"If I weren't Jewish, I would already be dead," 82-year-old Zhanna Butenko told me, bursting into tears. A few minutes earlier we had turned onto the street where she lives. Her neighbor's house had been completely destroyed and everything around us stood witness to the heavy fighting that had taken place there.
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We were standing in what used to be the back part of Zhanna's home in the town of Bucha which was right on the front line. It was destroyed almost completely in the heavy fighting that took place here between Ukrainian and Russian forces in late February 2022.
Video: Hanan Greenwood
According to Zhanna, who only had a few cats and dogs for company, and whose monthly pension amounted to approximately $100, she survived the nightmarish siege only thanks to the humanitarian aid she received from the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine.
One year after the invasion, I set out on a journey throughout Ukraine, a giant country 29 times the size of Israel. I and my associates – Israelis that were born or lived in Ukraine at some point – crossed dozens of checkpoints, encountered countless fighters, and met with people whose homes and souls were scarred by the war.
Before the war began, Ukraine's Jewish population comprised 200,000-400,000 people. After the invasion, around 30,000 fled to Israel and other various European countries.
And while Ukrainian authorities struggle to care for all of their citizens, Jewish communities of Chabad often come to the rescue with regular food parcels, generators, humanitarian equipment, and – no less important – mental and spiritual support. All this with the help of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, which is an umbrella organization of various communities in the country.
I landed at the Chisinau airport in Moldova late at night. Overnight – on Feb. 24 – the country became one of the main destinations for Ukrainian refugees. Even now, it continues to serve as an entry and exit point to Ukraine.
"As soon as the war started, we realized that it would also impact us," said Rabbi Menachem Mendel Axelrod, who runs the Chabad synagogue in Chisinau. "Already on the first Shabbat [after the invasion], several dozen Jewish refugees arrived, and later many more. It's hard to describe in words: a never-ending stream of buses. Hundreds and thousands of people arrived destitute, after fleeing in panic day and night. There was a tremendous shortage of places to stay in the city, there were no vacant beds, so we rented places for them outside the city. We set up an aid center with basic equipment, toothbrushes, and games for children. The Jewish refugees stayed in Moldova for about a week, and then continued, most of them to Israel."
We continued on, entering Ukraine through a border crossing near the city of Mohyliv-Podilskyi. Ukrainian officers asked many questions. I took out my phone to take a picture, but the Moldovan taxi driver knocked it out of my hand. "No photos," he warned. "It is too suspicious and might prevent us from crossing." Finally, the gate opened and we entered the land of war.
Roee, who accompanied me from Israel, gave me a big, thick coat. He met his wife in Israel, where he was born, but for the past 12 years, the couple has lived in Dnipro and have been members of the city's large Jewish community.
Q: Is it scary to be back here?
"As Israelis, we are used to this. But it is indeed dangerous here. A missile fell just 300 meters (yards) from my home. I heard the siren, went outside – and suddenly there was a huge explosion. I immediately took the children to the bathroom, because it has no windows, and is like a shelter."
Dnipro, which is located in southeastern Ukraine, is a significant war target for the Russian military. In mid-January, it bombed a nine-story residential building about a kilometer and a half away from where Roee lives. Dozens of civilians were killed, and some bodies could not be identified "because they were completely burned."
Our first destination is Vinnytsia. It is a fairly small – in Ukrainian terms – city of about 350,000 residents. Before the war, Vinnytsia was thought to have the best standard of living in Ukraine, although some of the residential buildings were constructed during the Soviet Union and the city's tramway was built in the 1950s.
"There are no air conditioners on the buses and the train, and the fares are collected by grandmothers who sit in the front of the vehicle," Roee explained.
We came across a checkpoint. "Take photos secretly, not openly," he warned me.
We arrived at a relatively wealthy-looking suburb where the Ohr-Avner Jewish school is located. The territory looked abandoned and was covered in snow, with the light off in every room except that of the principal's. I met with the head of the school – Yevgeny – and several Jewish refugees, including Moshe Baruch from Kharkiv and Aharon Zhegilo from Kherson.
