“These villages don’t have banks, don’t have ATMs, often don’t have shops, and we provide all this.
Well before the war, Ukrposhta had already expanded beyond parcel delivery, turning its network of rural post offices into small community hubs where locals can buy canned goods, sunflower oil, and cookies and sweets at subsidized prices pay utility bills and, crucially, receive their monthly pension payments. Ī woman covers her ears from the sound of mortar fire as people line up to collect pensions from a postal delivery van in Mayaky, Ukraine, on May 6. Novyi Buh itself is around 37 miles from the front line.Ī woman covers her ears from the sound of mortar fire as people line up to collect pensions from a postal delivery van. “We’re the only state company that operates in these villages, and people wait for us,” explained Valentina Matkivska, the head of the post office in Novyi Buh, a town roughly 55 miles north of Mykolaiv and a departure point for Ukrposhta vehicles going near the front line. These workers help maintain a connection to villages in Ukrainian-held areas isolated by their proximity to fighting and regular shelling.
Shards of war logo drivers#
Tens of thousands of people lined up to buy stamps featuring a Ukrainian soldier giving a Russian warship the middle finger and a Ukrainian tractor towing a destroyed Russian tank.īut in the front-line villages of southern Ukraine, surrounded by sunflower and wheat fields, the brigades of women manning post offices and the drivers who keep them stocked have played a more subdued-but no less crucial-role in Ukraine’s war effort.
Beginning in the spring, Ukrposhta’s decision to print stamps celebrating Ukraine’s resistance against Russian troops proved to be a morale-boosting public relations hit. Ukrposhta processed some 502 metric tons of parcels sent from Ukraine to Poland in the first half of 2022 alone-up from just 34 metric tons total in all of 2021. Along with its privately owned competitor, Nova Poshta, the state-controlled company initially helped support Ukrainians evacuating the country. Nearly seven months into Russia’s invasion, Ukrposhta has become one of the most striking illustrations of Ukraine’s transformation to a wartime society.
“But what can you do? Just cross yourself and pray.”
Shards of war logo driver#
“We’re scared every day,” Oleksandr Adamtchuk, a 52-year-old Ukrposhta driver from Mykolaiv, told Foreign Policy. 29, the vehicles of Ukraine’s state postal service, Ukrposhta, have remained a rare familiar sight for locals exhausted by months of fighting. In this southern region, where Ukrainian troops kicked off a long-awaited counteroffensive toward the Ukrainian city of Kherson on Aug. MYKOLAIV OBLAST, Ukraine-As Ukraine’s military battles Russian troops in grinding firefights and artillery duels, unassuming white and yellow vans filled to the brim with parcels, food products, and bags of cash drive down the isolated and exposed roads closest to the front line.
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