In the Baltics, grassroots groups get crafty to help Ukraine
TALLINN, Estonia — In a dusty workshop in northern Lithuania, a dozen men are transforming hundreds of wheel rims into potbelly stoves to warm Ukrainians huddled in trenches and bomb shelters. As the sparks subside, one welder marks the countertop: 36 made that day. Hours later, they’ve reached 60.
People from across Lithuania send old wheel rims to the volunteers gathering weekly in Siauliai, the Baltic country’s fourth-largest city. Two cars loaded with wood stoves wait outside the workshop ahead of the long night drive south.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — three states on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastern f lank scarred by decades of Soviet-era occupation — have been among the top donors to Kyiv.
Linas Kojala, director of the Europe Studies Center in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, said Ukraine’s successful resistance “is a matter of existential importance” to the Baltic countries, which share its experience of Russian rule.
“Not only political elites, but entire societies are involved in supporting
Ukraine,” Kojala told the Associated Press.
In Siauliai, Edgaras Liakavicius said his team has sent about 600 stoves to Ukraine.
“Everybody here ... understands the situation of every man, every soldier, the conditions they live in now in Ukraine,” said Liakavicius, who works for a metal processing plant.
Jaana Ratas, who heads an effort in Tallinn to make camouflage nets for Ukrainian soldiers, echoed his words.
“My family and most Estonians, they still remember” the Soviet occupation, she said.
Ratas chose a symbolic location for her project. Five days a week, Estonian and Ukrainian women gather at Tallinn’s Museum of Occupations and Freedom to weave the nets from donated fabrics.
Lyudmila Likhopud, a 76year-old refugee from Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, said the work has lifted her out of depression.
“I started feeling that I can be useful,” she said.
In Latvia’s capital, Riga, Anzhela Kazakova is one of 30 Ukrainian refugees working for Atlas Aerospace, a drone manufacturer that has supplied more than 300 kits to the Ukrainian military.