The Long War: Matthew Parish Interviews Kateryna Kantemyr
By Matthew Parish
Friday 23 October 2026
Matthew Parish, Editor-in-Chief of the Lviv Herald, talks to Kateryna Kantemyr of the Kharkiv humanitarian organisation Myrne Nebo Kharkiv (“Peaceful Heaven”) about the changing nature of humanitarian work as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches its fifth year.
This is a follow-up to the Lviv Herald’s earlier interview with Kateryna Kantemyr. The interview took place in the Ukrainian language and has been translated into English and lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Matthew Parish: Let us imagine that a major Russian strike hits a community tonight. What happens inside Peaceful Heaven tomorrow morning? Who contacts whom, how do you assess what people need and how quickly can assistance actually arrive?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Immediately after an attack, we contact the local community administration, or they contact us, to establish the most urgent needs. If the Foundation has the capacity to provide the necessary response, the team immediately leaves for the affected area.
Matthew Parish: That raises an obvious difficulty. How do you decide whether somewhere is safe enough to send your people? Who has the authority to say: no, this is simply too dangerous?
Kateryna Kantemyr: We assess security using operational information from INSO together with constant communication with the communities themselves. Our security specialist analyses the situation and makes the final decision about whether a team should deploy.
Matthew Parish: What do people sitting in humanitarian offices abroad misunderstand about the realities you encounter in the field?
Kateryna Kantemyr: People working in foreign offices often understand the problems facing communities and the security situation only partially. They cannot always anticipate the specific practical difficulties that arise in the field, where circumstances change every day.
Matthew Parish: Have you ever arrived somewhere expecting one humanitarian problem and discovered that what people really need is something quite different?
Kateryna Kantemyr: We have not had precisely that situation, but we have experienced something similar. Our team once arrived to distribute food because that was the community’s primary request. While we were actually carrying out the distribution, however, we discovered that people had a number of other critical needs that were no less important.
Matthew Parish: And what happens when several communities need urgent assistance at once and you simply do not have enough people, vehicles or money to help everyone?
Kateryna Kantemyr: We immediately contact colleagues in other organisations. We redirect requests and ask them to help us so that together we can meet the critical needs.
Beyond emergency aid
Matthew Parish: Humanitarian organisations naturally want to reach everyone. But who is most likely nevertheless to fall through the cracks — elderly people living alone, people with disabilities, internally displaced people?
Kateryna Kantemyr: The humanitarian system tries to reach absolutely everyone who requires support, including elderly people, people with disabilities, internally displaced persons and other groups. Its mechanisms are continually being adapted through mobile teams, cooperation with communities and an individual approach to particularly difficult cases.
Matthew Parish: There must nevertheless be a difference between what somebody asks you for today and what will actually improve that person’s life in the longer term. How do you distinguish the two?
Kateryna Kantemyr: We distinguish immediate requests from long-term needs by combining professional assessments by specialists with assessments of needs within the communities themselves.
We focus upon solutions that do not merely fill a basic shortage here and now but restore autonomy and resilience to the individual or the community.
Matthew Parish: This leads to a sensitive question. Can people become dependent upon humanitarian aid?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Yes. Dependency upon humanitarian assistance really does exist.
That is why we are gradually replacing emergency distributions of packages with programmes for housing recovery, business grants, professional retraining and individual case management. These programmes help restore people’s economic autonomy.
Matthew Parish: We are now approaching five years of full-scale war. What changes do you see in people psychologically? Are exhaustion, isolation and hopelessness becoming as serious as shortages of food or housing?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Prolonged war has transformed acute stress into chronic exhaustion, isolation and profound apathy. Mental health and psychological stabilisation have therefore become priorities no less critical than providing housing or food.
Matthew Parish: Is there one person you have helped whose story particularly remains with you?
Kateryna Kantemyr: There is Oleh from Kalynivske. He is a beekeeper, a physical education teacher and an example of extraordinary resilience.
