On a sunny Easter Sunday morning in Kyiv, the first warm day in weeks, two middle-aged men are sorting their handful of belongings in a secluded part of the city’s Solomyanskyy Park. Oleh and Misha are homeless and have been living in a dugout here for a week. They moved here together after the metro at Kyiv’s central railway station, where they had been living, resumed operation. Misha, who is originally from the western Zakarpattya region, once helped install the park’s central fountain – which is how he knew about their new temporary home.
Oleh, 58, from the Vinnytsia region, is a handyman without a job or a place to live. The Russian invasion found him in Stoyanka, a village close to the E40 highway, leading west out of the city. He and another 16 people were living in a ‘religious rehabilitation centre’, where homeless people worked in exchange for a roof over their head and three meals a day.
“I was lying on a sofa; it was around noon. A missile hit our building, and a piece of wall fell on my legs. Some men helped me get out, I got off lightly, with just a pinched nerve in my knee,” he said.