Ever since the outbreak of the war, the school premises had been used both for teaching and housing refugees. The halls were filled with boxes of flour, rice, pasta, and other staples. Outside the building, there was a large generator donated by the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine to provide heat, especially in the frequent power outages in a country where in the winter, temperatures drop to as low as -15 °C (5°F).
"After the invasion began, we received refugees from Kyiv, Mariupol, Kherson, everywhere," Yevgeny said and Aharon added that at some point, "as many as 128 refugees lived here together."
Aharon, who, as mentioned above, fled from Kherson, described the early days of the war after his city was one of the first to be occupied.
"When the Russians came, they changed everything. There were no police, and crime increased everywhere. They would shoot near my house, shoot at civilian cars. Many residents tried to escape and failed."
Aharon said he only managed to flee a month after the invasion and rescued his mother, who stayed behind, only many months later – in December. She later moved to Germany, but Aharon himself was not allowed to leave Ukraine as he was within the conscription age. Currently, no man between the ages of 20 and 60 is allowed to leave the country.
Moshe, who as mentioned above is from Kharkiv, said, "My city was also bombed. It's hard to describe the feelings. The ground disappears from underneath you. Every ten seconds there was a missile, an unimaginable situation. The only thing you think of is how to save yourself."
The sun started to set and we set out again. The roads were completely dark, the street lights were off – mainly to save energy – and although the potholes could not be seen, they were definitely felt. We drove west, with the lights of a police car flashing in front of us from time to time, with dozens of military vehicles behind us in a never-ending convoy in the direction of the fighting. They moved in the dark as driving during the daytime could prompt a Russian missile strike.
We arrived in Khmelnytskyi, which has a small Chabad community, and were greeted by 28-year-old Yossi Teitelbaum, who has been a shaliach (emissary) here for five years. Yossi left Ukraine after the outbreak of the war but returned to the city that has about 350 Jews soon after.
"There is a certain similarity between the way missiles are experienced in Israel and what is happening in Ukraine," he said.
According to Yossi, Ukraine also has an app that shows when and where there is a siren and what the level of risk is. Moments before we arrived in Khmelnytskyi, such a siren went off and we learned that a Russian missile that had been launched from Belarus crossed into Ukraine.
Yossi said that just a week earlier a missile landed a short distance away from his home. "We hide from the missiles in the corridors, and the kindergarten that we run has a small shelter," he said.
I also met with Vitali Labskir, a 50-year-old journalist who works for an Israeli media outlet. He was born and has lived in Kharkiv his entire life, which got turned upside down when the Russian military launched its attack last year.
"I woke up at five in the morning to the sound of explosions. I immediately went to work at the studio, but then the municipality ordered us to evacuate because we were about to be bombed. Just as I got home, the bombings began. There was a terrible racket. Planes were dropping missiles all around. What I saw was horrific, two corpses next to me. I knew that I myself could die at any moment.
"When we stepped outside, there were still missiles and we were rescued while under fire. The bus driver who drove us calmly maneuvered between the addresses of the Jews. Russian planes circled above us, and suddenly a huge explosion was heard. They bombed some kind of sports center. On March 7, two days after we escaped, we celebrated my 50th birthday on mattresses, as refugees."
Vitali's wife and daughter are in Israel, while he stayed in Ukraine and wanted to enlist, but was told that the military had enough soldiers for now.
"I told them that I wanted to fight, to take revenge on those who destroyed my house, but they didn't need people my age yet."
Since escaping from Kharkiv, Vitali has been living in a room in Khmelnytskyi and has only seen his wife and daughter twice. The family home is no longer habitable as it was heavily damaged by a missile.
"A rocket exploded right in front of the building, and one of my neighbors was seriously injured. Huge shrapnel broke into my apartment, on the third floor, and shrapnel scratched the gas pipe in the kitchen. Fortunately, the apartment was not destroyed, but it suffered very heavy damage, and it needs to be renovated."
We continue to Berdychiv, a town that had a prominent Jewish community before the Holocaust and is today considered a pilgrimage site as Jews travel there to visit the burial place of the sage Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev.
During the drive, Roee's phone beeped and he told me that sirens were going off across all of Ukraine. At one point, our driver stopped, pointing to a destroyed building on the left. "There used to be a police station here."
