As dawn broke, Ganna Fesenko donned her flak jacket and clambered into her armoured van. And so begins another normal day for the postwoman doing her rounds in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Fesenko works for Ukraine’s postal service and admitted she still gets scared even after two years of delivering to frontline towns and villages.
“Every time I go, I’m very aware that I might not come back,” Fesenko told AFP.
That was the case late last month when a postwoman was killed by a drone in the Kharkiv region where Russian forces launched a surprise offensive.
Since the Kremlin launched its attack in February 2022, four Ukrposhta employees have been killed and four injured on duty.
Fesenko accepts the risk because she believes her work in her native industrial region of Donetsk — devastated by brutal warfare — is vital.
Fasenko doesn’t just deliver letters and parcels. She also brings precious pension and social payments, medicines and groceries.
“Someone has to do it. People are waiting for us,” the 39-year-old said. “In frontline towns, they’re left behind.”
At the first stop of the day, around a dozen elderly locals rushed towards the van as it pulled up to the central square in the village of Novoselydivka.
“We waited and waited for you!” one woman told Fesenko.
“But we’re not late,” she replied with a smile before setting out newspapers, coffee, pasta and biscuits for people to buy.
The pensioners exchanged jokes and news with Fasenko. She is sometimes greeted as a saviour and sometimes as a punching bag for their foul tempers.
They have no one else to vent to, she explained, conceding that in these moments she wants to “leave everything”.
Her work offers a window into the mental state of Donetsk residents drained by more than two years of conflict.
In the queue, Anastasia Kerelova said the war had “broken” village life. Its post office is closed, so Fasenko’s monthly visit is a must.
Russian forces “shoot every single day. It’s unbearable. I’m so tired of it,” the 86-year-old sobbed.
Kerelova still rides around the village on a blue bicycle, which she jokingly calls her “taxi”. But others are not as mobile and so Fesenko stops at their homes.
Olga was waiting outside hers on a chair when Fasenko arrived.
“Where am I going to go?” the 74-year-old with severe mobility problems said, when asked if receiving the postwoman’s grocery deliveries was more convenient than trekking to the shop herself.
In her deserted village, there was nobody to offer her lifts, making day-to-day tasks like grocery shopping next to impossible.
“People are in a desperate situation,” Fesenko said.
She recounted how one elderly woman with disabilities in Ocheretyne — a town now captured by Russia — lived for six months in a cellar without leaving once.
“We went down to the basement and delivered her pension. Where would she go? What ATM or at what bank would she be able to get to?” Fesenko said.
She said she empathised with people who refused to flee.
“I understand these people most of all, because I myself have lost everything,” she said.
Fasenko left her whole life behind in November 2022 when she fled her hometown of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia six months later. It now lies in ruins after months of devastating fighting.
“It’s hard. Every house is for someone the whole world,” she said.
Fasenko said the people she meets on her rounds can be fatalistic.
“We don’t know if we will meet you again or not,” sometimes people tell her.
“I always tell everyone that I believe in them and we will meet again,” she said.
That is a promise she is not always able to keep. She said she brought a pension payment recently to someone who was killed in shelling the very next day.
When rockets smash near her vehicle, she sometimes wonders whether she will be next. She said she had considered giving up the job she has been doing for 17 years.
Ukrposhta’s regional director Maksym Sutkovy said other frontline postal workers had wanted to quit.
In such cases, the company offers them jobs in the relative safety of western Ukraine.
For now, Fesenko is holding firm.
“I love the job. I love the people. No matter how hard it is sometimes,” she said.
Without that approach, it’s impossible to work here,” she said.