achievements do not mean that they should be expected to bear every burden indefinitely, nor that their private circumstances ought to become public property merely because they are engaged in charitable work. There is an uncomfortable tendency in the international presentation of Ukraine's humanitarian crisis to seek ever more extraordinary personal stories, as though suffering must reach a certain level of intensity before it deserves public sympathy. The work of SvoRa is worthy of recognition without requiring its founders to expose their most intimate difficulties to the scrutiny of strangers.
Nor should we overlook the wider implications of what they are attempting to build. Ukraine's animal welfare difficulties will not disappear when the fighting eventually ends. Displacement, poverty, damaged veterinary infrastructure and large populations of abandoned animals will continue to create problems for many years. Responsible ownership, sterilisation programmes, public education and sustainable shelter management will become important elements of post-war reconstruction. The ambition to create a permanent centre where people can learn to care for animals appropriately is therefore more than an expression of immediate wartime compassion. It is a contribution towards the creation of a society in which the treatment of vulnerable creatures becomes an ordinary measure of civic responsibility.
There is something particularly significant about this ambition in Kharkiv. The city has suffered enormously, yet its inhabitants have repeatedly demonstrated a determination not to allow their community to be defined exclusively by destruction. Universities continue their educational work, cultural institutions preserve the city's intellectual identity and volunteers maintain networks of mutual support amid continuing danger. Animal rescue belongs within this broader tradition of civic resistance. It represents a refusal to accept that war must extinguish all concerns beyond the immediate requirements of survival.
The moral importance of SvoRa rests ultimately upon a simple proposition. A society demonstrates its values not only through the principles it proclaims when circumstances are favourable, but through the responsibilities it continues to recognise when circumstances are at their worst. Protecting animals cannot end a war, rebuild a destroyed hospital or restore the life of a murdered civilian. Nevertheless, it can preserve something of the humane order that war seeks to undermine. It affirms that suffering matters even when the sufferer cannot describe it, that vulnerability creates responsibilities and that compassion need not be suspended because the world has become cruel.
Roman Kharchenko and Valeria Holovanova are amongst the many Ukrainians whose work exemplifies these principles in practical rather than rhetorical terms. Their organisation began with animals that needed somewhere to go and developed into a demanding undertaking whose consequences extend beyond the walls of their own home. The story of SvoRa is not one of uncomplicated heroism, nor does it require embellishment to acquire significance. It is the story of people who encountered suffering, recognised that something could be done and accepted the burdens associated with doing it.
When peace eventually returns to Kharkiv, the city will have much to rebuild. Its damaged buildings, shattered infrastructure and disrupted communities will require years of sustained attention. But reconstruction will also involve the recovery of trust, neighbourliness and the ordinary habits of responsibility through which civilised life becomes possible. In the meantime, the work undertaken by Roman, Valeria and others like them preserves a small but indispensable part of that future. Among the ruins of war, they have insisted that there are still lives worth protecting, however small, however vulnerable and however easily forgotten.
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Further information about SvoRa and its animal welfare activities is available at svora.org.