The patriotism of the Ukrainian people is clearly felt, although there is also a less beautiful side of the picture: social media is full of hard-to-look-at videos of soldiers beating men in the street and dragging them to enlist, despite their opposition.
In some cases, the recruits are required to buy their own military equipment, including shoes, which is not great for morale.
In Berdychiv, we were met by Chabad shaliach Mendy Taler. Only 19 years old, he has been the sole emissary in the city that has 400 Jews, mostly elderly people. After the invasion, Mendy and his family fled to Israel, but he later returned by himself. A few days after our visit, a community member passed away and Mendy held the funeral and buried him himself.
Mendy also overlooks the burial place of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok. Before the war, "five or six busloads of tourists from Israel would come here every day, around 100,000 people a year. A large part of our income came from tourism and donations, and all of that is gone," he said.
Now, he is aided by the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine with food and funds.
"We provide food to the people here. Most of the community members are elderly and hardly leave their homes. A truck comes to us and unloads parcels with everything we need. Berdychiv is a small community that has always struggled to finance itself, and the few who still contributed fled the war."
Q: Have tourists from Israel also stopped coming?
"Every once in a while, Breslov Hassidim arrive. You have to be a little bit crazy about this to come to Ukraine at such a time."
We visited the local synagogue, which is 150 years old and was in the process of being renovated by the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine.
According to Mendy, "There are grave robbers looking for gold from the teeth of tens of thousands of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis in the pits outside the city. I got there once and saw the skull of a baby. It was one of the hardest sights of my life. A feeling of a punch in the stomach. Today the place is covered with concrete, so there are fewer robbers."
At the entrance to the Chabad house, 95-year-old Moishe Vanshelboim, a Berdichev native who survived the massacre, was waiting for us.
"I went with my father," he recalled. "They put us in a pit, and as soon as they started shooting, I jumped out and hid under a nearby harvester. A Ukrainian farmer hid me in his village for a year. Then I was caught again by the Nazis and sent to labor camps. At the end of World War I, worked for decades at flour mills in the region."
Moishe asked us for a donation and said he was going to the burial place of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok. "I pray there that the war will end, and that there will be no more war," he sighed.
On the outskirs of Kyiv, we are greeted by Sasha, a soldier. The Jewish Federation donates a lot of humanitarian equipment to the Ukrainian army, including non-Jewish fighters, which is why the army agreed that I interview some of them – a rare opportunity indeed.
Wearing his uniform, Sasha, who is 26 years old, got out of his vehicle, exchanged a few words with Roee and Valeriy, and asked us to follow him.
We got in, drove a short distance, and then stopped at a forest and continued on foot.
"I would like to show you something," Sasha said. Soon, we began to see the scope of the damage: there were destroyed trees everywhere and a giant pit – 15 meters (yards) deep – created by a Russian missile.
After a few minutes of inspecting the site, Sasha explained, "This used to be a training base in a beautiful forest. Not many fighters, mostly management and the like."
Two weeks after the invasion, after the Russian military overtook Bucha and Irpin, they attacked the base.
"It started with a massive shelling. The ground shook. About 500 Russian fighters, heavy artillery, tanks, and fighters of an elite unit, began to attack the place, where there were about 70 Ukrainian soldiers armed with rifles, pistols, and grenades, entrenched in bunkers and trenches. They tried to invade, but we returned fire, and they turned around and ran.
"We were 15 soldiers in the bunker, and the Russians attacked us from four directions, surrounded us with huge forces. Ten soldiers were killed in that attack, and the rest of us were captured.
"Around midnight they put us on trucks and took us to Belarus – and from there to Russia. They interrogated us. I don't want to go into detail, in order not to scare Ukrainians who might fall into the hands of the Russians in the future. It's hard to describe the terrible things we went through there. Let's just say I lost 15 kilos (33 pounds) during my 294 days in captivity."
Last month, Sasha and his fellow soldiers returned to Ukraine as part of a prisoner swap deal. They rejoined the military and are stationed at the very same base that they had protected and their fellow soldiers had died for.
