The Road Back to Kramatorsk: Ksenia Parfentiya and the Animals of a City at War

By Matthew Parish

Sunday 8 November 2026

She has rescued hundreds of animals, survived the destruction of an evacuation vehicle and lost the home that served as the centre of her humanitarian work. Yet Ksenia Parfentiya, a Ukrainian volunteer from Kramatorsk, has an extraordinary ambition: when the war ends, she wants to reverse the evacuations and bring everyone home. In an extensive interview conducted in English for the Lviv Herald, she describes the triumphs, tragedies and remarkable determination of those who refuse to abandon the innocent victims of Russia's war.

There is something quietly extraordinary about a woman whose greatest ambition is to conduct evacuations in reverse. For most humanitarian volunteers working in eastern Ukraine, evacuation is a journey in one direction: away from the advancing Russian army, away from destroyed homes, away from places where the ordinary business of living has become intolerably dangerous. But Ksenia Parfentiya, an animal rescue volunteer from Kramatorsk in Donetsk Oblast, dreams of an entirely different operation. When the war is over, she wants to put the people and their animals back into the vehicles and take them home.

"My biggest dream after the war is to rebuild our cities, especially Kramatorsk," she explains. "I want to rebuild all the damaged houses, including my own home. And then I want to organise evacuations in reverse, when we take all our people and all their animals back to Kramatorsk. We must keep this city alive."

It is an ambition made all the more poignant by the fact that Ksenia no longer has a home in Kramatorsk to return to. On 26 October 2026, a Russian FPV drone struck the house that she and her family had spent years building. The resulting fire destroyed not merely a family residence but the operational heart of an organisation that had provided shelter, veterinary treatment, food and transport for thousands of animals displaced by the war. The irony is almost unbearable. A woman who devoted so much of her life to finding homes for abandoned creatures has herself been made homeless.

A childhood affection becomes a life's work

Ksenia's involvement with animal welfare long predates Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. She describes having loved animals since childhood, although she struggles to explain precisely why this affection developed into such an overwhelming personal commitment.

"I don't know why," she says with appealing simplicity. "I just love animals."

For many years, she pursued an entirely conventional professional career. She worked as a web designer for approximately fifteen years, a profession that allowed her to earn a living while devoting her spare time and a considerable proportion of her income to animal rescue. She helped shelters, supported other volunteers, arranged veterinary treatment, funded sterilisation programmes and found new homes for abandoned cats and dogs. What began as a personal interest gradually became something closer to a second occupation.

The Russian invasion transformed both the scale of the problem and the demands placed upon her. Domestic animals were suddenly being abandoned in enormous numbers as families fled their homes, villages were destroyed and communities disappeared beneath artillery fire. Soldiers discovered frightened dogs and cats in deserted settlements and military positions. Elderly people refused to evacuate because nobody could guarantee the safety of their pets. Animals arrived suffering from starvation, untreated illnesses, injuries and profound distress.

"A full-scale invasion changed all our lives, of course," Ksenia observes, "and it changed our voluntary work."

For a time, she attempted to maintain both her professional life and her increasingly demanding humanitarian activities. The arrangement required her to work at night on her computer and spend much of the day helping animals, organising transport, answering requests for assistance and coordinating other volunteers. Eventually the situation became impossible.

"When you work at night and volunteer all day, it's impossible to do that endlessly," she explains.

In April 2026, after fifteen years in web design, Ksenia gave up her professional career to concentrate on humanitarian work. It was hardly a conventional career change. She had exchanged the relative predictability of computers, clients and deadlines for a succession of emergencies in which the consequences of failure might be the death of an animal, the separation of a family or the loss of a vehicle upon which dozens of lives depended.

Building a world of friends

Ksenia did not work alone. Over the years she developed relationships with other animal welfare volunteers, charities, veterinarians and international supporters. Among her closest collaborators was Olena Mykhailenko, another animal rescue volunteer from Kramatorsk with particular experience caring for dogs. Their cooperation eventually developed into a formal organisation.

