{"id":4921,"date":"2025-03-31T23:58:26","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T20:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uanimals.org\/media\/?p=4921"},"modified":"2025-04-11T11:18:44","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T08:18:44","slug":"stories-from-the-winners-of-the-animal-protection-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uanimals.org\/media\/en\/interviu-en\/stories-from-the-winners-of-the-animal-protection-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Stories of (Un)Caring from the Winners of the Animal Protection Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The grumpy hen Baba Zina, the dogs Romka and Hraf, Mike and Gina, the pig Dusia, and the goat Marta live in shelters or with families across Ukraine. Most likely, these, and thousands of others, animals would not have survived if they hadn’t been taken in, evacuated, or treated in time by the people honored by UAnimals at the <\/span>Animal Protection Award<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These people experience every layer of society\u2019s attitude toward animals on a daily basis. They know how often indifference is intertwined with compassion in the story of an animal.<\/span><\/p>\n

We asked them about the moments that left the strongest impressions on them, and here\u2019s what they\u2019ve told us.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo one expected he would survive\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n

Anastasiia Klimniuk, the founder and the head of Animal House Rescue NGO<\/b><\/p>\n

Kharkiv\/Poltava region<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]This memory is from February 26, 2022. Animal food was hard to come by in Kharkiv. You couldn\u2019t buy natural food, and all pet stores were closed. A warehouse with pet supplies opened in a garage. We were in a queue for dog food with 60 other people. It was a moment I\u2019ll never forget. A man approached us with a cat in a carrier. His house had been destroyed, his wife had evacuated. He decided to go defend the country and had nowhere to leave the cat. He asked the people if anyone could take the cat in. No one responded. My husband and I exchanged glances and almost instantly decided to take the cat. That\u2019s how we started taking in animals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later, we found out that the cat belonged to that man\u2019s son. He and his wife had just had a baby, who was just two weeks old when the war began. So they decided to leave the cat with the grandparents for a month. When the man came to that line, the young parents were under russian occupation. Later, I received a message from them asking, \u201cDo you still have our cat by any chance?\u201d<\/em> They sent me a photo of him as a kitten. So when we took him in, he was still very young. In 2022, the cat returned to his family.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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A cat temporarily taken in by Anastasiia and her husband<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Hraf, the dog Anastasiia treated and found a family for\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]There are examples of very caring attitudes toward animals in our area. Once, people saw a German shepherd lying near their yard. At first, they thought the dog was dead since he didn\u2019t even move his ears. Eventually, they realized the dog was breathing. The people contacted us, and we took the animal to a veterinary clinic. There was very little hope of him surviving. The dog had no sensitivity in his body at all. An MRI showed a dislocation in his cervical spine.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we picked the dog up at the clinic, he was already eating and going to the toilet on his own. The people who found him agreed to take in the dog with a disability and care for him. They named him Hraf. Now he can crawl, lie in a sphinx pose, and sit up for about 40 seconds, and he doesn’t need anyone\u2019s help to eat. They built a wheelchair-like device so he is able to move around.<\/span><\/p>\n

She fled on foot with a child and a puppy from shelling\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n

Olena Rusina, the head of Pegasus shelter<\/b><\/p>\n

Malozakharyne, Dnipropetrovsk region<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]Recently, we were asked to go to a village because there was a large injured dog there. He had just appeared on the streets, even wearing a collar, but no one knew where he came from.<\/span><\/p>\n

Local elderly women noticed him. These weren\u2019t young people, skilled at using the Internet, yet they still tried to post his photo on social media to look for his family. The women even chipped in to buy parasite treatments for the dog.<\/span><\/p>\n

