There are things you must never do, 
not by day nor by night 
not by sea nor by shore: 
for example WAR.
Gianni Rodari


I thought of these words four years ago, on the 24th of February 2022. 
To this day, war exists. 
Unlocking your phone is enough: news of new frontlines, escalations, missiles, drones. A continuous quantity of violence that seems to overtake the world. Then you lock it again, and remember that in some places war is not a piece of news: it’s daily life. And just like that you find yourself in the centre of Mykolaïv, walking by open shops and people chatting amongst themselves. Then the syren rings out and the store’s clerks make you exit immediately. 

Operation Dove volunteers arrived in Ukraine in March 2022. They lived the first few weeks in a refugee reception center in Lviv and helped prepare some caravans with Stop TheWarNow to evacuate people in difficulty from frontline areas.

They then moved to Mykolaiv, a city under shelling 140 km from Odessa.

They live and work in a reception centre, also engaged in the distribution of aid in the villages near the front.

Since the front moved to Kherson, 40 km away, trips have been made every ten days and brief presences in the city to support the civilian.