In November 2024, they established the Ukrainian public organisation Svit Druziv, meaning World of Friends, whose registered English name is Druzi Space. The organisation provided a structure for work that had previously depended upon informal cooperation between individuals. It enabled the coordination of food supplies, veterinary programmes, transport operations and partnerships with larger Ukrainian and international humanitarian organisations.

"We have been able to achieve so much and help so many animals because of it," Ksenia says of the decision to formalise their activities.

There is a practical distinction between loving animals and running a humanitarian organisation that cares for them. The former requires compassion, the latter logistics. Food must be purchased and distributed, veterinary appointments arranged, medicines obtained, vehicles maintained, donors updated and an apparently inexhaustible quantity of administrative work completed. Rescue operations demand drivers, fuel, temporary accommodation and somewhere to receive animals that may be frightened, infected, injured or incapable of travelling long distances.

Ksenia's background in web design proved unexpectedly useful. She understood how to organise information, communicate with supporters and maintain the administrative arrangements upon which an expanding volunteer operation depends. Her former professional skills did not disappear when she stopped working commercially. They were simply redirected towards an entirely different purpose.

Druzi Space developed a network of Ukrainian volunteers and international supporters, working alongside organisations such as Animal Rescue Kharkiv, UAnimals and other animal welfare groups. Ksenia also became involved in obtaining practical assistance for Ukrainian military units, including vehicles, generators, portable power stations and first-aid equipment. To her, supporting the Armed Forces and rescuing animals are not competing humanitarian priorities.

"We do everything we can to help the military too, because they defend us," she explains. "We cannot survive without them."

There is little ideological elaboration in her explanation. The soldiers are defending the communities in which she works, while her volunteers are rescuing the living creatures left behind as those communities become battlefields. Each depends upon the other for the possibility of continuing.

The house that became a refuge

For years, Ksenia's family home in Kramatorsk formed the centre of her animal rescue operations. The house had been built over a long period by her family, with all the emotional and financial investment that such an undertaking entails. It was intended as a permanent home, somewhere to raise a family and build an ordinary future. Instead, the war transformed it into a sanctuary for animals fleeing destruction.

Dogs and cats arrived from communities across Donetsk Oblast, including Toretsk, Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Lyman and other towns subjected to Russian attacks. Some had been rescued by soldiers, others brought by desperate owners or collected by volunteers. Many required medical attention before they could travel further west. The house became a temporary shelter, a food distribution warehouse, a veterinary stabilisation point and a transfer station for animals beginning the difficult journey towards safety.

Over the years, more than a thousand animals passed through the property. Food was distributed from there to volunteers throughout Kramatorsk, while dogs and cats were treated, vaccinated, sterilised and prepared for transport. It was an extraordinary transformation of an ordinary family residence into a centre of humanitarian activity.

The pressures were immense. Animals might arrive without warning, often in groups, with little indication of their medical condition or ultimate destination. One family's request might involve a single elderly dog, another a collection of cats and puppies for which nobody had made adequate arrangements. A volunteer might suddenly receive a call from a soldier who had found abandoned animals in a dangerous position and wanted them collected before his unit moved.

Ksenia recalls helping a family from Druzhkivka that had approximately thirty cats. The number might sound absurd to somebody who has never attempted to evacuate a collection of frightened animals from a town under bombardment, but for the volunteers it was simply another problem requiring a practical solution.

Every animal needed a suitable carrier, transport and somewhere to stay. The larger problem was that the number of animals requiring assistance was growing faster than the capacity of shelters to receive them.

The extraordinary logistics of kindness

At one point during the summer of 2026, Ksenia's organisation helped evacuate approximately 200 animals and eight people in just four days. The operation involved six evacuation journeys and some 6,500 kilometres of travel. These are remarkable figures, not least because every animal represented an individual logistical problem and every journey involved roads increasingly exposed to Russian attacks.

Such operations are not simply a matter of opening the door of a van and inviting the animals inside. Some dogs are terrified of vehicles, others have never travelled in a crate, while cats are capable of displaying considerable ingenuity when attempting to escape an unfamiliar situation. Sick animals may require medication during a journey and frightened animals can injure themselves or others if not properly secured.