We got a call after he got into a fight with another dog. We arrived and were met by these women, all with canes. These were civilized people who didn\u2019t abandon the animal. They didn\u2019t say, as often happens, \u201cThe dog\u2019s lying around somewhere, go find him yourselves.\u201d<\/em> They followed our car, led us to the exact spot where the dog was. They cared for us, the volunteers. That was very heartwarming. The dog is still being treated and now lives at <\/span>Pegasus shleter<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]There was also a case when the offensive on Vovchansk began. Some people even fled on foot. A woman contacted us, asking if we could help provide shelter for a puppy. We didn\u2019t want to, as our shelter was overcrowded. But it turned out this young woman was fleeing shelling on foot. She only took her child in a stroller. Just imagine <\/span>the state she was in <\/span>at that time! On the road, she saw a small, exhausted puppy. He was in the same circumstances as she was. The woman picked up the puppy and placed him <\/span>at <\/span>the bottom of the stroller!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She made it to Dnipro, but didn\u2019t abandon the puppy in the city. Then she contacted us, saying, \u201cWhat do I do with a puppy and a child?\u201d<\/em> I posted the story on social media, and a family immediately responded and adopted the dog.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cForgive me, Mike\u201d<\/b><\/h2>\n

Serhii Ludenskyi, the founder and the head of Save Animals Ukraine NGO<\/b><\/p>\n

Dnipro<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]Not long ago, I was asked to evacuate two Rottweilers from the frontline village of Oleksandropil in the Donetsk region. An elderly man was still living there, with a granddaughter waiting for him in Poland. The only issue was the dogs: two Rottweilers, 7-year-old Mike and 5-year-old Gina, lived in his yard. Traveling with such large dogs would have been difficult for the elderly man. It was because of them that he hadn\u2019t left.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the day of the evacuation, the elderly man arrived at his yard by bicycle. He had come from a small neighboring village, which was hit less often by artillery. A field behind his house was burning after a strike. All of this was happening under the thunderous sound of artillery.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most heartbreaking moment was the man\u2019s goodbye to his dogs. He hugged Mike\u2019s head and said, \u201cForgive me, Mike. I have no choice.\u201d<\/em><\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]That video on my TikTok<\/a><\/span>\u00a0got a million views. I think many Ukrainians could relate to that pain.<\/span><\/p>\n

We knew that Mike was aggressive. I had to climb onto the roof of the van and pull him up by the leash to get him inside.<\/span><\/p>\n

The elderly man asked us to leave quickly, to avoid prolonging the goodbyes. So we did.<\/span><\/p>\n

We brought the dogs to our shelter near Dnipro. It turned out that Mike was only aggressi<\/span>ve toward ot<\/span>her dogs. Both Rottweilers were soon taken in by lovely families. I\u2019m very happy there are people who don\u2019t abandon animals and others who are willing to take them in.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two skeletons on chains<\/b><\/h2>\n

Tetiana Nelha, the founder of Zoofamily charity fund and shelter\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Pavlysh, Kirovohrad region<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]I always see both sides of the coin in how people treat animals, and it shocks me. I look at the soldiers, the rescuers who evacuate animals from combat zones while risking their own lives. They\u2019re amazing. On the other hand, there are people in our area who don\u2019t sterilize their pets, who cruelly dispose of puppies and kittens in trash bags at garbage dumps or in treelines. Some head into shelling to save animals; others kill them.<\/span><\/p>\n

In our area there were people who would frequently leave their homes, abandoning their animals in chains and not feeding them. By law, we don\u2019t have the right to enter someone else\u2019s yard and take the animals. We had to push to get the police to go in with us and remove the dogs from their chains. These were already two skeletons. There\u2019s currently an investigation against those people, so I can\u2019t say more. I took the animals for treatment and rehabilitation at Zoofamily.<\/span><\/p>\n

