We provide aid in forgotten villages in Ukraine
Published: Jun 4, 2015 Reading time: 4 minutes
We found the desolated village of Polevoye one Sunday, while exploring places, where recently has been a battlefront. We were driving the twisted and damaged roads with the unexploded mines here and there. “You better don’t go further,” a boy, who was looking for some fragments of shells to collect, warned us: “A couple of days ago, a car hit a mine trying to pass the damaged bridge.” We are turning to the left, to the village, which looks so well-preserved that is seems like there has been no war at all.
But this impression is wrong. Even now, when people are coming back, only about one third of the former population lives here. For the past six months people have been living between two frontlines, and it turned out that all that time they did not get any help.
We are sending boxes of food from the UN World Food Program as soon as possible. There are just basic things – pasta, buckwheat, rice, oil, sardines or some canned meat. Distribution goes fast since there are only 50 families living in the village. So, at least we have some time to listen to people’s stories, which are, however, similar to each other.
Volodya and Valentina are already retired, but they have not been receiving their pension for more than 6 month, because they could not withdraw the money. “There was an Ukrainian post at one side of the village, and insurgents at the other side, so we could not get out. They did not let us go along the road, and the only possibility was to go through the field,” he remembers. This route was extremely dangerous. “Yuri from next door did not come back. He was found shot and nobody knows what had happened. And probably we will never find out,” he says quietly as if he was still scared. The same happened to his other two neighbors.
It was like this until Christmas. They were getting some help from soldiers from time to time. They were bringing some food, bread. But then they were replaced by other unit, which hardly ever went to the village. Intensive shelling began in January. “We were sitting at home, praying,” they remember. Windows were broken by the blasts, so Volodya had to cover them with some blankets, because there was no money for the glass.
Volodya and Velentina survived thanks to their small farm. They are not that old and still can work in the field. They could also help their neighbors, which have been in the worse situation. Elderly people often remain in the area of fighting alone and without any help. It is important to note, that in some cases they find themselves in such situations because they refuse to leave their houses regardless of any danger.
„However, you cannot convince old people to leave,“ says Marina from Uglegorsk. Every day she helps three seniors, who do not have any relatives. She cleans their houses, does the laundry and brings them some food. “These people are not even able to get the humanitarian aid, which is being provided regularly. I stood in a queue for them, but then it turned out that there was no food left,” she sighs. Together with Igor, the other volunteer, Marina finally brings the WFP boxes to ‘her family’, Nina and Vasya. They are not hiding their emotions: Vasya, like many other local men, spent a major part of his life underground as a miner, which affected his health. Nina, who used to work in a bakery, cannot walk and is totally dependent on the other people’s help.
The second stop is at the house of old woman called Ekaterina. She was born in 1925 and during the second world war, when she was young, the Nazis sent her to the labor camps in Germany. She does not remember much and she does not speak. So, we can only guess what she had to go through there. She lives alone in the house on the outskirts of Uglegorsk. All the surrounding houses are ruined, except hers. Her neighbor says that two food boxes from WFP will be enough for her for the entire month. Ekaterina is eating her soup, which was brought by the volunteer and remains silent. We are leaving quietly and we are happy that there is at least something we can do for these people.