Nor does evacuation necessarily end when a vehicle reaches a safer town. An animal may need to be transferred to a veterinary clinic, a temporary foster home or a shelter hundreds of kilometres away. Volunteers must coordinate the journey, keep records, reassure owners and find sufficient money to pay for treatment and accommodation.

Ksenia describes an increasingly complicated network of drivers, temporary shelters and cooperating charities. As the danger around Kramatorsk has intensified, the methods of evacuation have had to change. Large vehicles are conspicuous targets for Russian drones, making it necessary to collect animals in smaller vehicles and transfer them to larger evacuation vans at comparatively safer locations. Local drivers have helped with some of these journeys, including transport through Barvinkove.

The arrangement is hardly ideal. It increases the number of transfers, the administrative burden and the possibilities for something to go wrong. Yet it allows the volunteers to continue operating in circumstances where conventional large-scale evacuation journeys have become exceptionally dangerous.

For Ksenia, these practical difficulties are accompanied by the emotional strain of dealing with people who have lost almost everything. Owners may be elderly, distressed or unwilling to acknowledge that they cannot safely remain in their homes. Some have spent their lives caring for animals and are reluctant to entrust them to strangers, however benevolent.

In such situations, helping the animals often means helping the people as well. A person who knows that their pets will be safe may finally agree to leave a dangerous town. Animal welfare becomes a necessary part of civilian evacuation rather than a separate and lesser humanitarian concern.

The cat who went to Poland

Amidst the relentless succession of emergencies, Ksenia is careful to remember the successes. She describes one particularly moving case involving a seriously ill cat rescued from Druzhkivka. The animal arrived in an appalling condition, with little apparent prospect of recovery. It required a prolonged course of veterinary treatment before it could be sterilised, vaccinated and prepared for adoption.

The cat eventually travelled to Poland, where it was adopted into a new family. Photographs of the once desperately ill animal, now healthy and contented in its new home, provided Ksenia with a powerful reminder of why she continues her work.

"I remember the condition in which we took her from Druzhkivka," she recalls. "There seemed to be no hope, no chance at all. But now she is so happy, so beautiful. It's just amazing, really."

She becomes noticeably more animated when discussing these successful rescues. The enormous effort involved in saving an animal can be forgotten when the creature is finally safe, healthy and apparently oblivious to the extraordinary circumstances of its survival.

"I could tell you hundreds of happy stories like this," she says. "They keep me alive and give me the strength to continue what we do."

These are not sentimental embellishments to a wartime humanitarian operation. They are a form of emotional survival for the people conducting it. A rescued animal represents something achieved, a problem solved and a life that has escaped the destructive processes engulfing the region. When so much else appears beyond human control, the recovery of a small cat can seem like a disproportionate victory.

Unfortunately, not all the stories have happy endings.

When veterinary medicine disappears from a city

One of the most distressing consequences of the deteriorating security situation in Kramatorsk has been the disappearance of much of its veterinary infrastructure. As Russian attacks have intensified, veterinary clinics have closed or relocated and specialist medical treatment has become increasingly difficult to obtain.

Ksenia explains that animals requiring serious treatment frequently have to be transported to Dnipro, Kharkiv or other cities where veterinary services remain available. Such journeys may take many hours, sometimes over roads subject to attack, and the animals cannot necessarily survive the delay.

In her interview, she recalls animals that died before volunteers could deliver them to a clinic. These are among the most painful experiences for rescuers because the animals have already been found, collected and placed in the hands of people trying to save them. The effort has begun, the vehicle is moving and help appears to be within reach, yet the opportunity for treatment arrives too late.

There is also a financial dimension. Serious veterinary treatment can be extremely expensive, particularly when animals need surgery, hospitalisation and prolonged rehabilitation. Fuel, transport, food and temporary accommodation consume the organisation's limited resources, while emergency cases can exhaust money intended for several other rescues.

Ksenia is emphatic about the importance of those who support the organisation financially. Donors receive photographs, receipts and reports explaining how their contributions have been used. Accountability is an essential part of maintaining the confidence of people who may be thousands of kilometres away but whose generosity makes the work possible.

"Without their help, we can do nothing," she acknowledges.

