Valentina Stoyanov with some of the dogs she and her husband have rescued.

BUZZFEED

By Karla Zabludovsky

With bags of dog and cat food piled in the back of her van and her petite body cloaked in an oversize bulletproof vest, Valentina Stoyanov was ready to feed hundreds of animals. Or to be shot at.

“A very difficult day for us,” Valentina says in a video posted to the Instagram account she shares with her husband, Leonid, also a Ukrainian veterinarian.

The two had spent the last 41 days saving hundreds of animals: Casper, a blind Husky whose owner had gone to the front lines of Russia’s invasion; flocks of birds who survived a bombing at the market where they were kept; turtles, snakes, geckos, rats, chinchillas, rabbits, and hedgehogs.

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