Elena in her silver Honda on her way to the front
Image: Serge Poliakov
Every week, a Ukrainian woman drives her car loaded with meat, eggs and potatoes from Odessa to where the bombs are falling. It’s their way of fighting.
Elena drives towards the bombs every week. It is 140 kilometers from her hometown of Odessa to the frontline town of Mykolayiv. While hardly anyone in Odessa is responding to the air raid alarm, Mykolaiv is repeatedly shaken by explosions. Nevertheless, Elena is not afraid, neither of the Russian missiles nor of the cluster munitions. She was a strong woman before the war and has remained so. “It’s just my nature.” She laughs.
A flat landscape passes by, fields, meadows, not a cloud in the sky. The rapeseed is blooming. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she says. Sugar, cabbage, sunflower oil, eggs, onions, potatoes and herbs pile up to the roof in their silver Honda. Early in the morning, the butcher had just opened, she bought seventy kilograms of meat and stowed it on the back seat. Potatoes alone do not strengthen, especially not a soldier. As a church appears in the distance, Elena takes one hand off the wheel and crosses herself. She drives slower now. A rocket hit the street in the first days of the war. There is still a gaping hole in the poorly repaired asphalt.