When a vet becomes an animal volunteer<\/b><\/h2>\n

Aliona Hrinnyk, the founder of Give a Paw YU NGO<\/b><\/p>\n

Pivdennoukrainsk, Mykolaiv region<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]One day the phone rang, \u201cHello, I\u2019m a veterinarian. I googled \u2018volunteers Pivdennoukrainsk,\u2019 and your number came up right away. I want to be useful, by giving advice at the very least.\u201d<\/em> It was Oleksandr Sokolov, who had relocated from Enerhodar. We met, and I immediately invited him to join our sterlization projects.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before that, I had rented a house in the neighboring village of Kostiantynivka for animals to be housed temporarily. Well, calling it a house is generous; it was falling apart. There were walls, piles of trash, and grass up to our waists. My husband, my father, and I started fixing it up. People helped. Someone brought a bucket, someone brought a broom. A few volunteers came to clear weeds. We made sure the house was in order and set up a temporary place for animals to stay in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Oleksandr arrived, with other volunteers, we chipped in to buy thread, anesthesia, and to set up an operating room. We began sterilizing stray cats and dogs there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Time passed. I changed jobs, and our financial situation improved. We invested money, and in September 2024, we opened a clinic in the city.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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Oleksandr performing sterilizations in the village house<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Oleksandr at the clinic<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]There, we treat pets for a fee \u2014 to help strays, you need resources. Soldiers and internally displaced persons get discounts; some even get treatment free of charge. If an elderly woman comes with a pet, we treat it at a discount or free of charge. Plus, we do free spaying only of female cats so far. Our city has a shelter. By agreement, we operate on their dogs. Sometimes animals are brought in for treatment and we don\u2019t charge for that. For strays under care of volunteers, we only charge the cost of materials.<\/span><\/p>\n

We run campaigns for the free sterilization of strays. Our city is small, and there are more animals here than people. So we focus on sterilization.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That village house now serves as a post-op recovery space and houses animals with disabilities. And Oleksandr Sokolov still works with me at the clinic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the shelling that killed them, it was hunger\u201d<\/b><\/h2>\n

Alina Ostapenko, a member of Sumy Animal Home\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Sumy<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]I hardly remember life before the war. February 24, 2022, was a turning point in my mind. That\u2019s when my real test as an animal rights defender began. It seemed that after the liberation of the Sumy region, life should have gotten easier, but then came the shelling of border areas and mandatory evacuations.<\/span><\/p>\n

A year ago, in Yunakivka, a border village in the Sumy region, a local woman found eight dead dogs in different yards. It wasn\u2019t the shelling that killed them, it was hunger. Most of the animals remained chained up until they died, unable to find even a scrap of food. All of them had been left there by people.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]We had to go there to save the chained-up animals. On our first trip to the border area, we evacuated two dogs, Bruno and Alex, from Yunakivka.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bruno\u2019s survival was nothing but a miracle. We found him tied up in a yard where two other dogs already lay lifeless. Alex survived by eating raw corn.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Alex and Bruno, we evacuated around 15 more dogs from Yunakivka.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bruno is now at the shelter, and we\u2019re still looking for a home for him. Alex found a loving family last year.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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Bruno is still looking for a home<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Alex<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]After meeting these dogs, we began actively evacuating animals from the border areas. Few people wanted to go to the villages of the Sumy region, so I decided to learn how to drive. That\u2019s how a new chapter of spending weeks in remote shelled corners of the region began. Sadly, we couldn\u2019t save them all.<\/span><\/p>\n

In three years, we\u2019ve found homes for about a thousand animals. No more abandoned animals is the result I strive for.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neighbors so unalike<\/b><\/h2>\n

Olha Volkova, the head of Soul of a Tramp shelter\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Lupareve, Mykolaiv region\u00a0<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]This happened in the village of Lymany, before my trip to the Animal Protection Award. There, one woman poisoned about 20 dogs.<\/span><\/p>\n

An acquaintance came to me and said, \u201cImagine, Olia, while you\u2019re saving animals, this woman asked me, \u2018Are you going to the city? Then buy me some rat poison, I didn\u2019t have enough. I\u2019ll poison the dogs.\u2019\u201d<\/em> When I heard that, I went to the village. But the dogs were already dead, I couldn\u2019t do anything. I saw the woman who poisoned them. I asked if she didn\u2019t feel sorry for the dogs. She replied, \u201cNo. I poisoned them, and I\u2019ll keep poisoning them.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Olha has passed her testimony to the legal department of UAnimals and hopes to bring that woman to justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roman Oleksandrovych, Baba Zina, Dusia, and the others<\/b><\/h2>\n

Viktoriia Zhydkova, the founder of Virnist animal protection society and of Human Rights Initiative NGO<\/b><\/p>\n