As we stood in the forest, there was suddenly a deafening noise in the sky. A Ukrainian fighter jet emerged above us at breakneck speed, and Roee said that "alarms were going off in Kyiv right now." Suddenly there was a loud explosion – and smoke was seen in the air. The fighter jet apparently successfully intercepted a Russian missile right above us.
Yevgeny, a platoon leader, arrived in a military jeep.
"This was one of the last bases before Kyiv and thanks to the soldiers who were here, we managed to delay the invaders and the Russian military did not reach Kyiv. While our soldiers were delaying the Russians, the Ukrainian army managed to send necessary reinforcements to the area."
Turning to Sasha, I said that some people would say they were heroes.
"We did what we were supposed to do: to protect our country," he replied. "If we hadn't been here, Kyiv would have fallen like Bucha, perhaps even worse."
Q: Are you worried about a renewed invasion by President Vladimir Putin?
"Absolutely not. This time, we are even more prepared to fight. If Putin tries to come here again, his army will encounter a lot of surprises. We have no other option but to succeed. Glory to Ukraine!"
From Kyiv, we continued to Bucha and Irpin, a 35-minute ride. On the way, we saw a destroyed shopping center and a bombed bridge that has become a symbol of the war.
In the dark days of February and March of 2022, these streets were full of bodies of children, elderly, men, and women and shocked refugees hid under the ruins of the city in a desperate attempt to survive the Russian shelling.
Bucha and Irpin came to symbolize the unimaginable cruelty of the Russian occupation, with mass graves that were discovered there, as well as mutilated bodies in basements and dozens of civilians dead in the street with their hands and feet tied.
We stopped in front of a destroyed shopping mall in what used to be a prestigious neighborhood. The private homes were completely burned down and there were still abandoned luxury cars in the driveways. On the ground, I noticed three booster seats that somehow survived the fire and my body shuddered at the thought of what must have happened to the babies who sat in them before the war.
Renovations were already being conducted nearby, with the World Bank estimating that rebuilding Ukraine's economy would cost a whopping 600 million euros ($640 million), and seeing the destruction in Irpin one understands why.
We continued and at one of the junctions we were joined by Rafael, a senior official at the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, who was on his way to the neighborhoods most affected by the war to deliver food parcels, including to Zhanna.
What we saw on the way was hard to look at: not a single building remained standing and the road was scattered with ruins. We unloaded the equipment in front of what remained of Zhanna's home and went inside.
"I've lived here for six years. Not long ago I did a renovation, and then the war started," she said.
Zhanna's husband died about a year and a half earlier, and she was trying to survive on a monthly pension of 3,500 hryvnias, which, as mentioned above is about $100.
During the first days of the fighting, she said, a military doctor lived in her house, and she herself prepared food for the fighters and allowed them to sleep in her home. When the battle for Bucha began, Zhanna found herself in a nightmare: the Russians on one side of her home and the Ukrainians on the other, and her house became the frontline.
"I was right in the middle, some were shooting from here and some from there. Sometimes I sat in the basement and sometimes I lay on the floor, so as not to be killed. Everything was being bombed, there was shrapnel everywhere. The house next to me was hit directly and my neighbor was wounded in the leg. They took him to Germany for treatment, but he died there. I would constantly run out to escape the bombs with only water and toilet paper in my hands. But I had nowhere to run, I have no family, I have no one in the world, I am completely alone."
The Jewish Federation of Ukraine organized a donation for Zhanna so that she could rebuild her home and made sure to provide her with food.
"My father was not Jewish, and he used to tease me and my mother for being Jewish. Today I am very happy that I am Jewish, thanks to that I am alive."
Heads of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine Rabbi Meir Stambler explained that donations helped the organization reach out to many more in need.
"If before the war about 20% of our work was humanitarian, and we focused on building Jewish infrastructure in the country – today about 85% of the time we are busy saving lives," he said. "This started with the rescue of 40,000 people from the country, and today is manifested in the transfer of huge quantities of food and medicine through a major logistics center, and with financial assistance to the communities.
"No one trained us for these things. We are yeshiva students who suddenly found themselves coordinating with the Ukrainian army, getting potatoes, and making a decision to save people, who if we don't get to them might die. "Unfortunately, there were times when we didn't succeed. Our people arrived in the field and found out that there was no one left to save."
