In her normal life, Daria is a medical worker in Russia. But now she also describes herself as a "truck driver."
For three years now, she has been regularly driving to areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia, meeting refugees, and taking them somewhere where they can get help.
In peacetime, Daria helped an animal rescue group and often just picked up dogs and cats from the street. But, of course, she had never before had to evacuate animals from under shelling.
"Right from the beginning of the war, I immediately got involved in helping refugees, but it quickly became clear that we also needed to help animals," Daria (whose name has been changed at her request) told RFE/RL.
"At first, I had five or six animals on a trip. And on January 1, 2023, I was carrying one family -- Anya and her mother had 11 other people's cats, a small dog, and a large dog. They had to be delivered to St. Petersburg, so that other volunteers would pick them up and take them to the Finnish border. And my car was filled with carriers full of cats, who all New Year's Eve sang songs to us in different voices."
Animals that have to be evacuated have various and often serious medical issues.
"Many there are simply turning into skeletons because of hunger," Daria said. "Everything is destroyed; there is no food. Almost every animal that we evacuate has dirofilariasis; cats are not susceptible to it, but for dogs, it's serious. This is a nematode worm that lives in the veins, in the lungs, and leads to cardiopulmonary failure and very often death. Eight out of 10 dogs arrive infected.
"The treatment is very difficult, and you also have to deal with its side effects. The injections are expensive: 12,000 [rubles, $130] for one bottle. The minimum course is three bottles. We recently cured one dog but, unfortunately, she was simply exhausted and died anyway. But we gave her several months of happy life."
Once, she had to pick up wounded animals in Oleshky -- a dog with a leg broken by shrapnel, a cat with a wound through the ear, and several other animals to return them to their owners, including a dog with puppies -- yet another car full of animals.
Approaching Oleshky, Daria realized that the route was under fire. She was told to return to the main road, which she had taken many times and knew well.
On the left bank of the Dnieper River, east of Kherson, Oleshky was occupied by Russian troops in the first days of the full-scale invasion. When the Kakhovka dam burst in June 2023, Oleshky was almost completely flooded and heavily damaged.
"And so, I'm driving, and I don't recognize anything -- just destroyed cars, civilian cars, and military equipment lies destroyed. At the Radensk-Oleshky-Kakhovka fork, there was the nastiest checkpoint. There were always military personnel, people's militia, some clowns in hats on duty there. I arrive, and a concrete checkpoint is lying on its side, sandbags are scattered, and huge caliber cartridges all over."
Daria says she stepped on the gas, realizing from the sound that it was not artillery, and drove with the windows open in order to hear an approaching drone in time.
"Then, for the first time, I was really scared. I realized that I might not get there," she said. "In Oleshky, as always, there were mortars firing. Literally, you are loading animals in one yard and in the next one a mortar is firing across the street. This is all familiar. I collected all the animals at their addresses."
According to Daria, the only people left in Oleshky now are mostly elderly people who are afraid to leave. Some are feeding packs of animals that have clung to them, completely stunned. Some were apparently abandoned during the evacuation; some were lost in the flood; some had their owners killed in the shelling.
"They gather in packs, and no one bites anyone: The law of the 'water truce' applies in full. A woman comes out, my age, looks 20 years older -- blackened, weather-beaten, emaciated -- and begins to feed them. It's obvious that she herself is malnourished and doesn't drink enough, but she feeds them and doesn't leave, doesn't abandon this whole horde of 30 dogs and 40 cats," Daria recalled.
She was advised to go back through Kakhovka, past the destroyed checkpoint.
"On the way out of Oleshky, I saw an old man walking in the rain, dirty, with a bundle of sheets on his shoulder. I opened the door: 'Where are you going?' And he looks at me, his face is twitching. He cannot answer," Daria said.
"He shows me a piece of paper [with] a Russian number, and it says, 'Tanya.' I dial, and a woman starts crying: 'You found him. I have no way to contact him.' This was his daughter. She had been living in Russia for a long time, and he remained in Oleshky until the last," Daria continued. "I put him in the car and decided that we needed to put him on a train and send him to his daughter. I bought him a ticket to Voronezh, where he was supposed to be met.
