Hours after the start of the Russian invasion, Sergei Kit received phone calls from members of the Ukrainian Association of the Blind at his factory in Dnipro.
Like everyone else in the country, visually impaired people in Ukraine were horrified when the invasion began. In their case, they had an 88-year-old association for visually impaired Ukrainians to turn to.
Keith is the director of a factory in the Dnieper that welds parts for railway tracks and was established in 1945 by the association, one of the oldest governing bodies in the country. The factory is non-profit, mainly managed and serviced by visually impaired people.
Keith’s factory is one of 48 owned by the organization in Ukrainian-controlled areas; another 32 companies are in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Sergei Kit, director of the Dnepropetrovsk Training and Production Enterprise of the Ukrainian Association for the Blind Photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind / The Guardian
“We were the first shelter to open in Ukraine on February 25,” Keith said. “Twenty-six of ours.” [association] members in Kharkov called me and asked me to help them leave. We said they could stay in the factory.
Kharkiv, 18 miles (30 km) from the Russian border, has been bombed by Russian forces since the first day of the invasion, while the Dnieper, in south-central Ukraine, has been relatively calm. Members of Kharkov went with their families to the Dnieper.
“We called and found mattresses for them and cleaned one of our offices,” Keith said. “But then the calls kept coming. We’ve never done anything like this before, but we couldn’t just stop. “
The plant houses about 90 people who fled the shelling. Many more have passed on their way to relatives elsewhere in Ukraine. Their former offices and basement are crammed with beds and bags of people’s belongings lined up nearby.
Anatoly Savelevich says he left his home near the front line because he could no longer stand the sound of artillery. Photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind / The Guardian
Although Keith initially sought to accommodate visually impaired people, they provided beds to neighbors and relatives of members of the association, people with other disabilities, and displaced people who arrived in the Dnieper nowhere else.
Anatoly Savelevich, a 71-year-old blind man from Slavyansk, a town in eastern Ukraine near the front line, said he left because he could not stand the sounds of artillery. He was evacuated by volunteers, but left his wife after she refused to leave.
“I’m still young enough to remarry,” Savelevich said with a laugh. “I didn’t see why we had to suffer any more, but she wanted to stay.”
He arrived at the factory in pain, the lasting effects of a heart attack he suffered last month. He said he had not eaten in 24 hours. The others, who were accommodated without visual impairments in his dormitory, gave him tea and biscuits.
Andrew Keith helps Anatoly Savelevich. Photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind / The Guardian
The son of director Andriy Kit, who is a factory manager and stand-up comedian, went out to buy Savelevich’s drugs. He refused to take Savelevich’s money.
Other visually impaired people came with their relatives as well as children.
“For blind people, their children are most worried because they do not see the danger,” said Andrew.
Andrew, who is not visually impaired, grew up with a blind and visually impaired father and mother in municipal housing for the visually impaired – a norm during the Soviet era.
“The councils ghettoized the visually impaired and kept them separate from the rest of society,” Andrew said. “There was even a city outside Moscow called the Blind City.
The factory stopped production when the war broke out, but its workers, Andriy said, were making their way to work on the bus.
“They know the route, sometimes they come in groups, but mostly alone,” said Andriy. “Our idea is to integrate visually impaired people with the rest of society so that people learn how to treat them and not be afraid of them.”
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The money became tight for Andiri and his father as the factory’s reserve funds dried up. They receive some donations from sponsors and have most of the food provided by local restaurants.
The city still charges them business fees, despite their registered refugee status, and the factory is down. In Ukraine, where the average salary of a civil servant is £ 300 a month, the cost of supporting so many people is huge.
People are preparing a bed for those who have arrived at the shelter. Photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind / The Guardian
“I do it because if I had to leave my home and go to another city, I hope there is another Andrew who is like me to help me,” Andrew said.
Sergei Keith said their motto had always been to be as independent as possible and that they had not accepted donations before the war. But now they are desperately looking for partners to restart the factory.
“We want to be independent, and to do that, we have to make money,” Keith said. “We are looking for partnerships.”
Most of the raw materials of the factory came from the now destroyed city of Mariupol, south of the Dnieper. Breaking logistics routes has made it extremely difficult to import goods into Ukraine, and suppliers are afraid to ship goods, Keith said. Even before the war, he added, they struggled with finances, while their handmade products struggled to compete with mass production.
“Our handmade parts last four years compared to the mass equivalents, which last about six months,” Keith said. “This is the job of our team, not me or some people, and we will not stop accommodating displaced people.”
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