Yevgeny Yalbitiforov is taking care of the house keys given to him by friends who fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion, stating, "There are 19 in total," according to an investigation by "Agence France-Presse" from Irpin, Ukraine. Since the war began, Yevgeny, a 37-year-old biologist who works in gardening to cover his expenses, has added another job to his resume: key keeper.
During the past few months, Yevgeny has been roaming the devastated suburbs of Kyiv, Bucha and Irpin, caring for the homes and plants abandoned by their owners when they fled to save their lives.
He tells "Agence France-Presse": "After the liberation of the two cities, many of my acquaintances asked me to check if their houses were still intact and whether their doors and windows still existed."
Yevgeny wanders through the homes, turns on lights to deter thieves, removes broken glass, sends belongings back to their owners, or does some gardening.
The keys quickly began to accumulate. Yevgeny explains that friends started "mailing them to me, or I would receive them from a neighbor or find them under a welcome mat."
Some keys were delivered with a bottle of wine or chocolate in a gesture of gratitude, which Yevgeny accepted graciously.
Often, the friends returning to their homes find a small gift from him, a bouquet of flowers or fruit, to make them feel "happy."
Yevgeny says, "If I were in their place, they would treat me the same. These are my friends; all the keys I have belong to people I know."
### "You May Lose Consciousness"
However, this task can sometimes be unpleasant, literally, as the "hardest part" is removing spoiled food from refrigerators that have been left without electricity for weeks.
He adds, "The smell is so bad that you might lose consciousness." He is therefore very grateful to a person who gave him a Soviet-era gas mask.
Even after a thorough cleaning, the apartments need to be ventilated several times because "the smell lingers for a week or two."
In Bucha, Yevgeny stops his car in front of a new residential complex where most windows of the apartments are shattered, and charred vehicles are left as metal skeletons.
Yevgeny spends time in a small apartment that is enough to water the plants. The only sign of war in it is a note on the wall left by Russian soldiers that reads “Sorry for the intrusion.” The door needed to be replaced, like most of the other doors on that floor.
### "Special" Tasks
But this "job" does not seem to be unique to Yevgeny. Oleksandr Furman, who worked in acting before the war, spent the month of April as a key keeper, taking care of six apartments in Kyiv abandoned by his friends.
His most unusual task was cleaning up the sex toys left behind by his ex-girlfriend and her new partner after they fled the city when the Russian attack began on February 24.
Oleksandr laughs, recounting, "She said, 'I can't ask my mom to do that.'” He clarifies, “I was lucky. I wasn't shot at and no rockets fell near me." By providing this help, “I felt I was fulfilling my duty to those who suffered.”
Back in Irpin, Yevgeny filmed some potted plants with his phone in a two-story house overlooking a school with a collapsed roof. He will send the video to the homeowners currently outside the country.
At his next stop, workers were putting a new roof on a house with burned walls. He paused for a moment to care for a severely burned evergreen shrub.
He concludes, "It reminds me of the Ukrainian people. On one side, it is burned, and on the other, it has the strength to continue living."