The organisation nevertheless faces an almost permanent shortage of money, vehicles and suitable accommodation. The number of animals requiring assistance is enormous, while the resources available to rescue them are inevitably finite. The volunteers must repeatedly make difficult decisions about where to go first and which cases demand the greatest urgency.

The yellow van

On 11 October 2026, the dangers of animal evacuation were demonstrated with particular brutality. A yellow evacuation van used by Druzi Space, known as Sunny, was struck by a Russian FPV drone in Kramatorsk while carrying animals to safety. The vehicle was driven by an Australian volunteer, Scotty Webster, who had come to Ukraine to assist with the rescue effort.

The consequences were devastating. One dog was killed in the explosion, while three other dogs escaped amid the destruction and were subsequently reported missing. A sphynx cat also escaped but was recovered approximately an hour later. The vehicle sustained serious damage, with broken windows, damaged doors, shattered carriers and substantial destruction to its bodywork.

Scotty survived, although he suffered concussion and considerable shock. His blood pressure was elevated after the attack and he experienced pain and severe stress, requiring medical assessment and rest.

For Ksenia, the death of the dog was particularly distressing because it was a domestic animal being transported towards a new home. Its owner had several dogs and cats and had been attempting to get them out of danger. The dog had survived the initial dangers of remaining in Kramatorsk and had reached the vehicle that was supposed to carry it to safety. It died during the rescue itself.

The incident also exposed the peculiar cruelty of drone warfare against civilian humanitarian operations. Vehicles transporting frightened animals are not protected from the threat of attack merely because their purpose is humanitarian. A conspicuous evacuation van can be observed and struck, with consequences for animals and volunteers alike.

Yet what followed the attack was almost as remarkable as the incident itself. The volunteers repaired the damaged vehicle sufficiently for it to continue operating. Doors were put back into position, holes patched, windows and other components replaced as circumstances permitted. At one point, the yellow van was functioning with almost none of its original rear lighting or mirrors intact.

The following day, despite the destruction, the evacuation operation continued. Ksenia and her colleagues transported animals towards Dnipro and resumed the work upon which so many lives depended. The vehicle eventually underwent further repairs, but its continued use became an illustration of the improvised resilience that characterises so much Ukrainian humanitarian activity.

There is something particularly Ukrainian about a volunteer organisation whose response to having its evacuation van attacked by a Russian drone is to repair the doors, make the vehicle roadworthy and carry on. The enemy may have the drones, but the volunteers have stubbornness, mechanical ingenuity and an apparently inexhaustible supply of animals requiring transport.

The day the house burned

Less than three weeks later, another Russian drone struck at the heart of Ksenia's operations. On 26 October 2026, an FPV drone hit the roof of the family house in Kramatorsk that served as the principal base for Druzi Space. A fire broke out and spread through the building, destroying the home and much of the infrastructure upon which the rescue organisation depended.

There were dozens of animals inside the property when the attack occurred, including animals being cared for by cooperating rescue organisations. Volunteers and emergency workers managed to remove the animals from the burning building, although some escaped in the confusion and subsequently had to be searched for. A responding fire engine was itself struck by another drone, further obstructing attempts to extinguish the blaze.

Ksenia had been away from the house undertaking evacuation work when the attack occurred. She lost not only the family home that had been built over many years but the warehouse, temporary shelter and organisational centre around which so much of her work revolved.

The loss was almost impossible for her to comprehend.

"I lost my base. I lost my ground," she says. "I lost the place that gave me strength."

A home is an intensely personal possession. It contains memories, the evidence of years of work and the ordinary objects through which family life acquires continuity. Yet for Ksenia, the house had become something considerably larger. It represented a place where people could bring suffering animals and expect somebody to help them. It was a centre of practical reassurance in a region where reassurance had become increasingly difficult to find.

"We lost the one place where we could keep the animals," she explains. "Our base, our place of safety."

There is a terrible contradiction in losing one's home while devoting oneself to helping others retain some small part of theirs. Ksenia expresses it in a sentence whose simplicity makes it all the more affecting.

"While you're helping others, you can't help yourself."

The destruction of the house created immediate practical problems. The organisation had to find another place to accommodate animals, store supplies and coordinate transport. It could no longer rely upon a familiar facility with established routines, equipment and local volunteers who knew exactly where everything belonged.

