He saved 200 people from starvation in Mariupol, delivered hundreds of tons of humanitarian goods for IDPs and Dnipro hospitals, wrote dozens of business strategies for Ukrainian brands, develops designs of interiors, works at the publishing house - LLC “Magazine Spirit and Letter” under Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, sometimes drives a taxi and holds services in the church of the cottage town Khutir Yasnyi near the village of Lisnyky, Obukhiv district, Kyiv region. This is the life story of priest Volodymyr Koskin from Mariupol after February 24.
Mariupol on fire
“It is terribly cold. I want to sleep. I walk down the street with a big sack of potatoes on my shoulders. I walk from the wholesale market in the direction of the 23rd microdistrict. I am really starving and thirsty.
I could not find neither water, nor bread anywhere. I bought this huge bag of potatoes for practically the last 800 hryvnias. The realization that money is just paper passes through the mind along with the weight of potatoes on the back.
My shoulders hurt terribly, the bag constantly falls off my shoulder, and I move it to my neck (I couldn't relax it at home). I understand that I’ve almost run out of food at home, and I can’t stand the hungry looks of my child and wife.
Shells fly overhead with an awful sound.
I pause for a moment... It flew by and hit somewhere in the 17th district. An explosion, glass rattling and someone’s screams and cries.
I go around the side of the body on the asphalt, continuously performing a memorial service in memory of everyone who lies here and who is dying now somewhere there. Step by step, step by step...
I walk, stubbornly moving in the space and looking only at my feet. Step by step.
I am asking God that at least someone will be saved by Him. As if it were an answer from Him, a woman with two children catches up. One is three years old, and the one in her arms is two months old. She asks: “Tell me, where is the Savona cinema? They say that there is food!”
The children’s hungry eyes, like portals, swallow me... It’s better not to look. In my pockets, I find candy and a dozen cookies that the woman in Savona literally put into my hands. I give the sweets to them. I indicate the direction of the cinema.
Someone was covered with a sheet on the asphalt. I see that the hand is female. A bag and loose potatoes are nearby.
Two women pass by, look back at me and, without thinking for a long time, begin to quickly collect the spilled potatoes into two bags...
It’s only now that I started talking about it, – says Volodymyr. “I gave myself the opportunity to release these feelings, opening my heart little by little, letting go of those who remained there forever, in February-March 2022.”
Volodymyr lived in his occupied hometown with his wife Yuliia and son for a month. School No. 26 became a refuge for the community. 200 people, 80 children, including 20 infants, were hiding there from the war. It was almost the only storage facility in Mariupol, where food was constantly being prepared, an army generator was working, and there was a canister with diesel fuel. Priest Volodymyr appointed himself “responsible for school supplies.” All the volunteers knew him, so the collected packages with the humanitarian aid under shelling were most often given to him. Every single day supplies of food and water dwindled.
“Seeing a child die of thirst is not humane. The most vulnerable moment was when my son looked at me and asked: “Mom, how much water do we have left?” And I understood: he knows what it means,” recalls Yuliia.
The city was left without gas, electricity, and communication. The Russian aviation mercilessly bombed it. Houses were destroyed, the church was destroyed.
The Russians began to enter the city from the direction of Berdiansk, it was not far from the school shelter, the Port City mall burned down nearby, the electricity and gas supply disappeared, there was no communication. The residents of the school stayed in this condition for several weeks. But Volodymyr realized that there were no pharmacies or shops nearby, drinking water was running out, so he began to look for the possibility of evacuation. They said that there would be buses near the Drama Theater and a green corridor would be provided. They arrived there with all the shelter, ready to go. However, a Security Service of Ukraine car was circling around, they were announcing that there would be no green corridor, they asked people not to gather there.
On March 15, the munition hit the school, a large piece of debris mutilated a nearby poplar, damaged the school corridor, and some pieces of wood got stuck in the windows.
Children who were at school ran out to the first floor – when there was some silence between the bombings, they played tag. And one little girl shouted: “Chick-pick, I’m in the house.” And the older girl then shouted at her, saying: “You are stupid. Nobody here has a house”...
“I clearly understood then that these are people who have lost their roots forever,” - this is how Volodymyr’s wife Yuliia later commented on this episode.
People started leaving the city in their own vehicles. All residents of the school have already been “sorted by car”. It was planned to take them out.
“We have no place in the cars to place Volodymyr and Yuliia,” they discussed at the general meeting at the school, while the priest was alone. There were enough cars for everyone except them. Volodymyr entered an empty classroom to ask God a question...
“Give me an answer, God. I am asking you; I demand you. After all, I have served you for so many years. Have you decided to just dump everyone? Let me suffer. But what is my child guilty of? Maybe I’m not good enough as a priest? I understand that I was not good in everything. Maybe my wife was not good in everything? Indeed, after all, she’s a priest’s wife. We are adults, we are guilty. My child is not.”
When the priest returned, he was called into the corridor by a man who cooked at the school.
“Listen, you’re completely crazy,” he started his speech. “For the first time, I meet a person whom I can call a friend, with whom I would go in the surveillance. You and your wife are crazy. For the first time, I see a priest who did not leave the people, did not escape, stayed with the people, would drive, get something. In short, I have a car. Can you drive?”
“I have a license, but I haven’t driven for more than seven years,” Volodymyr answered. He had already been warned about the “lists for mass executions” of activists, but he had to at least try. “Take the car. I have another one, and it’s old, but still a workhorse”...
