Several days into the merciless shelling of Kharkiv by Russian forces, Elena Dolzhenko decided she’d had enough of sitting on the sidelines.
She spent the late winter days immediately following the invasion on her phone, trying to help panicked volunteer organizations deal with an overwhelming number of cries for help from thousands of residents in Ukraine’s second largest city.
She kept it up until one of those shells landed near her home.
“The first boom came near my house. I understood that it’s impossible to stay there,” said Dolzhenko, a petite, steely-eyed professional photographer. She said her biggest fear at that moment was that a shell
