Kyiv charity head: ‘I can’t do anything to change the situation, to stop this war.’

About ten minutes into the call, he looks up and out through the window. “Jets”, he says after several moments, returning to the screen. “Russian jets just flew over my house.”

He makes a swift motion with his hand and manages half a smile, together with a bit of a shrug, a semi-raised eyebrow, and a downward glance. Enemy aircraft, bombing his city – the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. What do you say to that?

He carries on, telling me about how the Russians yesterday bombed Babyn Yar, then the connection cuts. It’s about 60 seconds since the jets passed. Did they kill the power? I hold. Nothing. I email. Finally, he replies. Yes, let’s recommence.

“Sorry, that was my mother calling from Kharkiv. The Russians just bombed next to her apartment. Now it has no windows. It’s cold, really cold, minus two. She’s 81. My father is 84. They can’t leave. The bomb was five minutes ago. She couldn’t hear me properly because of the shock of the bomb.”

He motions reverberations around his ears. Half a smile. Subtle shrug. Semi-raised eyebrow. Downward glance. What do you say to that?

I’m speaking to Aleksey Tolkachov, head of a Jewish charity in Kyiv. Others have left but he has stayed. His day-job is helping Jews there find work or set up in business. I suppose it’s the Ukrainian equivalent of Finchley’s Work Avenue.

We speak, interrupted, for 40 minutes. Unusually for a journalist, I find myself close to tears throughout (my family is Ukrainian). It’s likely I’d have cried, had I not been so angry.

“Aleksey, I’ve never lived in a warzone. Most of our readers won’t have, either. Can you describe it?” What a question. Your flat’s just been buzzed by fighter jets and your mother’s house has just been bombed – how do you feel? I know how I feel just asking it. But he’s gracious and pauses.

“It’s less a fear, more a paralysis. You can’t think, you can’t do anything. In your stomach, there’s a big stone. People don’t have a social fear, it’s an animal fear. They fear for their own life.

“For me, it’s the helplessness. I can’t do anything to change the situation, to stop this war. I am weak. I am powerless. I can’t physically evacuate my parents from Kharkiv because people are being shot by Russians while they drive their cars. I want to take a rocket and kill Putin, but I can’t. I can’t do anything.”

He says it goes to the core of what it is to be a man, of masculinity. “The man is protector. The woman is the heart of the family. The most awful feeling for a man is not being able to protect his children, his wife, his family.”

Yet, he is protecting people. “Me and my girlfriend took my Jewish bookkeeper and her husband to my house in the south of Kyiv. They are aged 70. I also took four elderly Jewish relatives, who now live with us.

In a few hours the shelling will start here. When it does, I don’t know what to do with these elderly people. I cannot protect them. I have no weapon. I tried to get a gun, but they ran out. So many people want to fight the Russians.”

Are there still escape routes?

“Some. But where should we go? For me, for younger people, it’s normal to take a car or train and go somewhere. But for an elderly person to leave their house, their room, their furniture, it’s catastrophic. I feel that Ukraine is very strong right now, but on a personal level, I feel weak.

“But, I found out, weakness can be overcome by helping people. I sat in Kyiv for the first two days asking myself, ‘what should I do, what could I do’.

“I couldn’t find any answer. Then I started to help get elderly people first to my house, then onto a train, to get them far away from Kyiv.

“People started calling me and asking me to help evacuate their parents from the city, so I did. And here, now, I am talking to you because we have electricity and internet. If it goes in the next few hours, I won’t know what to do next.”

Half a smile. Subtle shrug. Semi-raised eyebrow. Downward glance. What do you say to that? What do you say to that?