The city had been under Russian occupation for 4 months and was seriously damaged as a result of fighting. Almost 90% of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed by shelling. But people continue to live in the city. Many of them stay in basements under charred high-rises where their apartments used to be not so long ago.

Every day, volunteers from Kramatorsk bring meals to Lyman and give them out at 3 different locations. One of these food distribution locations was where the Solidarity Collectives organized humanitarian aid distribution. The main things we brought to Lyman were warm clothes: winter jackets and coats, sweaters, hats, thermal underwear, winter shoes, etc. Because most people are only wearing whatever they managed to move to bomb shelters. We also handed out dozens of blankets, pillows, and bed linens. We obtained all this thanks to our comrades from Germany who brought tonnes of items to Lviv. FemSolution activists, who organized aid collection in Kyiv, also helped.

In addition, power supply was restored in the city after de-occupation, so another request is now electric heaters and electric stoves. Before this, people had to heat the shelters with firewood (and the majority still do).

Other than that, people received power banks, flash lights, batteries, cell phones. And we gave 2 powerful heaters and a generator to the local volunteers for their needs.

We want to say a special thank you to Ukraine Solidarity Bus, FemSolution, Екоплатформі, Юлії Новобранець, mostundtrester, Oskar-Romero-Haus, Lützerath, FemSound and База UA for hosting us so nicely in Kramatorsk.

But each of these trips tells us just one thing: this is just a miniscule part of what is actually needed. There are still thousands of impoverished people in the city who still don’t have the most basic necessities. So we’re already preparing for the next trip, and we will appreciate it if you support it.