The War Beard
In the West 'Futurama' is a TV show. In Ukraine it's a link in the chain of tiny local organisations trying their best to help the neediest people of Donetsk oblast.
It may be shallow, but it would also be spurious to deny that the first thing one notices about Kolia, the founder of anarchist NGO Futurama, is....
All right, now that’s out of the way… the second thing you notice is how much he and his co-volunteers contribute to their community. Kolia isn’t keen on interviews, and only agreed to this one – and to showing me around a lot of places and other volunteers, for which I’m grateful – because the specific point of this blog is to give seriously interested foreign readers as clear a picture as possible of what happens in Donetsk oblast, and what the locals really need from supporters outside the country. He doesn’t want to be seen as a one-man, one-van hero, and the next post will introduce the whole team. For now, let’s sit with Kolia eating pizza in his van, on the housing estate where he grew up, discussing the situation in Russian, because that is still the language many people are most comfortable with in the east.
The first th…
!!TWO TRAILER PARK GIRLS GO ROUND THE OUTSIDE, ROUND THE OUTSIDE, ROUND THE OUTSIDE!!
… that’s Kolia’s ringtone, a clip from the Eminem song ‘Without Me’, which goes off multiple times an hour. This call is from a colleague and only takes half a minute. Onward…
You’re one of many people in Kramatorsk engaged in evacuations.
Kolia: Yes a lot of people do it. It’s a call of the heart for all of them.
To the West, evacuation seems like a simple idea. It’s when a person leaves Kramatorsk and resettles in Poland, for example.
It’s not that easy for us. The people left are the ones with nowhere else to go, or who’ve lived here all their lives and don’t want to leave. They will stay here until the end. I have evacuated such people several times. I turn around and go home, and they’re back there cultivating the fields. In a village in the grey zone, where there used to be several thousand people and now there are eleven. They bury people in the gardens under the apple trees.
If someone wants to return to the grey zone will you take them?
Since 2022 I’ve held to certain principles. For example, this is a dry county and people often ask me to bring alcohol in. But I don’t carry alcohol, barring exceptional cases such as funerals or birthdays. Secondly, if I evacuate someone, I never take them back.
In Futurama we always try to follow the four principles of humanitarian aid. What’s important to us? Saving lives. We are against abortion, like the Church. We’re quite similar to them in a lot of ways but there’s a difference: we don’t force people to pray to one deity or another. You can believe in God, or Buddha, or the universe, you can be an atheist. That’s the essence of democracy.
You’re evacuating people from Druzhkivka at the moment?
Yes, I was there yesterday, evacuating a 90-year-old man. We went to the far side of the city… I don’t like going there. Every street is half-ruined by glide bombs.
I can’t take humanitarian aid to Kostiantynivka now. I did that in Bakhmut: while there was fighting on one side of the city I was driving around the other side. At worst there was a bit of artillery shelling in the distance, some crossings where you had to drive fast. One time the glass was blown out of the van windows. That was the last time I went there. But now military technology has advanced [i.e. thousands of FPV drones roam the grey area]. Two days ago two women were killed in a Proliska evacuation vehicle which was attacked by a drone.
When did you last do an evacuation from Kostiantynivka?
Last autumn. The last time I was between Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka was in February, evacuating cats! [laughs]
I heard you’ve evacuated goats a number of times.
An awful lot of goats. One time there were 40 at once… I’ve taken goats, birds, cows, pigs. Pigs are for eating but dogs, cats, goats and cows are intelligent animals. They can’t live without people. A cow needs to be stroked, milked fed. But cows are big and if you transport them standing for a long distance [on the terrible roads in Donetsk oblast] it damages their skeleton.
Do you think Kramatorsk will be evacuated?
There’s already partial [state-ordered] evacuation from Sloviansk. The law on compulsory evacuation of children has not yet been passed [on 24 March 2026, when this interview was conducted]. Looking at what’s going on, I would have already started evacuating children from Kramatorsk, at least from the outskirts. But so far there’s no orders from the bureaucrats on this. So we will continue to work in Kramatorsk.
In June 2025, Futurama’s first evacuation vehicle was destroyed in a Russian drone attack. In this Instagram video, Kolia half-weeps as he says ‘Friends, veterans, volunteers, supporters, today we were spotted and [the Russians considered us] so significant, so dangerous, that they had to do this to us.’
What do you think about compulsory evacuation?
People have nowhere to go. That’s the main thing. Where do you take them to? So they stay in their village.
There’s no houses [still standing], the neighbours have been killed, there’s no electricity or gas or water, and there’s war all around, soldiers shooting. And then the people want to evacuate, which on the one hand risks the lives of volunteers. On the other, conditions haven’t been created that make it possible for them to leave.
Nobody’s saying, ‘give us handouts’, give us more. There would be no need if the money that comes here as humanitarian aid or in other forms was used more effectively [more on this in the next post]. It would be possible to build towns, or just houses. Simple modular homes.
I know of a few cases where people bought shipping containers and converted them into homes… but, for example, think of an old lady living in one of these flats. She doesn’t leave it, or maybe she comes out and sits on a bench when it’s sunny. She doesn’t need this shipping container. She can’t live there. She needs a flat with facilities nearby. Other flats with other old ladies, and a social worker, and medical facilities.
