Natalia is 40 years old. She is the voice of Leleka`s Ukrainian team. She is a mother of two daughters and a former head of an advertising department at a large company in Luhansk. She has lived in Kyiv since 2014.

“I was pregnant at the time. We thought we were leaving for a short while — that we would return home and live a happy life,” she recalls.

She remembers life in Luhansk with warmth: her work, her close circle of friends, the feeling of home. But despite having to start from scratch, Natalia has no doubt: the decision to leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory was the right one.

“It was the hardest choice of my life. And it was the right one. I am so glad that my daughters know exactly what it means to have a homeland.”

Family is Natalia’s anchor — especially her parents, who also left their home to be close to her and support her in this new life. 

Finding her place

After the full-scale invasion began, Natalia looked for ways to be useful. She visited wounded soldiers in hospital with her daughters. She donated blood. When she was offered a position at Leleka, she didn’t hesitate for a second.

“It was my dream — to be connected to the army. Someone close to me is serving.”

Natalia’s daily work involves communicating with military personnel and everything that comes with it: assessing a medic’s qualification level, understanding the situation in a unit’s medical service, preparing stacks of documents, tracking reports. And simply — listening.

“When a soldier doesn’t pick up a package and doesn’t respond, we try to reach his fellow soldiers from the same unit. Sometimes there’s no signal at the position. Sometimes he’s wounded and in hospital. The worst is when we didn’t make it in time — the person died. That always hurts,” she says.

Natalia doesn’t hide how emotionally demanding the work is. Every day she hears deeply personal stories without filters: about the front line, wounds, losses, pain, exhaustion, the shortage of people.

“You become a little hardened somewhere inside. But I remind myself that our team is simply doing what we can, in the circumstances we have.”

What keeps her going

What keeps her going are the stories where help arrives on time and saves someone’s life — or, more plainly, someone’s leg. Her phone is full of these messages, and she can’t bring herself to delete them.

“It may sound strange, but in today’s circumstances, a photo of an amputated limb with the caption ‘Today you saved a life’ can actually lift your spirits. Someone’s bleeding was stopped, they were warmed with a thermal blanket, carried out on a stretcher, evacuated against all odds — and then you understand that none of it was in vain.”

Natalia says working at Leleka has taught her to hear and understand people better. She talks about her work often with her daughters — so they know what price is paid for every single day, here in the rear.

“Being with the Leleka team right now is simply a gift from God. I am truly proud of what I do. I don’t just feel like I’m in the right place — I feel like I’m exactly where I always wanted to be.”