The bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine may seem to have subsided, but the conflict continues. This film meets people from the city of Dnipropetrovsk, which is just 200 kilometers from the war zone.

Julia Segeda, a successful lawyer, and her husband have turned their office in Dnepropetrovsk into a collection point for relief supplies. Each week, the couple goes to the front line to deliver them directly to army units fighting there. The escalation of fighting in the neighboring Donetsk region and the dire supply situation of the Ukrainian army motivated them to help.
The Segedas are just two of many volunteers nationwide who collect donations and provide food and medicine to refugees and the wounded. Some six thousand people have been killed in the war in eastern Ukraine to date, and 14,000 have been wounded. Despite the peace agreement signed in Minsk on 12 February 2015, the ceasefire is fragile.
Father Vasily is the pastor of an orthodox church in Dnipropetrovsk who volunteered as a military chaplain when the fighting first broke out. He sees big changes in the country and to the people: “The volunteer movement has given us a big boost… If ordinary people hadn’t supported it, who knows what our situation would be like today.”
Young mother Natalia Bornyakova and her children had to flee the Donetsk region. They are happy to be safe, now, but they still cannot forget their ordeal. Everyone wants peace and a better future for their children. But the tense situation in eastern Ukraine and their distrust of Russia allows them little respite. Irene Langemann’s film shows how the fighting still colors everything in Dnipropetrovsk and how much it has changed the way people there think.

Produced by Wolfgang Bergmann for Deutsche Welle TV