The surprising front line job – being a postman in Ukraine

On a recent autumn afternoon outside Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, Zeinada Alexander stood in front of her boarded up house, thanking the heavens for the Ukrainian postal service.

A 72-year-old pensioner who walked with a cane and moved with difficulty, Ms Alexander had remained in her home as the war and Russian artillery crept closer. As the young people left and services stopped working, it had felt as though the world was receding. There was no gas in the pipes any more, no internet, and the water main outside her yard had ruptured.

That morning she had been woken by nearby explosions. “I was shaking, the dog was howling,” she said.

But the arrival of the postal van cheered her.

“Thank god for the post, they’re even bringing it under shelling, they’re heroes,” said Ms Alexander, as she received her pension, counted out to the last hryvnia coin.

Some 3.5 million Ukrainian retirees receive their pension delivered in cash at home, and those living near frontlines like Ms Alexander have come to depend on Ukraine’s postal service Ukrposhta when all other services went dark. In towns where the shops have closed and most people have left, the postal service may be the last link to the outside world for those left behind.

But postal delivery workers like Olga Simonenka, a no-nonsense type delivering Ms Alexander’s pension, snort at the idea of being called a hero.

“Normalno,” she said. “It’s fine.”

In their yellow and white Citroën Berlingo, Ms Simonenka and her driver Dmitri Deli ply the rutted roads around Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, skirting shifting frontlines to deliver post, medicine, groceries and pensions. That morning they had passed through fields of drying sunflowers, hedgerows concealing freshly dug trenches and checkpoints manned by suspicious guards to reach this settlement outside Bakhmut.

The day had been peaceful, though not all runs passed so smoothly. “In June we were under shelling, we were running late and it saved our lives,” Ms Simonenka said. “But at times like these, everyone just needs to do their job.”

Her driver, Dmitri Deli, concurred. “Even if there’s heavy shelling we need to go there to give their pensions. No one else is taking care of the old people. If we don’t bring them pensions, no one will look after them.”

Ms Alexander for one had begun to fear what might happen were the post to stop arriving. “Recently the post office in Bakhmut called, they said they were sorry but they couldn’t come because of the shelling, I was afraid for my pension,” she said.

Since the summer, the main focus of the Russian advance has been towards Bakhmut, a city with a pre-war population of 72,000 in the Donetsk region. Drawing upon mercenaries from the notorious Wagner group, Russia has made creeping headway, until intensive shelling forced the closure of the post office.

For now deliveries are being made from the nearby city of Kramatorsk, though even there the war is never far away.

At Kramatorsk’s central post office, the sidewalk is still littered with shattered glass from windows that were blown out by nearby missile strikes. Inside, bookish postmaster Constantine Chepyzubov said he never imagined his job could be a frontline role.

“But no matter what happens, I’m still coming to work,” he said.

Half his staff have left though, along with most of the city’s pre-war inhabitants, but the post office was busier than ever, with a throng of pensioners queueing up to receive their benefits in person.

“We are offering a lot of services right now,” Mr Chepyzubov said, explaining how with stores and most banks closed, the branch was receiving utility and bill payments, selling phone credit and delivering subsidised food staples and heaters ahead of the looming winter.

And with encroaching frontlines closing other branches, Mr Chepyzubov said his staff were constantly taking on new delivery routes. The only place Ukrposhta won’t deliver to, he explained, is Russian-controlled territory.

“We do not work with roubles, traitors and occupiers," Ukrposhta said in a statement in June, explaining why it could not continue working in the occupied Kherson region.

But when the Ukrainian military liberated territories – like the large swathes of Kharkiv and Donetsk they recently “de-occupied” – postal workers were among the first civil servants to return.

Last Wednesday, hundreds of residents received their pensions and humanitarian aid when Ukrposhta resumed work in the newly freed towns of Lyman, Sviatohirsk and Yarova.

“It’s an honour and a responsibility to be the first to resume work there after our armed forces and emergency services,” Igor Smelyansky, Ukrposhta chief executive, said on his Telegram channel.

Back on Ms Simonenka’s delivery route, an eldery couple who gave their names as Olga and Nikolai walked out with matching canes when her van pulled up at a tiny hamlet at a dead end road.

“There are no buses here so we are very grateful that they bring the pension to our home,” said Nikolai.  “There was a rumour they would stop and we were very worried.”

As the van pulled away a distant barrage of outgoing artillery set the dogs barking. Ms Simonnka and Mr Deli still had more villages to serve.