Already before the war, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the organization created a database for Jews in Ukraine, and this list helped them reach those in need after the invasion.
"We supply basic products to tens of thousands of addresses, and we have already distributed seven rounds so far," Stambler said. "As the war continues, the budget is starting to dwindle. But we operate warehouses and provide a lot of humanitarian equipment that helps save lives. As far as we are concerned, every Jew is part of our family, and that is what we will continue to do."
We arrived in Kyiv on Valentine's Day and saw residents in the streets carrying flowers. Life seemed normal, but it was not. The streets quickly turned dark and businesses closed at 09:30 p.m. to allow employees to get home by the 11:00 p.m. curfew.
The well-known Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) stood empty and dark and iron barriers against tanks were placed all over. The few tourists who dared visit posed for a selfie next to a large, illuminated sign that read "I love Kyiv." In the daytime, you could see a sea of small Ukrainian flags planted in the ground under the sign, in memory of fighters killed in the battles.
With Israel's Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky I met in the lobby of a nearby hotel. Since last May, the embassy has been operating only partially, but recently it was decided to return to full operation. Brodsky returned to Kyiv as an act of solidarity.
He explained that despite the war, there were still thousands of Israelis in Ukraine, some of them business people or tourists, and some with dual citizenships – Israeli and Ukrainian – who could not leave the country for fear they would be recruited into the military upon trying to cross the border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been asking Israel for military aid for months. Brodsky politely declined to comment on the matter, only explaining that "We have good answers for the Ukrainians, but it is not something that should be discussed publicly."
In the meantime, he is busy coordinating the vast humanitarian aid to Ukraine. "It's no secret that there is some disappointment that Israel is not supplying weapons, but all parties recognize interests and sensitivities. We need to take advantage of the areas in which we can act. We already do, but we can do even more," Brodsky said.
With regard to the country's Jewish citizens, he said, "The majority of the Jews stayed, either out of choice or because they cannot leave. It is a very difficult situation. There are also quite a few Jews who enlisted in the army, and unfortunately, there were several cases of Jewish and Israeli deaths at the front, which we had to deal with transferring their bodies to Israel."
After stepping outside, in the square in front of St. Sophia's Cathedral, an area that is filled with embassies and government offices, including the home of the president of Ukraine himself, we came across a difficult sight: among the magnificent churches and golden domes stood a line of tanks and armored vehicles that were heavily damaged or completely burned. One had been hit by a missile and another had been torn in two by a tank.
Ukraine's Culture and Information Policy Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko explained, "Although a year has passed since the invasion, we have been at war for many years. We are working on two fronts - war and work and peace. There is quite a bit of similarity with what is happening in Israel, and we also have the confrontation with Iran in common.
"I believe that cooperation between Ukraine and Israel is extremely important. We want to learn from your experience regarding security and technology. There are different ways to cooperate and prove that countries can unite against terrorism.
"Over 1,500 historical cultural buildings have been destroyed in the war so far, including about 600 heritage sites. There are quite a few empty synagogues in Ukraine, and I am interested in resuming activity in some of these magnificent buildings and saving them."
In the heart of a residential neighborhood in eastern Kyiv stands a renovated building that houses a Jewish school. There I met with Rabbi Mordechai Levenharts and his wife Devorah, Chabad emissaries who have been in the city for 20 years.
Before the outbreak of the war, they – and seven other families of emissaries – ran a community of thousands of members and a school with 400 students. Today, they are the only ones left to run the small Jewish community that remained. Their youngest son, Dovi (11), studies with only one other Jewish child in their class.
"On the day of the invasion, we heard tanks, and people were being shot here in the streets," Levenharts recalled. "We gathered about 100 people together on Shabbat and sat in the basement. There was tremendous pressure from Israel and Chabad to leave Ukraine. Every once in a while I would go upstairs from the basement, break down in tears, then come down and strengthen everyone."
A few days later, the couple and their children left Ukraine for Israel but later returned with most of their kids having stayed behind, with the understanding that they were what held the community together.
