Elena drives towards the bombs every week.

It is 140 kilometers from her hometown of Odessa to the frontline town of Mykolayiv.

While hardly anyone in Odessa is responding to the air raid alarm, Mykolaiv is repeatedly shaken by explosions.

Nevertheless, Elena is not afraid, neither of the Russian missiles nor of the cluster munitions.

She was a strong woman before the war and has remained so.

"It's just my nature." She laughs.

Melanie Muehl

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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A flat landscape passes by, fields, meadows, not a cloud in the sky.

The rapeseed is blooming.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" she says.

Sugar, cabbage, sunflower oil, eggs, onions, potatoes and herbs pile up to the roof in their silver Honda.

Early in the morning, the butcher had just opened, she bought seventy kilograms of meat and stowed it on the back seat.

Potatoes alone do not strengthen, especially not a soldier.

As a church appears in the distance, Elena takes one hand off the wheel and crosses herself.

She drives slower now.

A rocket hit the street in the first days of the war.

There is still a gaping hole in the poorly repaired asphalt.

Elena, in her fifties and born in Kazakhstan, belongs to a huge Ukrainian power in the background.

To the countless volunteers supporting the war machine.

People like Elena make big things happen on a small scale, without them the war in Ukraine might already be lost.

Once, when Elena looked at her overloaded car, when she realized how much food for Mykolayiv had been collected from neighbors, friends and through social networks, she cried with joy.

Patriotism brings people together.

Elena believes in defeating Putin

Elena says, "I was a great patriot before the war, now I'm an even greater one." That laughter again, warm and full of confidence.

She believes her country is defeating Putin's army.

Soon.

A tattoo has adorned her left forearm for a few years. It is a trident, the coat of arms of Ukraine, with a red flower above it.

Elena used to often travel to Europe on vacation, but as a Russian-speaking Ukrainian Elena was tired of having to constantly clarify: I'm not Russian.

The tattoo should now speak for her.

A few trucks thunder across the street, probably they too are transporting relief supplies for the embattled region, otherwise there is little traffic.

Mykolayiv, the center of Ukrainian shipbuilding, where two rivers meet and 475,000 people lived before the war, is Odessa's rampart.

A fortress that the Russian army must storm in order to advance to Odessa.

Mykolaiv and Odessa are linked by fate.

In Odessa they say: If Mykolaiv falls, Odessa falls too.

When Russia's army attacked Ukraine on February 24, Elena was with her sister in Lviv.

They had just been laughing, drinking coffee and talking for a long time, and suddenly war broke out.

Up until the moment the air raid alarm woke her up, Elena was convinced that despite the Russian troop deployment at the border, Putin was only bluffing, spreading fear without taking any action.

"Why do they hate us so much?" Elena asks.

She knows she will never get an answer to that.

On February 25, Elena hastily packed her things, shocked by the invasion, and took the first train to Odessa.

She wanted to be at home, with her husband and close to her older daughter and grandchildren, even though Odessa was far from a safe place.

Nevertheless, when she arrived in Odessa, she immediately felt better,

full of energy.

Had the war paralyzed them, that too would have been a small victory for the enemy.