In Ukraine, Russian troops are moving closer to the city of Pokrovsk every day and devastating the surrounding communities. Under constant fire from this approaching line of fire, thousands of civilians, some already displaced from towns and villages further east, are forced to flee. However, there are those who are making the opposite journey and braving all dangers to return to their place of residence, like Sasha, a beekeeper ready to do anything to save his bees.
From our special correspondent in Myrnohrad,
Amidst dozens of hives on the edge of a sunflower field, Sasha is proud of all the species of bees he has been cultivating for almost 20 years. This one is a young bee, it is just coming out, these are its first days of life and its first flight.marvels this passionate beekeeper.. She must fly to find out where her home is and remember everything. And every day she will fly further and further. “.
But this is not where this bee, like the thousands of others – 60,000 per hive, Sasha confides – will continue to forage, because the front line is only a few kilometers away. Not far from Myrnohrad, under constant Russian fire, the population continues to evacuate every day.
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A feeling of waste and nostalgia for Sasha and her bees
Sasha had fled to the Carpathians six months ago when the Russians bombed his house. But he has returned to harvest his honey and evacuate his hives to a safer place. A dangerous task, which he undertakes with full awareness: “ The front line is really not far, you can hear everything from here. It is dangerous to spend the night on the site, you can’t protect the bees and you simply can’t stay there ” explains the beekeeper.
Sasha knows that he is probably harvesting his last honey here, a sense of waste caused by the war and nostalgia after years spent here in peace: ” We made our own breakfast, we had little stools, a wood stove and a gas stove. We drank tea, everything was there, we had fun here. There were always people, guests, children. It was paradise, there were people… Now we are just two retirees! “, Sasha regrets.
Since our meeting, Sasha has managed to evacuate his bees to the neighbouring region of Dnipropetrovsk, where he too has taken shelter – relatively speaking – from Russian bombs, which are currently less numerous in this region.