Through the War: An Interview with Kharkiv Architect and Humanitarian Olha Kleitman
By Matthew Parish
Saturday 31 October 2026
Kharkiv is a city in which the professions people once pursued and the work they now find themselves doing have become curiously intertwined. Architects have become humanitarian workers, businessmen have become soldiers, teachers have become volunteers and ordinary citizens have learned skills in logistics, emergency medicine and civil defence that they never imagined they would need. Yet the old professions do not necessarily disappear. Instead, they are adapted to the peculiar necessities of war.
Olha Kleitman is an architect from Kharkiv who offers an unusually striking example of this transformation. She continues to practise architecture, but since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion she has also devoted an enormous part of her life to caring for elderly people and people with disabilities who have been displaced, isolated or otherwise left unable to care for themselves.
In March 2022, in the chaotic first weeks of the invasion, Kleitman and her colleagues established the humanitarian organisation Through the War. They subsequently created Velyka Rodyna — “Big Family”, a residential care centre in a former factory dormitory. The project began with two elderly women and an unsuitable building. It has evolved into a long-term home providing care, rehabilitation and companionship for people who might otherwise have nowhere to go.
The story is partly one of humanitarian improvisation. It is also a story about architecture. Kleitman’s professional understanding of how people interact with the spaces around them has informed the transformation of an inaccessible dormitory into a home designed around the practical needs and dignity of its residents.
The Lviv Herald interviewed Olha Kleitman in Kharkiv on 31 October 2026. The interview took place in English and has been lightly edited for clarity and publication.
Matthew Parish: You continue to work as an architect. How did the war change your life and what made you devote so much of your time to helping elderly people and people with disabilities?
Olha Kleitman: I still work as an architect, but the war changed my priorities. We found elderly people who were alone and could not get food, water or medicine. I could not ignore them. Helping them became part of my everyday life.
Matthew Parish: How did the idea of creating Through the War and the Big Family care centre arise? What were the greatest difficulties during the first months?
Olha Kleitman: We created Through the War in March 2022, responding to urgent needs around us. On 20 March, we welcomed our first two elderly women into a former factory dormitory.
The building had no ramps, lifts or accessible bathrooms. We had to organise care and rebuild the space while the city was under attack.
Matthew Parish: Tell me about the people who live at Big Family today. Where do they come from and what do they need?
Olha Kleitman: Our residents are elderly people and people with disabilities from Kharkiv and frontline communities. Many have lost their homes or loved ones and cannot live independently. They need daily care, medicine, rehabilitation and, above all, human warmth and a sense of safety.
Matthew Parish: You have helped hundreds of people. Is there one particular story that has stayed with you?
Olha Kleitman: One woman came to us after spending three years in bed. With support and rehabilitation, she began walking again and eventually left, making room for another person who needed care.
Stories like hers remind us why rehabilitation matters.
Matthew Parish: The name “Big Family” seems to express a philosophy as much as it describes an institution. What does it mean to you?
Olha Kleitman: Big Family means that nobody should feel forgotten or unnecessary. We try to create a home where people share meals, spend time together and receive personal attention. Feeling part of a family grows through small, everyday acts of care.
Matthew Parish: What is the greatest practical difficulty you face in keeping the home operating?
Olha Kleitman: Our greatest difficulty is stable funding. We depend on donations, but salaries, food, medicine and heating must be paid for every month. Regular support for our care team is especially important.
Preparing for winter and buying firewood are also urgent needs.
Matthew Parish: How effectively do you think the Ukrainian state and local authorities are meeting the needs of elderly people and people with disabilities affected by the war? Do organisations such as yours receive enough public support?
Olha Kleitman: The state cannot cope with the need for care for elderly people and people with disabilities affected by the war. There have long been no places available in state care facilities for people with special care needs. In our region alone, around 3,000 people are still waiting for a place.
People who come to us therefore often stay for the rest of their lives, and we become responsible for their lives. Yet our home receives no state funding and relies on donations.