!!TWO TRAILER PARK GIRLS GO ROUND THE OUTSIDE, ROUND THE OUTSIDE, ROUND THE …!!
It’s another phone call from a fellow volunteer. This one is on a bad line so Kolia assures the guy he will be along shortly, and hangs up.
There are no mechanisms for the compulsory evacuation of children yet. What are [the police going to do? Take them by force, beat the parents? That’s even worse than… well. The police absolutely do not want to do that. They’re local themselves. Police will have to come from elsewhere and do it.
Will you ever leave Kramatorsk yourself?
No, of course not. This is my city, I love it. I was born here. I’ve left many times in different directions. But I always returned and always felt safe at home. There is no better place in the world. Who wants to leave their home?
Even if Russians come to Kramatorsk?
They will kill me [he calmly mimes slitting his throat].
After the pizza and a smoke, Kolia gazes across the huge grassy yard, surrounded by five-storey blocks of ‘Krushchevka’ flats, and completely deserted.
Kolia: There were a lot of kids here when I was a child, very few old people. Every flat was inhabited, mostly by families with children. There were schools and kindergartens, 338,000 people lived in Kramatorsk.
Now there’s nobody in the park, every day. There’s rubbish lying around. It’s never been like this before. The city used to be very well looked after. I worked at coal mine before the war. All that ended in 2014 – for me, that’s when the war started. And the war is what I see here.
How old are you?
Fifty-four. The change happened mostly in the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s. Because we grew up with perestroika, when consciousness was broken. We grew up believing in the state, and every state brings up its children to be future citizens. But when parents bring up their own children they don’t bring up citizens; first and foremost they bring up people.
In the 80s under Gorbachev, there were posters saying ‘Beat the junkie like a cockroach!’ Because a whole generation was destroyed by drugs. And the sickness hasn’t gone away.
I’ve seen grant programmes, pharmacies where junkies collect drugs that are paid for [by the state]. And maybe that’s changed the crime situation, because previously they were robbing people to get the money for drugs and now they can get them other ways. But society hasn’t become healthier. Principles have deteriorated. It affects everyone. None of the other boys from the block of flats where I grew up are alive today.
In the past, if a child was sitting at home playing on the computer you’d scold them: do your homework, go and play outside! But now we understand: it’s gamers who control the drones. Who’s being rounded up on the street and conscripted to the army? Workers, farmers. In the past, you needed 15 people to run a workshop. Now three is enough. So there are superfluous people.
After [the fall of the Soviet Union], money became valuable and life valueless. There are a lot of people who nobody needs. Someone who has never pricked their finger will never understand the pain of someone who has.
When you were a boy in Soviet times, did you believe the West was an enemy?
Of course. Of course. We were convinced. There were cartoons in all the magazines with enemy bourgeois who looked like wolves. The Soviet Union was a very closed country. For example, Kramatorsk wasn’t on the map; just a small square with ‘Kramatorsk’ written on it. Because there were a lot of factories here.
!!TWO TRAILER PARK GIRLS GO ROUND THE OUTSIDE, ROUND THE…!!
It’s a phonecall from an agitated woman who wants a dog evacuated from nearby Komyshuvakha to Zaporizhzhia. It’s an Alabai – a big Central Asian Shepherd Dog that could be difficult to control. Kolia keeps telling her to contact him via the Telegram channel on the same number: what dog, address, where is it being taken to. He has to insist a few times. The woman finally agrees to message Kolia on Telegram, and hangs up.
How many calls a day do you get [from people wanting help]?
It varies. There can be two or three hundred messages a day on Telegram. Today, just two phone calls.
And you can’t help everyone…
I can. As much as possible until I fall asleep. When I sleep, which I can’t any more.
The essence of helping is not just to give to everyone. Sometimes they just need information, which is a very important kind of help. Where to get grants, where to see a psychologist. Sometimes a person just needs to talk in order to understand what to do next.
After this, we headed off to the Futurama office to meet the ‘divchata’ – meaning girls, the other key members of the anarchist collective. Via a petrol station to pick up van parts, and another volunteer’s house for a quick consultation about an ongoing project. And an important question:
When and why did you start growing the beard?
2022.
You have this beard as a result of the war?
Yep.
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Kolia's beard is spectacular! I love beards. I also love multi-species evacuations... But I was a bit surprised by the cursory reference to abortion. Of course in a war zone it's going to be a problem, and a heartbreaking one, but I hadn't thought of it until now. Do you have any information about the incidence, and diy versus medically assisted?=
The man interviewed was different, such a person during peace times I imagine would slip under the proverbial radar but in a way today he is a living example of the power of pluralism where a society can benefit from the actions of individuals who are/were free to follow the dictates of their conscience rather than be subsumed MAGA like into conforming to the obedience to a point of view that served not the interest of a society but instead the will of a single individual whose single virtue is the ability to gaslight. Still, not wanting to armchair quarterback, as I read the article I also wondered was he not also helping some of those who perhaps are waiting for russia to invade and take over ..my ignorance is showing here, but still interesting person, interesting interview.