Dobropillia, Donetsk region<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]In August 2019, my husband went to take out the trash. There was a bag with puppies in the dumpster. Only one was still alive, it was just two hours old. That\u2019s when our fight for its life began. My husband made a special box for the puppy, basically, an artificial mom. We fed it by the clock, woke up at night. One time, my husband suddenly yelled, \u201cCome here!\u201d I thought something bad had happened. I came over and the puppy had opened the eyes. I\u2019ve never seen my husband so happy. And now that dog is our famous Roman Oleksandrovych. Little Roma.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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Roma and Oleksandr<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]Another real act of humanity was when a whole chain of kindness worked together to rescue a farm in Udachne. I\u2019m a vegetarian, and it was essential to me to save the farm, not to slaughter the animals. I wanted to create a shelter that would take in farm animals, and I shared the idea on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when a man from Udachne called me. He had a small farm. I must\u2019ve asked him ten times, \u201cAre you going to eat the animals?\u201d<\/em> He said no, and that their goose was 15 years old, the goats were 17\u2026 <\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]Many people were involved in the farm\u2019s evacuation. And now the animals from Udachne live at my shelter. We have Dusia the pig, who gives you her paw. There\u2019s Marta the goat, she always greets you, bleats in her own way, and stretches out her front leg. There\u2019s a chicken we call Baba Zina because she\u2019s always grumpy. The moment you walk into the coop, she clucks as if to say, \u201cYou\u2019re walking wrong, standing wrong, doing everything wrong.\u201d<\/em> Her beak won\u2019t ever close.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kolia and the puppies\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n

Inna Borodulia \u2014 founder and the head of Happy Cat CSO<\/b><\/p>\n

Zaporizhzhia<\/b>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]I work closely with a soldier named Slavik. He has evacuated a large number of animals and finds people to take them out of the combat zone. He pays for sterilization and treatment out of his own pocket. I\u2019m actually about to head out to vaccinate puppies where he\u2019s stationed. I\u2019d love to take them all to the shelter, but that\u2019s just not possible. To me, he\u2019s a human with a capital H.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text]\n

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The cat rescued by Slavik<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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The cat rescued by Slavik<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n [vc_column_text]But I have another hero. Kolia, a tall, easy-going guy who works at a factory. Honestly, at first, I thought he wasn\u2019t the brightest. But things aren\u2019t always what they seem at first glance. The summer before last, Kolia found newborn puppies in a dumpster. Not afraid of the challenge, he took them in and raised them. All by himself! And this while working shifts at a demanding job! Every one of those puppies survived. He found homes for them all and kept one for himself. Ever since, I tell him, \u201cKolia, you\u2019re my hero.\u201d<\/em><\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]***<\/strong><\/p>\n

After receiving their awards, the winners of the Animal Protection Award are quick to step out of the spotlight and return to their animals. At home, they change back into work clothes and roll up their sleeves. For three years of full-scale war, these people have been taking in dogs and cats, farm and wild animals, those evacuated from the front line or nearby areas, and sometimes they evacuate them on their own. That\u2019s hundreds, sometimes thousands, of new animals each year. Animals keep arriving because the war continues. However, we can at least make sure these animal defenders don\u2019t have even more work because of abandoned and mistreated pets left behind in safer regions of Ukraine.<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The grumpy hen Baba Zina, the dogs Romka and Hraf, Mike and Gina, the pig Dusia, and the goat Marta live in shelters or with families across Ukraine. Most likely, these, and thousands of others, animals would not have survived if they hadn’t been taken in, evacuated, or treated in time by the people honored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[62,88,96,46,90,61,60,98,131,45,74,94,64,66,95,129],"topic":[92,28],"class_list":["post-4921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviu-en","tag-koty-en","tag-dnipropetrovshchyna-en","tag-dogs","tag-dopomohty-en","tag-pereselentsi-en","tag-kyivshchyna-en","tag-viyskovi-en","tag-shelter","tag-sterilization","tag-volonterstvo-en","tag-viyna-en","tag-bezprytulni-en","tag-prytulok-en","tag-sobaky-en","tag-sterylizatsiia-en","tag-sumshchyna-en","topic-obureni-en","topic-vriatovani-i-nebayduzhi-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStories from the Winners of the Animal Protection Award<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Winners of the Animal Protection Award have spent years rescuing animals from war and cruelty. 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