The priest’s family persuaded his mother... However, it is difficult for elderly people to realize that everything you have acquired during your life – a place in this world, a home, a household, a certain circle of acquaintances – the whole life you lived, you have to leave and leave the world before your eyes Raisa Mykolaivna did not want to hide and leave the city - she stayed at home. Volodymyr, his family and several other passengers from school reached the city of Dnipro. In the first days in Dnipro, priest Volodymyr received a photo of his nine-story building, in which all the entrances had burned out. It looks like an empty concrete box.
In a few weeks, news came that Volodymyr’s mother had been killed.
“My mother always took care of those who were in trouble. That day, she left the house to her neighbor, carrying some grain to her, because she had her own supplies. There was an explosion nearby. The Russians hit the city from the sea. Shrapnel damage incompatible with life. She was buried near the house under the cherry tree that she loved so much. At that time, no one was taken to the cemetery, the occupiers fired at them.”
In another three weeks, the priest found out that his church was destroyed.
About the church
Volodymyr Koskin had a long way to his temple in Mariupol and built it literally by himself, because he mixed the mortar, laid the bricks, and argued for its actual possibility to exist.
In 2011, the abbot of a small religious community of the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate fainted from hunger near the Mariupol city council. Then the priest announced a hunger strike, demanding that the city authorities allocate land for the construction of the temple. For fifteen days he lived in a tent, next to which there was only a table with icons, a prayer book and water.
Disillusionment with the Moscow Patriarchate has been gaining momentum in Russian-speaking Mariupol for a long time. Although at the beginning of his priesthood, Volodymyr himself was a protodeacon of the MP.
The temple in honor of Panteleimon the Healer, for which the priest fought, was opened in 2017, only six years after the active struggle for its existence. It became the first wooden temple of the Kyiv Patriarchate. He gathered doctors, teachers, musicians, and writers for services. “The Mariupol intelligentsia,” is what Volodymyr called his flock.
The restless father made the temple a real center of education, a center of communication and help. With him, on the left bank, there were courses on traditional egg decorating, English, writing skills and even on building healthy relationships; there was a library, and they also collected help for those who needed it.
Priest Volodymyr not only served in the church, but also managed the education department of the entire Donetsk diocese. Yuliia, the wife, headed the social and psychological department.
Five years have passed. In 2022, the church was destroyed by two aerial bombs on Lazarus Saturday before Easter...
“Holy God, have mercy on us, look down from heaven and save us... For the salvation and help of those who work and serve, for the healing of those who are infirm, for the forgiveness of sins and the salvation of the people present here...”
Volodymyr says that he is often asked, especially by young people, whether he believes in God? He would answer, ironically: “I don’t believe in God, I trust God! This is different. If you drive a car, you don’t believe in the existence of the car, you just know that it exists. So, for me, the existence of God is an indisputable fact. He is present everywhere; He permeates all being! Everything that breathes praises God!”.
Volunteering in Dnipro
In Dnipro, Volodymyr served in the Unexpected Joy church. The priest and his wife were accepted into the Dnipro Diocese. During the year of living in this city, Volodymyr knocked on many European foundations, obtained food, medicines, medical supplies and equipment for hospitals. He loaded and unloaded trucks with humanitarian aid by himself having constant instant phone communication with suppliers, worked together with his wife in a rehabilitation social hub. He was waiting for getting his own parish...
Parish on paper
Within a year, he decided to look for such an opportunity in Kyiv. Currently he has his own dream parish... on paper. There is a document on his appointment as abbot of the Holy Transfiguration Church in the village of Lisnyky, Obukhiv district, Kyiv region. But a pro-Russian priest still serves there.
“I am waiting for the court’s decision. They would say to me: priest, take the military and win back the temple. How is it possible? To go with a angle grinder and shout: “Down with the Moscow priest!”? You don’t need to incite me to a coup. Society must be constructive because there will be no dialogue. It was not love then, but rape,” says Volodymyr.
Currently, he serves in the church of the monastery in Khutir Yasnyi between Lisnyky and Khodosivka villages. In order to support his own family, he undertakes various projects. “There is no sin in healthy ambitions,” father believes. Therefore, he takes up interior design with particular enthusiasm, because he has the necessary knowledge and experience for this and works as a sales manager at the publishing house Spirit and Letter on the basis of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and sometimes even drives a taxi.
About non-return
Volodymyr’s son started the fifth grade of one of the Kyiv schools this school year. His wife Yuliia Ostriakova works as a psychologist and art therapist in several charity projects. According to the owner, one of the most valuable pieces of advice that the wife gives to the people she cares for is not to put life on hold during the war. After all, the war proved how fragile and fleeting life is, and if we hang in this pause, it is not known whether we will be able to do something later.
“My wife is very strong,” states priest Volodymyr with special warmth. He does not remember her tears in Mariupol, because she never shoved them there. For the first time, Yuliya burst into tears in a store in Dnipro.
“We went with Yuliia to Epicenter store to choose pillows because we didn’t have any. And when she began to choose them, I saw that her face was covered with tears. A month before the war, she had bought new pillows for home. And in a month and a half, she didn’t have any pillows or even a home... Yuliia held these new pillows and cried for the first time in several months."
When asked about returning to Mariupol after the end of the war, Volodymyr Koskin responded sharply: "We will not return! There is no home. There is no church. I have nowhere to go back. I won’t be able to mentally be there. There is no need to talk about the return or reconstruction of the city. I’m sorry, but I won’t be back. And this is an axiom for my family! Period, and this is not up for discussion with anyone. For me, there will never be an authoritative opinion on this matter.
The only thing I will come back for temporarily is to mourn my mother, hug the hill of her grave and take at least a stone from the place of her death.
For me, this is the sacred thing, which I will order to place in my hands before my death"...