Yevgen, the “caretaker” of Kiev who guards empty homes

Yevgen Yelpitiforov gather 19 units of keys in his pockets, for the reason that starting of the Russian invasion in opposition to Ukraine, he started to maintain the homes and flats of his buddies who fled the battle.

On the wheel of an previous blue automobile, Yevgen often passes by the streets of Irpin and Buchaon the outskirts of Kiev, to watch their “property”.

Russian forces withdrew from the area on the finish of March, after an occupation that was notably harmful. Quickly after that, his providers started to be sought.

“A lot of my buddies who left requested me to return and see if their homes had been intact, if the home windows and doorways had been nonetheless in place,” says the 37-year-old, with a blond goatee and a chic smile.

Then, began receiving units of keys, generally by mail, different instances by neighbors. In some circumstances they thanked him with espresso or chocolate.

Jevgen often visits the properties beneath his care and he does it voluntarily.

On his rounds, he waters flowers, empties fridges, generally delivers objects to homeowners, and different instances merely flip the lights on and off “to indicate somebody it is there” and scare off thieves.

Those that dare to return discover a welcome present ready by Yevgen. Generally a bunch of flowers or some cherries to make them really feel “blissful”, says the younger man who makes a dwelling as a gardener.

“If I had been of their place, they might assist me,” he says.

In his story he says that the worst is the odor of rotting meals who spent weeks in fridges that didn’t work resulting from energy cuts.

Yevgen even has a Soviet gasoline masks, which he makes use of particularly combined operations.

Even after cleansing, there are occasions when it’s a must to return to ventilate, as “there are smells that stay for per week or two”.

In Bucha, the neighboring suburb of Irpin that has turn out to be an emblem of crimes committed during the Russian occupation, parks the automobile in entrance of a gaggle of beautiful new buildings, however wounded by struggle. None have glass within the home windows. Everybody exploded.

The stays of a smashed automobile are discovered within the car parking zone.

Yevgen wastes no time. He must water some crops in a small house of some buddies. Within the nation, there are virtually no remnants of the battle, apart from a message on a wall left by the Russian military: “Sorry for breaking the door.”

However Yevgen is just not the one one, Oleksandr FurmanThe 31-year-old additionally devoted himself to this activity in April.

Earlier than the struggle he made a dwelling as double television and after the conquest he devoted in the future per week to coping with six flats in Kiev who had been deserted by their buddies.

What has been your most uncommon mission on this interval? Disguise in inconspicuous locations intercourse toys that his ex-girlfriend and new associate had been deserted in his home shortly earlier than the beginning of the invasion, within the early hours of February 24.

“She mentioned, ‘I am unable to ask mother to try this,'” he remembers with amusing, noting that he first washed them after which hid them.

Then the dialog takes a extra critical course.

“I used to be fortunate. They did not shoot me. The rockets did not fall close to me,” says this younger man for whom it’s a “responsibility” to assist others.

In Irpin, Yevgen enters a constructing that’s intact. there’s subsequent to it a college that misplaced its roof within the bombings. In a duplex, he movies the homeowners’ crops along with his telephone.

After going outdoors, he stops in entrance of a home of which there’s nothing left the burnt partitions. As the employees work to rebuild the roof, the younger man appears to be like at a cedar tree badly broken by the flames.

“It makes me consider the Ukrainian folks,” he mused. “On one facet it’s burnt, on the opposite facet there’s the power to proceed rising and be inexperienced once more,” he says.

Ania Tsoukanova, AFP

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