"In the car, he thawed out a little, drank some water, and said that his name was Volodymyr, that he was 87. He said he wanted to die in his house, but the house got hit while he was in the garden. It was a miracle that he wasn't hit by shrapnel. The house collapsed. He pulled out his passport, wrote down his daughter's phone number on a piece of paper, and set off on foot, thinking maybe he'd get somewhere," Daria continued.
"And here I am, with mortars on the right and return fire on the left. I later reconstructed in retrospect that something hit nearby. Something flashed from the direction of the Russian units; some things flew by. I tried to drive faster but the rear wheel was hit by a piece of shrapnel. And then something also hit my windshield, and I understood that I didn't want to change the tire here. I want to make it to the forest. Trees are no protection at all, but at least it's psychologically easier, at least it's not in the open."
WATCH: Life in the city of Kherson, liberated by Ukrainian troops in the fall of 2022, is a constant struggle for locals. Russian forces continue to shell the war-torn regional capital.
When Daria stopped, smoke was pouring out of the wheel. Daria was unable to unscrew the nuts and remove the punctured tire herself.
"I was left on the road under fire. There's a mortar nearby. A response could come from the other side. I expect drones at any moment, and I don't have a wheel wrench," she said. "We sat there for a couple of hours. Grandfather sat without moving."
Russian soldiers found them this way.
"They stopped, clutching assault rifles in their hands, approached carefully, saw that in the car there was only a very old grandfather and many, many animals. Puppies were whining; a wounded dog was barking; cats were meowing. In the end, they laughed, quickly put on a spare tire, and said, 'Get out of here quickly,'" Daria recalled.
"At the next checkpoint, they tell me: 'Who let you in here? Civilian passage is prohibited!' They showed me some abandoned way. There were no drones, but no asphalt either -- just holes and a lot of armored personnel carriers. And these bastards kept trying to pass me and push me out of the way. This is their favorite pastime. Locals told me that they enjoy driving over cars and don't care whether there is anyone inside or not," Daria said.
"I miraculously dodged one such reckless driver and dragged myself to Simferopol, where I managed to put Grandfather Volodya on a train. I packed him a bag of food, called his daughter, and went home. All the animals made it out alive, but the next day one puppy was found dead, and the cat who was shot in the ear also didn't survive."
'Dogs Are The Only Thing That Keeps Them Going'
At the beginning of April this year, Daria picked up a girl from Oleshky after she suffered a shrapnel wound to her hip, along with her mother and, again, a bunch of animals. After crashing her car and coming under shell fire, everything ended well and two large mongrel dogs -- Rex and Kim from Oleshky -- were dropped off in Mariupol to then be sent to Germany to their owners.
"In Mariupol, an experienced animal volunteer helps us. He has contacts with carriers to Europe and with sponsors who help raise money for such transports," Daria explained.
"Rex remained in Oleshky under the supervision of neighbors who went to visit him. And Kim escaped during the evacuation, then returned to his home, and a family friend took him in and looked after him. Then we managed to transport them to Germany to their refugee owners. [The owners'] homes are destroyed, their jobs are lost, absolutely all their prospects are lost, and their dogs are the only thing that keeps them grounded," Daria added. "For many, this is a very powerful psychological support -- a familiar animal that shares their burdens and joys with them and which needs to be taken care of.
"During this war, people lose their animals for various reasons. If you had to flee with a Russian evacuation column, then most often they simply did not allow you to take animals. Commercial flights were also often pet-free," Daria said.
"People had a choice: to remain under fire or abandon their dog or cat. Some abandoned them, some left them with the neighbors. Sometimes people traveled with animals, but they got lost at the border, during the inspection of the car and the fingerprinting and interrogation of their owners, which usually lasted a very long time."
Surviving dogs sometimes return to their homes. Neighbors recognize them and inform their owners, who have already left.
'It Wasn't Snowing, It Was Ashes'
Daria has even taken a guinea pig and a ferret out of the combat zone. And among her passengers were people with hamsters, parrots, and a turtle.