Ksenia describes the uncertainty that followed the attack with a frankness that contrasts with the confident public rhetoric often associated with wartime volunteering.

"I have no idea about the future," she admits. "I don't know what's next."

Yet uncertainty is not the same thing as surrender.

The decision to continue

By the autumn of 2026, Kramatorsk had become an exceptionally dangerous environment for civilian life. Russian drones, artillery and guided aerial bombs had made the roads, residential districts and remaining humanitarian facilities increasingly vulnerable. Ksenia's assessment is characteristically uncompromising.

"Kramatorsk is total hell now," she says.

The statement is not a rhetorical flourish. She has seen animals injured and killed, watched her organisation's vehicles attacked and lost the home that had sustained her family and humanitarian activities for years. Her colleagues continue to work in circumstances where the next journey might be their last.

Her family had already experienced displacement during the earlier stages of the full-scale invasion. In 2022, Ksenia and her relatives travelled with their cats and dogs to an abandoned village house roughly forty kilometres from Dnipro. They remained there for approximately six months, living in difficult conditions without normal running water or heating.

The experience taught her something about the importance of animals to displaced families. People who have spent years sharing their homes with pets cannot necessarily abandon them simply because they have become inconvenient to transport. A family may accept extremely uncomfortable living arrangements rather than leave its animals behind.

In April 2026, concerned for the safety of her young son, Ksenia moved her family to Kamianske in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Her humanitarian work nevertheless continued, involving repeated journeys and the coordination of volunteers still operating in and around Kramatorsk.

She is particularly critical of landlords and property owners who refuse accommodation to displaced people because they have animals. The problem is widespread, and it places people in an intolerable position. A family fleeing bombardment may be told that it can obtain a roof over its head only if it abandons the dog or cat that has accompanied it through years of war.

"After what you have survived in this hell, in frontline cities, the last thing you think about is somebody's sofa," she explains. "You are trying to save your life, the lives of your people and your animals."

Her anger is understandable. To somebody who has seen a home destroyed by a drone, the possibility that a dog might scratch a piece of furniture appears a remarkably trivial objection to providing shelter. Yet for displaced families, the objection can have serious consequences, forcing them into unsuitable accommodation or persuading them to remain in dangerous places rather than abandon their pets.

Ksenia's experience illustrates the extent to which the humanitarian consequences of war cannot be divided neatly into separate categories. People, animals, homes, livelihoods and communities are connected. Destroy one element and the others are profoundly affected.

The burden of being indispensable

There is an additional emotional cost to Ksenia's work, one that is less visible than destroyed buildings or damaged vehicles. She receives requests for help from people who regard her organisation as their last realistic hope. The telephone calls do not necessarily stop at night, during family occasions or when she herself is exhausted.

The requests may arrive from a soldier concerned about an animal found on his position, an elderly person trying to arrange evacuation or a frightened family whose pets have nowhere to go. Every request contains a story of vulnerability and often an expectation that Ksenia will somehow be able to solve the problem.

In the ordinary world, people can finish work and go home. For a volunteer whose home has itself become a shelter, whose telephone is an emergency contact point and whose friends are scattered across evacuation routes, the boundaries between work and personal life have largely disappeared.

The temptation must sometimes be to stop answering the telephone, to find another occupation or simply to acknowledge that no single person can carry such an enormous burden indefinitely. Ksenia does not conceal the exhaustion or the uncertainty. She speaks of the difficulties of continuing and of the emotional injuries that accumulate when one encounters so much suffering.

Yet she returns repeatedly to the same uncomplicated explanation of why the work must continue.

"We still have so many animals to rescue and so many people to help," she says. "That's why we can't stop."

It is worth considering what such a statement means after the events of October 2026. The organisation has suffered attacks on its vehicles and lost its central base. Its volunteers have been injured or traumatised, animals have died and the danger of further attacks remains considerable.

There is no guarantee that the next operation will succeed, that sufficient funding will be found or that the volunteers themselves will remain safe. But there are still animals in need of rescue and people who cannot bear to leave them behind. For Ksenia, that is sufficient reason to continue.

