PANTŠEVE A small village in central Ukraine was slowly dying. Young people went to the cities to study and adults to work.
However, the Russian attack turned the trend on its head. When people started fleeing from eastern and southern Ukraine to other parts of Ukraine, some migrants found a new home in the tiny village of Panchev. Before the war, the village had less than two thousand inhabitants, now clearly more.
Tetjana Bozko was born and lived all his life in Pančeve. She has a husband and four children. With the war, their peaceful life was hit hard.
At the beginning of the attack, the whole family moved to live in the basement of their detached house, fearing bomb attacks. Little by little, the fear subsided, and Bozko felt the need to contribute to the fight. Bozko called his friends through, and they started baking pies for the territorial defense soldiers.
Gradually, the activity expanded. Bozko founded the Pantchev volunteer organization, which began supplying long-lasting homemade food and dry food to the Ukrainian army.
In March of last year, an acquaintance called Bozko and asked if there was a place in the village where a refugee family from the Donetsk region could stay. Bozko and her husband have an old house that was empty at the time.
– There were no amenities in the house. Had to find a bed, linens and give people the most necessary things. We brought our own linens and pillows to the house.
According to Bozko, after the first family, a second, then a third arrived in the village. Then the bus radio started working.
“A humble and good-hearted group has come to our village”
Then Bozko received a call from a reporter in the nearest town, Kropyvnytskyi. His number was said to be circulating in migrant group chats. In the groups, it was said that the owner of the number helps accommodate migrants in the village of Pantševe.
Bozko initially tried to explain that he had been helping individual families and that they don’t have any real accommodation program. At the same time, however, he wanted to help refugees in need and told the reporter that his number can be passed on to those looking for a place to live.
– After that, I fell asleep. They kept calling me and asking if there was a place to stay and what the conditions in the village were like, Bozko recalls.
Now the villagers have renovated more than 50 houses in Pančeve. Bozko estimates that around five hundred migrants have passed through the village during the war. Some have moved on, some have settled in the village.
– Those who had money found a home in Kropyvnytskyi. But many had no savings. I feel that the most humble and good-hearted people have come to our village, who were in the greatest need.
“Central Ukraine is the heart of our country”
One of those left in the village is Volodymyr Sulyma. His family is from the Donetsk region, a village near the city of Druzhkivka. Bahmut is 30 kilometers away as the crow flies.
In March 2022, the shooting was so intense that Sulyma sent his wife and daughter on an evacuation train to Uzhhorod, a city on the western border of Ukraine. The rents raised by the war were too much for the Sulyma family who lived in the village, so they started looking for other solutions.
Sulyma got Tetjana Bozko’s phone number from her acquaintance and asked her about accommodation. Bozko immediately replied that the house will be found after Easter.
– So I packed my things in the car, went to Užhorod to pick up my family and we all drove to Pančeve.
Bozko had found a nearly hundred-year-old traditional Ukrainian house for the family. The house has three rooms, a kitchen and a storeroom. Water is fetched from the nearest well, the shower is outside summer and winter.
– The reception was very warm. The neighbors gave us part of their plot so we could grow vegetables.
Now the wife Larysa Sulyma working in the vegetable garden and a teenage daughter Sofia Sulyma studies at a distance school. Volodymyr Sulyma was allowed to continue working as an electrical engineering teacher remotely.
– I have always said that central Ukraine is the heart of our country. Although we have many big cities, Ukraine cannot do without villages and countryside, he reflects.
Although life in Pantševe is nice and resembles life in his home village, Volodymyr Sulyma misses home very much.
– If I didn’t have a daughter, I would go there right away. Children are children: when they go to the basement for shelter, they laugh. He, on the other hand, is worried about whether they will survive or not. This lottery game is mind boggling. I’m not afraid for myself, but for the children.
Raja met
The activity of the Pantseve volunteer organization has grown to a large extent in a year. It cooks food for the army, buys clothes and other necessary things for the refugees who have moved to the village, and builds playgrounds for the children. Most of the organization’s employees are refugees from Eastern Ukraine.
Tetjana Bozko says that it was not difficult to agree on the use of vacant houses with their owners. Everyone was happy to be able to help those affected by the war.
But now there are no more houses in the village that can be given to the migrants. However, Bozko has figured out that the dilapidated college dormitory in the middle of the village could be renovated.
– The walls of the building are in good condition. The house could easily become ten apartments for refugees, but the project requires large investments.
The construction company that Bozko has turned to has calculated the price of the contract at 600,000 euros. That’s an astronomical sum in a small Ukrainian village. However, that does not discourage the busy Bozko. He is still looking for a financier for the project.