With a sore heart, Ukraine has recently crossed a terrible mark – 1000 days of full-scale russian aggression. A thousand days of another, far from being the first in history, the russian-Ukrainian war, which this time has been going on for more than a decade.

As a nation, Ukrainians have gone through many challenging weeks, months, and years, but for each of us, it is much more important to know how much time is left until Victory! The Victory of justice and goodness, truth and light. 

Although there is nothing more terrible in this world than war, there is also much beauty in such turbulent times. Because war seems to remove the skin from a person, exposing his or her true essence. And a person faces the war – on the one hand, defenseless and weak, on the other hand, defenseless and strong!

This is exactly what our today's heroine, Energoatom employee and volunteer of the NGO “Guardians of Light”, Iryna Boyaryn, is – both incredibly weak and surprisingly strong.

A frail girl and mother of a son, she faced the war with a painful sense of fear, devastation, and hopelessness. But when she got into occupation near Kyiv, she realized that she would always be with Ukraine and in Ukraine. And that she should not wait for victory, but bring it closer as soon as she can, that she should be resilient, strong, and persistent to help liberate her native land and eventually build the state of her dreams – a truly independent, powerful, just Ukraine! And most importantly, to do everything so that her son would never know what war is again!

Before the full-scale invasion, Iryna Boyaryn had a wonderful life: she raised her son, worked for Energoatom, played sports, made plans, dreamed, and achieved.

“I used to live the life of a person who did not know what war was,” says our heroine, ”a person who always had plans for three to five years in advance, knew how to develop, what to study, what to try, where to go. And I could never even imagine that our usual peaceful life could be taken away from my family, the whole country, and me.

Now I am very ashamed of the fact that in 2014, when this war started in eastern Ukraine, it did not affect me personally. Yes, I have always been a patriot because my parents raised me that way, and I always donated, but the anti-terrorist operation and later the joint forces operation were something far away for me. I did not fully understand what was happening, and it was a big mistake. But now I am trying to correct my mistake by my actions.”

...When Iryna learned about the full-scale invasion, she immediately tried to contact her parents, who live near Bucha.

“At that moment, I felt fear and complete hopelessness,” she says. ”I woke up my child and dialed my parents, but there was no connection. Probably, a huge number of people were trying to call their relatives at the same time, so the connection was simply “dropping”. I was very worried, so I gathered the necessities for myself and my son and rushed to my family.”

For seven days, the whole family lived without electricity, heat, water, and communication, and then they managed to evacuate. It was then that Iryna decided that she would stay with and in Ukraine until the end.

She explains: “My grandmother always repeated the same phrase at every family gathering: “Anything rather than a war”. We did not understand her and assured her that this could not happen in the modern world. It turned out that it could. So now I have a goal – to help with concrete actions, not words, and to contribute to our long-awaited Victory.” 

After getting her son to safety, Iryna returned to Kyiv and continued to work at Energoatom and help her family and friends who had defended the country. A short time later, she joined the Guardians of Light team, where she focused mainly on providing defenders with much-needed vehicles.

“For me, volunteering is the voice of my heart,” says Iryna Boyaryn. ”Even when I'm very tired, sick, or traveling somewhere, I still stay in touch. Because I always have to solve some issues and problems, and there are always a lot of them with the delivery of cars. But it does not bother me, because I know exactly why I am doing everything – for the sake of our Victory! And these are not just words, because we all have to join the common fight against the enemy, to become truly one, and then no aggressor will defeat us, and our children and future generations of Ukrainians will not know what war is.” 

Our heroine admits that nowadays she is as happy as the results of her volunteer work:

“The area I am responsible for has a long process of implementation: finding a car, registration, transportation to Ukraine, and approval by the military. But when we deliver vehicles to our heroes, I am incredibly happy at such moments. Every time I am happy –  this is another small step towards the future Victory.”

However, there are also situations in the volunteers' work that make them sad. First, it is the painful news of the deaths of defenders, as well as the inability to help everyone who needs it.

“I can't forget the story of 'my' second car, which I managed to find for the military,” Iryna admits. ”It was a Honda jeep that I was to give to a defender from the South Ukraine NPP. He was very pleasant to talk to and lived almost exclusively for the war; it had become so commonplace for him. He asked me quite seriously if I could bring this car to Pokrovsk, as he was unable to come to pick it up in person. I think he was so accustomed to constant danger that he just did not think about how dangerous it could be for a girl. He also probably really wanted to see someone from civilian life. To be honest, I was ready to drive the car myself, but my family and military friends talked me out. Therefore, we found volunteers to help deliver the jeep. Through messaging, we agreed on when the SUNPP warrior would be able to document the vehicle. But two days after that, I found out that he was killed. It was very painful.

It also saddens me that I am not able to help everyone who asks for help. It's impossible to be everywhere, but I really want to...”

The current realities in which wounded Ukraine lives and fights are very painful for Iryna. She says she now fully realizes that in the frozen trenches of the Donetsk region and the burning steppes of the Kherson region, in Kharkiv and Sumy regions, under shells, hailstones, guided air bombs, etc., Ukrainian defenders are fighting not just for their right to live. It is about the existence of the Ukrainian nation and Ukraine as a state. But it is thanks to these steely people, real titans of flesh and blood, that the volunteer is sure we will win this war.

“Hold on, our Heroes,” she says to all the country's defenders. ”Because you are our strength. It is only owing to you that Ukraine still exists. It is thanks to you we can live, and our children have the opportunity to go to kindergartens, schools, and universities. For them, you are Ukrainian Superheroes, thanks to whom this horror should end soon. I am extremely grateful to each one of you! I want the enemy to be driven out of the Ukrainian land as soon as possible, and all the defenders to return to their families.” 

As for those in the rear, Iryna Boyaryn asks them to continue to live their lives to the fullest, but not to forget that the country is still at war. She calls for donations to help those who hold our frontline.

“Each of us can do something for this,” the heroine is convinced. ”More or less, big or small, but we can. Someone can donate, someone can find and send something necessary, and someone can write postcards with their children and send them to the military... All this brings the Victory closer!”