“I need to be positive about the future and not complain about the situation and become an example for him. To move forward and never lose heart.”

Serdiukova, now World Vision’s security and access manager, fled the front-line city of Bakhmut, which has endured one of the longest and bloodiest battles since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022.

She now dedicates her life to helping her countrymen and women in need. To date, the charity has reached more than one million people in Ukraine, including internally displaced children and women, with basic needs, protection, education, mental health, cash assistance, shelter, and livelihood programs.

Her own story, both heartbreaking and inspiring, is a journey of rebuilding from scratch to volunteering, and ultimately finding purpose in serving those in need. In her hometown, she was head of the procurement department for a multinational company that manufactured plasterboard and gypsum compounds.

She recalls the early days of the war, when the city was filled with chaos and dread as residents emptied store shelves, while long lines formed at petrol stations. As the sound of artillery became louder, internet and mobile connections stopped working. Her 68-year-old mother refused to leave her flat.

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“I had begged her on my knees to leave the city for a week,” Serdiukova says. “Neither I nor my 27-year-old son with his wife could move out of the city without her.”

She recalled lying on the floor in the corridor of her two-room flat, trembling. While she hugged her son, a missile dropped 500 metres from the five-storey residential building where she had spent her whole life.

Last April, she packed a few belongings, including an album with old family photos, and her cat Berzelius (named after a famous Swiss chemist) and left her home town, for what turned out to be forever.

“My whole life, and the entire history of my family are captured in old, printed photographs. This album was particularly special to me since it contained all the old photographs left by my grandmother,” she says.

After finding a new home in Cherkasy, a city in central Ukraine, she learnt both the factory where she had worked for 15 years and her own apartment had been destroyed by missile attacks.

‘The hardest thing was to realise that you had lost your whole life: friends, and the place where you were born, where you grew up.’

Liudmyla Serdiukova, from World Vision

“The hardest thing was to realise that you had lost your whole life: friends, and the place where you were born, where you grew up, where your ancestors were born and raised. Their graves remain there,” she says.

Serdiukova volunteered for a year, delivering humanitarian aid and bringing hope to Ukrainians afflicted by the war, just as she was.

“What can you do personally in this situation? You can help people like you so that they do not lose themselves, and do not give up but try to find themselves and continue living,” she says.

“Life goes on. You are alive and healthy. You have a head, arms, and legs, so you can be of some use.”

The author travelled to Ukraine with assistance from World Vision Australia.

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