Dodging Bombs and Drones, This Postman Still Delivers
Oleksiy Klochkovsky has driven mail and parcels around the front line in Ukraine for four years. He keeps one ear tuned for danger from above.
By Cassandra Vinograd and Oleksandr Chubko
Neither snow nor rain nor Russian glide bombs have kept Oleksiy Klochkovsky from making his appointed rounds for Nova Poshta, a private postal service in Ukraine.
For four years, Mr. Klochkovsky, 37, has been delivering parcels near the front line in northeastern Ukraine. Russian strikes have torched three of his trucks, and he’s had numerous close calls — shelling, land mines, drones. The stress, he acknowledged, is constant. But he is naturally upbeat. “I don’t know what would stop me, honestly,” he said with a smile. “Maybe only a bullet.”
Mr. Klochkovsky braves the dangers for about $450 a month. He sees a larger mission.
“It’s about the people” who cannot leave or “simply have nowhere else to go,” he said. In frontline areas, local Nova Poshta branches are often the last remaining private businesses. Many Ukrainians view the company, which competes nationally against the state-owned mail service, Ukrposhta, as a shining success story and a lifeline for a country that has done its best to carry on.
Mr. Klochkovsky gets up every day at 8 a.m. (after hitting snooze twice, he says) and starts his coffee machine. He throws on one of his many matching Nike sweatsuits, downs a cup of coffee and hits the road. He checks his watch repeatedly — he imposes a strict schedule on himself.
A large crack from shrapnel snakes up the windshield of his truck; skull-shaped air fresheners hang with a toy rat in the cab. Stuffed into the driver’s side door is a trauma kit with two tourniquets, blood-clotting agents and strong painkillers.
“You never know” when you might need them, he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-kharkiv-nova-poshta.html