We could not obtain funding even for a fire alarm system in our home, either from the mayor or from the regional administration. We need a reliable system of public support for organisations providing long-term care.
Matthew Parish: You are an architect and this project involved transforming a former factory dormitory into a home for people with significant physical needs. How has your professional background influenced what you have built?
Olha Kleitman: My team and I used our architectural experience to make the dormitory accessible and comfortable. We added ramps, lifts, accessible bathrooms and welcoming shared spaces.
This project has reinforced my belief that good architecture starts with understanding people’s daily lives and protecting their dignity.
Matthew Parish: That leads naturally to the larger question of Kharkiv’s reconstruction. What sort of city would you like Kharkiv to become after the war?
Olha Kleitman: I want Kharkiv to be a city where people of different ages and abilities can live with dignity. Reconstruction should include accessible housing, green public spaces and care within communities.
We have an opportunity to build a more inclusive city while preserving its character and heritage.
Matthew Parish: After almost five years of full-scale war, what gives you the strength to continue? And what would you like to say to people outside Ukraine about the elderly people living in frontline cities?
Olha Kleitman: The people around me give me strength: our residents, our team, our defenders and our supporters. We continue working because we see that our efforts matter.
I would ask the international community to remember elderly people in frontline cities. Their needs continue every day, and regular, long-term support makes an enormous difference.
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There is a particular poignancy to Kleitman’s observation that the people who arrive at Big Family may remain there for the rest of their lives. The emergency that began in February 2022 has lasted long enough for temporary solutions to become permanent institutions. A dormitory hastily adapted to receive two elderly women has become part of the social infrastructure of a city living through a prolonged war.
Her account also exposes one of the less visible consequences of the conflict. Wars are generally described through maps, military units, missiles, casualties and destroyed buildings. Less attention is given to the elderly woman who can no longer obtain her medicine, the disabled man whose relatives have fled or been killed, or the bedridden resident for whom evacuation from a threatened community is only the beginning of the problem. Once such people have been brought to safety, somebody must care for them tomorrow, next month and perhaps for the remainder of their lives.
That responsibility is expensive precisely because it is mundane. Food must arrive every day. Carers must receive salaries every month. Buildings must be heated through the winter. Medicines must be purchased, bathrooms must be accessible and fire alarms must work. None of these things possesses the dramatic immediacy of an evacuation under shellfire, but without them an evacuation merely moves a vulnerable person from one crisis into another.
Kleitman’s criticism of the absence of sustained state support therefore deserves attention. Her claim that some 3,000 people in the region are waiting for appropriate institutional care illustrates the scale of a problem that charitable organisations cannot indefinitely be expected to solve by themselves. If voluntary organisations assume responsibilities that would ordinarily belong to a functioning system of social care, then those organisations themselves eventually require institutions, predictable financing and professional staff. Charity can improvise remarkably effectively, but permanent social care cannot be run forever as an improvisation.
There is also something distinctively architectural about Kleitman’s response. Architecture at its best is not primarily about monumental buildings or spectacular skylines. It is about arranging physical space around human beings. A ramp rather than a staircase, an accessible bathroom, a communal room in which people do not feel isolated and a garden in which an elderly resident can spend an afternoon are modest interventions. Yet for somebody who has lost a home, a family or physical independence, they may make the difference between existing and living.
This may ultimately be one of the lessons Kharkiv carries into its reconstruction. The city will need repaired apartment blocks, roads, schools, hospitals and infrastructure. But reconstruction ought not merely to reproduce what existed before the invasion. The experience of organisations such as Through the War demonstrates that rebuilding can also mean reconsidering whom a city is designed for.
Olha Kleitman began this work because she encountered elderly people who could not obtain food, water or medicine and decided that she could not ignore them. Nearly five years later, that elementary moral decision has become an institution. Amid the immense questions surrounding Ukraine’s reconstruction, Big Family represents something smaller but perhaps equally fundamental: the proposition that nobody, however old, disabled or displaced by war, should be permitted to become unnecessary.