"We have no other chances, no other options," she says. "We can't stop. We just continue."

The meaning of Kramatorsk

To understand Ksenia Parfentiya, however, it is necessary to understand something about Kramatorsk itself. The city is often mentioned in international reporting primarily as a military and strategic location, an important urban centre in the remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory of Donetsk Oblast. Its name appears in discussions about front lines, defensive positions, Russian advances and the possibility of further destruction.

For Ksenia, Kramatorsk is something altogether different. It is the place where she grew up, worked, made friends and built a family home. It is where she developed her commitment to animal welfare and created an organisation that has helped countless animals and the people who care for them. The city is not an abstraction on a military map but a collection of memories, relationships and obligations.

To outsiders, the attachment of Ukrainians to cities that have been subjected to relentless Russian attacks can seem difficult to understand. Why would somebody want to return to a place where their home has been destroyed, where familiar streets have become dangerous and where the prospect of rebuilding may require years of exhausting work?

The answer lies partly in the distinction between a place and the buildings that happen to occupy it. A city is not simply an arrangement of roads, houses, schools and shops. It is the accumulation of the lives lived there, the people who remember it and the relationships that survive even when its physical structure is damaged.

Ksenia's insistence that Kramatorsk must be rebuilt is therefore more than an expression of personal nostalgia. It is a declaration that Russia's destruction of Ukrainian cities must not be allowed to determine their ultimate fate.

The people who were forced to leave have not necessarily ceased to belong there. Nor have the animals that once occupied their homes, slept in their gardens or wandered through their streets. The city persists in the memories and affections of those who have been displaced, even as its physical structures are damaged or destroyed.

For Ksenia, restoring Kramatorsk means bringing those lives back together.

Evacuation in reverse

Towards the conclusion of her interview, Ksenia's tone changes when she begins to describe the future she hopes to see. The immediate problems of veterinary treatment, transport, fundraising and damaged buildings give way to an expansive vision of peace and reconstruction.

She imagines the evacuation vehicles travelling in the opposite direction, carrying families and their animals back towards the streets they once knew. She wants the houses rebuilt, the ordinary life of the city restored and the scattered community reunited.

"Maybe it sounds strange if you have never visited Kramatorsk," she says, "but Kramatorsk is a really, really good city. For me, it is the best city in the world."

There is no attempt at sophisticated political argument in her statement. She does not discuss borders, security guarantees, peace negotiations or the economic difficulties of rebuilding the Donbas. Her vision is simpler and in some respects more demanding. She wants the city to live again, with the people and animals who once belonged to it.

"Kramatorsk has survived so much and seen so much," she continues. "We simply cannot leave it as it is."

It is difficult to imagine a more affecting expression of Ukrainian determination. Ksenia is not a military commander or a prominent politician. She is a former web designer who loves animals, an exhausted humanitarian volunteer whose house has been destroyed and whose evacuation vehicle has been attacked. She has seen the worst consequences of war in the suffering of creatures that have no understanding of the political events destroying their lives.

Nevertheless, she remains attached to an idea of the future in which the people, the animals and the city are restored to one another. Her determination is not founded upon certainty that this will be achieved quickly or easily. Indeed, she freely acknowledges that she does not know what will happen next.

Perhaps this is what makes her account so compelling. She combines a painfully realistic understanding of the present with an almost obstinate refusal to abandon the possibility of a happier future.

For now, the roads continue to carry people and animals away from Kramatorsk. The vehicles travel west through the damaged landscape of Donetsk Oblast towards veterinary clinics, temporary accommodation and the uncertain promise of safety. Behind them lie empty houses, abandoned streets and a city whose future remains in jeopardy.

One day, Ksenia hopes, the same roads will carry the vehicles in the other direction. The cats and dogs will return with their owners, the houses will be rebuilt and the city will recover something of its former character.

Her final words are neither an appeal for sympathy nor a demand for recognition. They are an expression of faith in the future of a city that has endured almost unimaginable suffering.

"We will rebuild it," she says. "We will survive everything, and we will live happily together."

And until that day comes, Ksenia Parfentiya has one request for those who live beyond the immediate reach of Russia's war.

"Just don't stop. Don't forget about us."