"We are well aware of the danger," Devorah said, "The latest Russian attack took place about a week ago. We already have a method to identify: if you hear a boom, it's an interception, but if the ground shakes – it's the fall of a missile.
"Every Shabbat we sleep here, in the office, with our passports and a small suitcase ready. It's clear that fear exists, and we don't bury our heads in the sand. Every day we give out 60 parcels of food to the soldiers – Jews or non-Jews, it doesn't matter. It's important to us to help everyone."
The Levenharts also introduced me to Avraham Chernousov. It's been many months since he fled Mariupol, which has seen some of the worst fighting and heaviest damage in the war, and has since been helping refugees fleeing to Kyiv.
"For two months I lived under the Russian occupation in Mariupol. The combat zone was inside the houses, next to me. I saw people dead, I buried dozens with my own hands," he recalled.
Before the invasion, Avraham served as a kashrut supervisor in two synagogues in Mariupol and continued his work even after.
"One day I walked to my mother's house, and suddenly the pro-Russian rebels started yelling at me, they just wanted to fight. They pushed the barrel of their gun into my stomach and demanded my passport. When I asked for it back, one of them punched me in the face four times. It happened on my birthday. That's how I celebrated 53."
According to the Levenharts, Chernousov is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and he acknowledged that coping was difficult psychologically.
"I buried quite a few people myself because there was no one else to take care of them and help. If I hadn't buried the bodies, they would have rotted on the side of the road. One day I saw a burnt mattress with a body on it that had lost its human image. Completely charred. When I touched it, it disintegrated. I dug the grave myself and buried it. It was a nightmare.
"I left Mariupol when the synagogues in the city stopped functioning, but my wife and daughter remained there. I fear for their fate, but my wife does not want to leave the city, because she is afraid to give up some apartments owned by her father who was killed. That is why it is difficult for me to be in Kyiv now and I am not stable. My mental state makes it very difficult for me."
Later in the evening, my team and I set off for Uman. Valeriy drove at breakneck speed to make sure we got to the city before the curfew began. The next morning we visited the grave site of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, a popular pilgrimage site. The closer we got, the more it seemed like we were approaching an ultra-Orthodox city, with signs changing from Ukrainian to Hebrew and Yiddish.
Quite a few Israelis and Jews still live in Uman and come from time to time to the grave site.
"Aren't you scared?" I asked one of them, and he replied, "Only from the news can you understand that there is a war. True, it was scary at first, because of the uncertainty, but in practice, nothing happens here. We see the pictures in the newspapers and on the internet, and we are not ignoring the war, but you can't live all the time with a feeling of anxiety".
We traveled further toward Moldova and came across a challenge. I was informed that crossing the border on foot was no longer an option (the policy was changed overnight), and since that is what I was planning to do, I had already let Valeriy go. Thankfully, I was offered a ride by an acquaintance of the taxi driver waiting for me on the other side of the border.
I got in and met Ruth, a master's degree medical student at Tel Aviv University, who had moved to Israel from Odesa six years ago.
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This was the third time that Ruth returned to Ukraine since the invasion. This time, she said, she was calmer. "When I was in Odesa last September, dozens of Russian drones attacked the city every day. The windows in the house were shaking, and it was scary. This time only a few drones invaded the city."
Her parents are pensioners whose apartment overlooks the city's famous port. When I asked if she was trying to convince them to make aliyah, she sighed, "I'm not even trying anymore."
We stayed quiet as the traffic neared the border, and in Moldova, Ruth and I parted ways.
My journalistic journey was over, but the war was not.
It's been a year since the Russian military set out to conquer Ukraine, destroying everything in its wake. A year since a certain superpower – a permanent member of the UN Security Council – violated international law and proved to be a brutal regime seeking to reshape the world order for its benefit.
And in that year, the Ukrainian military withstood the attacks by the pitiful mercenaries of the Wagner group, drunkard criminals who were freed from prison only to be sent to do the killings in Ukraine. It fought against the invaders and regained occupied territories and stood guard over democracy and freedom – as I documented with my own camera.
And if one thing is certain about the war in Ukraine it's that another year of death and destruction is simply not an option.