In 2016 he was diagnosed with stage-four cancer, when his daughter was only three months old. Despite undergoing difficult treatment, he found the strength to develop his own smallholding. He went from two beehives and a small greenhouse to an apiary, greenhouses and poultry farming.
Even during the full-scale war, Oleh did not stop working. Instead, he adapted his business to dangerous conditions. With grant support from DCA-NCA and Myrne Nebo Kharkiv, financed by Danida, he received UAH 21,875 for essential equipment, medicines and feed for his bees.
His story is about the strength of somebody who, despite illness, war and constant challenges, continues working for his family and his future.
The psychological injuries of a long war
Matthew Parish: What medical and psychological problems do you see now that were less obvious during the first year of the full-scale invasion?
Kateryna Kantemyr: At the beginning of the war, acute injuries and states of shock predominated. Now the principal challenges include neglected chronic illnesses, psychosomatic disorders, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and profound emotional exhaustion caused by years of continuous stress.
Matthew Parish: You have spoken about frontline communities that do not even have a permanent doctor. What happens if somebody living there becomes seriously ill or requires continuing treatment?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Seriously ill people in frontline communities without a permanent doctor can become completely dependent upon visiting mobile medical teams for medicines and treatment, and upon humanitarian missions and the State Emergency Service for emergency transportation or evacuation to hospitals.
Matthew Parish: I am particularly concerned about children. They have experienced years of air-raid alarms, attacks, disrupted education and displacement. Are we creating consequences Ukraine will still be living with twenty years from now?
Kateryna Kantemyr: The war is creating educational gaps, social isolation and chronic stress among children, significantly reducing the quality of their future education and development.
Over the course of two decades, the consequences for Ukraine may include shortages of highly skilled workers, reduced economic productivity and increased pressure upon medical and social services.
Matthew Parish: There is something almost paradoxical about providing psychological treatment during a war. How do you treat trauma when the thing causing the trauma has not ended and the person you are treating might be attacked again tomorrow?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Under conditions of continuing danger, psychological assistance focuses not upon deep analysis of the trauma but upon rapid stabilisation, teaching grounding and self-regulation techniques and restoring a sense of control over everyday routines so that people can continue to function.
Rebuilding during a war
Matthew Parish: Let us turn to reconstruction. When a house has been damaged, how do you decide whether to make emergency repairs, rebuild it substantially or accept that it is beyond reasonable repair?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Emergency or major repairs are undertaken when the foundations remain stable and damage to walls and beams is localised or can be addressed through structural reinforcement.
If the foundations have been critically destroyed, or the load-bearing walls and floors have lost their structural geometry and threaten to collapse, the building is declared unsuitable and referred for demolition.
Matthew Parish: Give me a concrete example of something Peaceful Heaven has rebuilt.
Kateryna Kantemyr: Myrne Nebo Kharkiv, together with the Sigma Software Unity Fund, restored areas of the Kharkiv City Perinatal Centre that had been damaged by explosions. We also equipped safe, protected areas with backup power and equipment.
This allows medical staff to deliver babies and save newborn lives in comfortable and protected conditions even during daily attacks.
Matthew Parish: What is the greatest impediment to reconstruction? Money? Materials? Skilled workers? Bureaucracy? Or simply the possibility that Russia will destroy whatever you have just repaired?
Kateryna Kantemyr: The principal obstacle is the security situation and the threat of repeated Russian attacks.
Once the safety of people and the site itself can be ensured, the decisive issues become obtaining finance, overcoming shortages of skilled personnel, securing materials and dealing with bureaucratic approvals.
Matthew Parish: It must be immensely frustrating to repair something only for the same neighbourhood to be attacked again. How do your staff cope with that?
Kateryna Kantemyr: We rebuild as many times as necessary because this is direct assistance to the people who live there.
There is bitter frustration when somewhere is struck again, but our staff do everything possible to restore a roof over people’s heads and the basic conditions necessary for life.
