In the morning Zaporizhia belongs to the dogs.

They step out of all the houses into the green side streets of the south-eastern Ukrainian industrial city and sniff at their neighbors.

A short chat under white blooming trees, then the owners move on.

Zaporizhia was once planned as a socialist ideal city on the banks of the mighty Dnipro River.

Wildly growing green areas alternate between yellowed facades of the 1930s and meticulously tended flower beds and make the city appear like the realization of a utopia of the connection between man and nature.

"Almost like Mariupol," says Sascha Protjah, who found accommodation here after fleeing in a friend's ground floor apartment with a view of the lush greenery.

Alexander Haneke

Editor in Politics.

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Zaporizhia is only about 50 kilometers from the front and has become the focal point of aid to Mariupol, which was destroyed and almost completely occupied by the Russian military.

More than 115,000 refugees have arrived here so far, most recently the buses with the civilians rescued from the contested "Azovstal" area.

In Zaporizhia, the few aid supplies that get past the Russian checkpoints and into the occupied territories are sent out.

And here the countless volunteers who want to come to the aid of the people in the South and East have established a base.

Stay as close to home as possible

Sascha Protjah shot experimental documentaries in Mariupol up to the "second phase" of the war, as the Russian invasion that began on February 24 is called in Ukraine.

He made it out of town on one of the last trains, and he wasn't able to catch up with his mother until weeks later.

Sasha talks about the brief heyday that Mariupol had experienced in the last eight years.

At that time, the industrial city on the Azov Sea emerged from the shadow of its big sister, Donetsk, in which pro-Russian separatists had established their rule.

Artists, intellectuals and many others fled to Mariupol from the self-proclaimed “People's Republics”, making the city an exciting place for Sasha.

Now he has set up a hub for relief supplies in the apartment of his friend, who fled to western Ukraine before the approaching front, which his film team wants to collect and send on to Mariupol.

The near advances of the Russians do not deter Sascha.

He wants to stay here, as close to home as possible, and not be useless.

But once the material has arrived in Zaporizhia, the most difficult part is just beginning.

Anya Yegurtova and Yuriy Lushkavoy can tell you about the unimaginable courage it takes.

Anya, a young woman with huge dark sunglasses and full lips, grew up in a village near Donetsk.

She was 18 when Russian-backed separatists started the war in Donbass.

Anya later moved to Kyiv, but when the Russian invasion began in February, she realized she couldn't flee any further.