In an exclusive interview with UN NewsOleg describes his job as a security officer and the challenges he faces when trying to deliver food aid to vulnerable communities.
There is little respite even far from the front, he notes, with cities like the capital, kyiv, repeatedly bombed and plunged into darkness, as was the case just before we spoke to him.
His conversation with Daniel Johnson has been edited for length and clarity:
Oleg Kemin: “Every night like this, with the bombings, is quite difficult for us; Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is under fire, so each such attack can mean new blackouts throughout the country. In addition, there are new victims, which creates additional tensions.
Let’s say people spending sleepless nights in shelters can’t be as productive as usual. As a UN Security Operations Officer, my job is to track those constant airstrike alerts, try to keep our staff safe and warn them about the alerts.
UN News: How do you deal with the constant threat of attack?
Oleg Kemin: Next month will mark four years since the war began. I still remember the first attacks, I still remember the first air alert and it was very scary. It’s impossible to get used to it, especially when you can see the damage and destruction, but people are somehow getting used to it all.
But every once in a while, when you’ve been at work and you’re tired, you don’t hear the air raid alert on the app on your phone, or the air raid siren on the street. Other times you wake up with the first explosion and it is impossible to move to the shelter, because there is already an attack underway.
You create mechanisms, not to cope with the situation, but to understand the situation more clearly, and you follow emergency procedures. For example, if the attack is over, should we start counting headcount and assessing needs?
Across the country, people working in power and water companies are doing their best to maintain normal life as much as possible and restore electricity. In the capital we have more opportunities to make repairs very quickly, but in some cities, including on the left bank of kyiv, we remained without electricity for quite a long time.
UN News: Where are the needs greatest in Ukraine today?
Oleg Kemin: Some of the most vulnerable communities are in Pokrovsk, Kupyansk, Konstantynivka and Dobropillya; They are all in the news today. We used to send aid convoys to these places. It is really sad to see how with the gradual movement of the front line, life begins to escape from these cities.
On your first trip it’s a normal city, but then shops start closing, more buildings are damaged, and there are fewer people on the streets. In the final mission, you only see an empty, closed city and people who have nowhere else to go.
UN News: How are aid teams protected from drone attacks?
Oleg Kemin: Currently, in frontline areas there is a high presence of drones with first-person view (remotely controlled). They are relatively small and each is usually run by an operator. When any of our humanitarian convoys head towards such an area, we inform both parties to the conflict of their GPS coordinates using standard Humanitarian Notification Systems (HNS), so they can safely reach their destination.
But that only applies to UN vehicles; The rest of the civil and military vehicles in the convoy may be vulnerable, so to deter drones, the Ukrainian military builds pylon-mounted net corridors on both sides of the road for 10 to 15 kilometers.
Small drones don’t have enough speed to penetrate through the network, so they get trapped in it, and that can offer some protection. Let’s say it’s the last hope, but at least it exists. In such an aisle, you feel safer, because there is at least a layer of protection around your vehicle.
Of course, wars are constantly raging and there are already ways to penetrate these nets, or drones look for gaps in the nets, especially in the fall and winter when strong winds can tear the canopy. This is a double jeopardy because if the net wraps around a wheel, it will stop the vehicle and incapacitate it.
A WFP vehicle passes under drone protection nets in Kherson, Ukraine
UN News: What can you tell us about the people who need WFP’s help?
Oleg Kemin: Last summer, we went on missions to remote communities in the Kharkiv region (in northeastern Ukraine, near the Russian border). There are towns that we evaluated that are now impossible to reach because it is a very active combat zone, but there are still people living there.
In one of those towns, when I had the opportunity to ask one of the inhabitants, an older woman, why she didn’t leave the town and she told me: ‘Here is the grave of my husband, my children, I have nowhere to go; The only thing I can do is take care of their graves.
People still live in these communities and it was impossible to get to them by truck, so we removed the back seats of our armored vehicles, filled them to the brim with food kits, and literally drove through the mud.
Our partners’ vehicles got stuck and we had to get them out. People lived very close to the fighting (they were only 4.5 kilometers from the Russian border and drone activity from both sides was very high there), so sometimes we took twice as many food kits to these communities, because we never know if we will be able to reach them in the coming months.
UN News: What else can you tell us about the Ukrainian communities you have reached?
Oleg Kemin: These are older people, especially pensioners. Sometimes the people who live there have told us: ‘It’s our land, it’s the house I grew up in, it’s a house my great-grandparents built, it’s my land and I don’t want to leave.’
Other times, we have met people who have told us that they had tried to go to European countries or Western Ukraine, but because of their age they could not find a job that would allow them to earn enough money to rent a house, so they had to return to their war-torn communities. Furthermore, it is not so easy for people with disabilities and their families to leave these communities.
The state offers evacuation and assistance, but many people still plan to stay there. And they are among the people we help in the communities closest to the front lines, where the shops are closed and no one brings food. Further afield, if markets are open, our donors provide some cash help so people can choose what to add to their food basket.
A UN vehicle passes through a destroyed city in Ukraine.
UN News: Another key part of WFP’s mission is to make agricultural land safe again for Ukrainians to work. What more can you tell us?
Oleg Kemin: Yes, we participate in demining work. Ukraine is a huge agricultural country and a huge amount of land (25 to 30 percent) is contaminated with unexploded ordnance and explosive remnants of war.
For this reason, the WFP works on demining so that the lands are once again available for agricultural work. As you know, grains from Ukraine help feed countries in Africa and almost all over the world, so one of our goals is to participate in that activity to make it possible to fight hunger, not only in Ukraine, but using, let’s say, Ukrainian grains all over the world as well.”