Following the money
Matthew Parish: Humanitarian organisations tend to talk about their missions and values. I would like to talk about the machinery. Suppose a donor gives Peaceful Haven money for a particular project. What actually happens to that money between its arrival in your account and somebody receiving assistance?
Kateryna Kantemyr: The operational path of the funds is fully transparent and depends upon the scale of the work and whether contractors are involved.
Money passes through tender procurement procedures or direct purchases of materials. Completed work is paid for following technical inspection. The process concludes with beneficiaries signing the relevant documents and the donor receiving a complete financial and illustrative report.
Matthew Parish: How do you buy food, construction materials, medicines and other supplies during wartime? Have the supply chains changed substantially since 2022?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Goods are procured through transparent tenders and direct contracts with licensed distributors and manufacturers, adapted to the particular security and technical requirements.
Compared with 2022, supply chains have evolved from improvised purchases and rapid imports into stable, systematic logistics through Ukraine’s western border and a decentralised network of warehouses.
Matthew Parish: What controls exist against waste, conflicts of interest, inflated prices, misuse of funds or corruption?
Kateryna Kantemyr: The principal controls include transparent tenders with comparisons of market prices, declarations concerning the absence of conflicts of interest, independent technical supervision, staged payments against certificates for completed work, continuing external audits and complaints hotlines.
Matthew Parish: How much of your time is consumed simply documenting expenditure and proving to donors that the assistance reached the people for whom it was intended?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Documentation and financial reporting are undertaken strictly according to donor requirements.
For procurement work, the reporting package is prepared immediately after suppliers have been paid. For cash-assistance programmes, reporting takes place once a month.
Matthew Parish: Which is harder: finding the money or turning the money into useful assistance?
Kateryna Kantemyr: They are equally difficult.
Fundraising requires competing for resources in a highly competitive environment. Practical implementation requires overcoming security risks, personnel shortages and bureaucratic requirements.
The mines beneath Ukraine
Matthew Parish: Finally, let us talk about mines and unexploded ordnance. What exactly does Peaceful Heaven do in this field?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Our mine-action activities include educating people about the dangers posed by mines and unexploded ordnance in different regions of Ukraine, including Kharkiv region, where I work.
We conduct sessions for different groups, including adults and children. Every member of the team must understand the different approaches required when working with different groups. They must also have the necessary knowledge about mines and other explosive objects to provide people in a particular region with relevant and essential information.
Matthew Parish: How extensive is the contamination? Do Ukrainians really appreciate the scale of the demining problem the country will eventually face?
Kateryna Kantemyr: The degree of contamination varies between regions. We visit both de-occupied territories and areas that are less heavily contaminated.
People in each region are aware of the level of contamination around them, although their broader understanding of the problem may be insufficient. We are trying to change that.
Matthew Parish: What actually has to happen before contaminated land can once again be used for farming, construction or ordinary community life?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Before land can safely be returned to use, there must be a comprehensive survey of the territory, demining and disposal of explosive ordnance, laboratory analysis and remediation of the soil. The process concludes with independent quality control and the issue of an official safety certificate.
Matthew Parish: One of the strangest effects of a prolonged war is that people become accustomed to danger. Are civilians actually becoming less careful about mines and unexploded ordnance?
Kateryna Kantemyr: Yes. Civilians are becoming less cautious about the objects around them, particularly in de-occupied territories.
People become accustomed to the dangerous conditions in which they live. That makes our task of persuading them to recognise the risks increasingly urgent. We share statistics explaining which groups are most vulnerable and why these awareness sessions remain so important.
Matthew Parish: Kateryna, thank you for talking to the Lviv Herald.
Kateryna Kantemyr: Thank you.
Kateryna Kantemyr spoke with Matthew Parish, Editor-in-Chief of the Lviv Herald. The interview was conducted in Ukrainian. It has been translated into English and lightly edited for clarity, continuity and publication.