"The guinea pig was left during the occupation with a guy who was already looking after many animals. She ate all his grass and he had nothing to feed her, so he asked us to pick her up and give her a home. She is now with a new family and is doing well.
"And the ferret, thank God, was traveling with its owners. I gave them a lift to the Latvian border. He never managed to escape from the cage, so he didn't like us. They are very freedom-loving."
Daria remembers how in February 2023 she evacuated a family out of Oleshky: a mother, Yelena, her 17-year-old son Dima, and grandfather Anatoliy. When a shell destroyed their apartment, the family was taken in by friends, but that place was also hit. They moved to live with friends but were shelled there too. Miraculously, no one was hurt.
"Dima showed me a video of them climbing up the stairs to the street from the basement, and it seemed like it was snowing in the summer. It was actually ashes," she said.
By the time they fled from the occupied territory, they already had several animals. They fed homeless, dying cats. A zoo volunteer friend, having learned that they were leaving, asked them to take a puppy. Before this, someone asked them to take care of a poodle. With such a load, the family barely made it to Simferopol.
"There were inspections at the border. They were forced to open every carrier, and the animals escaped. The poodle, very affectionate and cute, chewed through all the leashes. They tied the dogs with pieces of rope and went to check them one by one. They spent 13 hours at the border, then the driver dumped them out halfway because it took longer than he expected.
The main burden of the move fell on Dima. He was the one who put together the route, negotiated with the driver, talked with volunteers, and at the border he helped his mother and grandfather fill out the necessary papers, told them where to go, and managed the animals. From St. Petersburg, the family with animals was transported to Finland.
"It was also quite an ordeal to register so many animals. And when they arrived, and Dima was able to relax a little, that's when it hit him: Neither the strikes in Oleshky nor the trip were in vain," Daria said. "It's now clear that he has post-traumatic syndrome. At first, he managed and even worked for some time as a volunteer at Rubikus and entered the university in Helsinki. But when his hometown Oleshky was flooded, it hit him very hard. After all, they lived in a private area and their street was one of the most affected.
"Now, after all this, the Finnish doctors realized that the situation is serious, so he now sees a psychiatrist regularly, and our volunteers found psychologists online who are working with him. I hope everything works out for this family."
Rey And Andrei
"I took a shepherd dog that was left with neighbors. His name was Rey, and he was just skin and bones; absolutely all his vertebrae and ribs were sticking out. You can study the anatomy of a dog's skeleton from it, and he was also covered in bedsores. He tried to attack, wouldn't allow himself to be examined, barked. It was clear how much pain he was in. We put him in a hospital, treated his bedsores under anesthesia, fed him for a week, and he became the sweetest guy."
In fact, no one abandoned him, but his owner, Andrei, worked in Kherson and left his dog with his mother in Oleshky. When the city was occupied, his mother refused to leave. And then she died. Neighbors threw food over the fence to the dog.
"But apparently not enough. The dog was sitting on a chain and could not move normally -- hence the bedsores. I have no idea where he got water. We returned him to Andrei through the crossing in Kolotilovka. Then they sent us the most touching video -- how this dog finally met his owner. He didn't see him for a year and a half. Can you imagine what that was like? We cried. Andrei cried. The dog cried."
Daria says that for people from whom the war has taken everything -- their homeland, home, loved ones -- an animal often turns out to be almost the only anchor tying them to life. And for her, volunteering is also a kind of salvation -- from constant feelings of guilt.
"You cross the border. Instead of a road, there are only potholes. There is not a single window intact in the roadside cafes. The signs are dangling on wires," she said.
"In Mariupol, only one model neighborhood has been built outside the city, in an open field -- a luxury village the likes of which do not exist in Moscow, and at the entrance to the city there are several new buildings. But inside, everything is destroyed, just ruins. Now there are construction cranes everywhere. They paint over the skeletons and insert new ceilings directly from the inside. Missile holes are filled with bricks," Daria continued.
"My country did this. I have to do something to at least somehow atone for this."
