Category: Media about us

The unfinished concrete block house outside Kyiv is home to twenty-three refugees who were evacuated from the war in Ukraine. They share one bathroom, one kitchen, one television, and sleep on bunkbeds on its second floor. Furnishings are makeshift, the house is dark, appliances are donated, and the stairs are rickety. Most are elderly, two bedridden, and one is blind.

But in the cluttered garden, Nikolai Fyodorov sits in his wheelchair and says “to me this is a fairy tale.”

That is because despite his current living conditions, he’s lucky. Some 1.8 million Ukrainians like him have fled the war and many are homeless or cannot obtain health care, schools for their children, or jobs.

Nikolai left Krasnogorovka, a village near Donetsk, because of constant shelling.

“My son, wife, and three little kids went to Russia, but I had nothing there,” he said. “I stayed until I had to leave. I have not heard from them since.”

He was taken in by Oleg Gorbachev who ran a shelter for the homeless, drug addicts, the elderly, and other vulnerable groups in Luhansk. When the conflict broke out in April 2014, his facility was plundered by a pro-Russian militia.

“I decided to evacuate people, although the thirty-hour route to Kyiv seemed unachievable,” said Gorbachev. He drove his family, found premises, and began ferrying people from the Donbas.

“The scale of the problem is bigger than one can imagine,” said Oleg. “Their stories are terrible. Each one was cheated or deprived illegally of their homes and belongings. Sometimes relatives refused to help them. But now they have new hope, friends, are not lonely, and are without fear.”

The place survives from donations, help from a Protestant church, volunteers, and a village doctor who donates time. Only twelve of the twenty-three get government pensions of $17 a month, and they donate 70 percent toward the cost of food.

Fortunately, CrimeaSOS NGO raised enough money through crowdfunding to replace Oleg’s van recently. “I hope we can crowdfund enough to buy the house and put in an elevator,” he said. “It would cost 500,000 hyrvnia to buy (roughly $19,000).”

Volunteers do major tasks and nursing, and the healthier residents share chores and the cooking. “If they do chores, they feel better about their situation,” said Gorbachev.

He raises donations, grocery shops, manages the volunteers, and helps them get documents so they can obtain pensions, medicines, and healthcare.

“Some of the residents make camouflage nets in the backyard for ambulances going to the front and do this in return for food,” said Olena Vynogradova, a legal analyst with Right to Protection CF who took me to the hostel.

She said the burden on Ukraine is substantial and its “refugee” population is the size of Turkey’s or Jordan’s. Then there are those left in the warzone.

“Tens of thousands more are in danger all the time who live in the ‘Non-Government Controlled Areas,’” she said. “Old people or disabled people are stuck there without doctors, police protection, postal service, water, electricity, heat, and are shelled constantly.” She said Ukrainian officials are not allowed in and only three NGOs can go in.

The region is lawless and besides human rights abuses there are “children being sold,” “sex trafficking,” and “organ trading,” she said.

Tiny Nina Simyonkina lives here and uses a cane. She also feels very “lucky” to be here. Her son in Kyiv doesn’t take care of her and she lost her apartment in Luhansk while visiting friends in Russia when the invasion took place.

“Burglars moved in, then my neighbors went to court and took the apartment, claiming it was abandoned,” she said. “I came back and was homeless. I got into a hostel but was frightened by the Russian separatists who came in demanding that we swear allegiance.”

Another evacuee, Viktor, washes dishes in the backyard sun. He lived months in the basement of his village home because of constant shelling. He is deaf and 78 years old.

“He likes doing the dishes,” says Oleg beaming.

Another man, sprightly and fit, is weeding the garden while another digs a large ditch where they will refrigerate food in the winter.

Alexei Karpushyn is a middle-aged resident who said he was “nearly dead” due to medical problems when rescued by Oleg. He now works alongside him.

“We had normal lives and lost everything in a second,” he said.

The invasion was planned for some time and then “marginal people” were hired to be militias.

“I think the Russians will leave eventually, but they will steal everything before they do,” Karpushyn said.

The youngest resident is a mere 16 years old. Oleg took care of him and his single mother for several years until she recently died. He attends a nearby college.

“He’s a good boy. We look after him, and make sure he does not make bad friends,” said Karpushyn. “He wants to be a chef. Now he can be, and that will make us all very happy.”

Diane Francis is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, Editor at Large with the National Post in Canada, a Distinguished Professor at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management, and author of ten books.

Retired and elderly people in the non-government-controlled Donbas region have lost their pensions as a result of registration requirements.

Every two months, Mykola Ivanovych* sets out to cross the Siverskiy Donets River, relying on others to help him cross a damaged bridge in his wheelchair and collect his government pension. The river marks the dividing line between his family home in non-government-controlled Luhansk and government-controlled Stanytsia Luhanska.

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Mykola Ivanovych, who worked as a bus driver for 54 years, must present himself at the state-run bank in Stanytsia Luhanska, which checks his identity to allow him to receive his monthly payment of USD$53.

Inside the bank, he waits patiently while his wife joins the queue to carry out the verification process.

Mykola Ivanovych, who is his 70s, suffered two strokes after his son was killed by an artillery shell in 2014 – the first year of the Ukraine conflict, which has cost nearly 10,000 lives.

“Pensions are an acquired right of all citizens and should not be connected to their IDP registration.”

For hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people in the conflict-torn Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the state pension is their only means of support. However, some 160,000 retired people lost this income after the government limited access to state pensions for residents of the area outside its control in December 2014.

Further restrictive measures introduced last year led to an additional 400,000 people losing access to their pensions.

Currently, people living in non-government controlled areas are required to register as internally displaced persons with the Ukrainian authorities in order to continue to access their rightful pension benefits.

“Payment of pensions should be resumed to all retired people, regardless of their place of residence, whether they are registered as IDPs (internally displaced persons) or reside at their homes,” said Pablo Mateu, UNHCR representative in Ukraine. “Pensions are an acquired right of all citizens and should not be connected to their IDP registration and the fact of displacement.”

Olena Grekova, head of the Severodonetsk-based office of Right to Protection, a UNHCR partner NGO that helps internally displaced persons in Ukraine, said many bedridden people had received no pension payments since the start of the conflict because they were unable to travel to government offices for identification.

“This is my pension, which I earned. Why do I have to feel like a second-rate person?”

Some have lost their payments because of mistakes. Tetiana Kovalenko, 83, had to leave the city of Donetsk after her house was bombed. Since 2015, she has lived in government-controlled Myrnograd and is registered as an internally displaced person.

Kovalenko, a former mine worker, stopped receiving her pension of USD$73 per month in April after the social security service decided that she lives in non-government-controlled territory.

Another woman, Olga Burkalo, 38, who has suffered from a severe form of diabetes since the age of 11, has up to 10 injections of insulin daily and needs her pension of USD$50 per month to pay for her treatment.

Social security inspectors visited her in December and March to check if she lives at her address in government-controlled Selidove. In February, she underwent an identification process at a bank.

However, in April she stopped receiving her pension. She was mistakenly suspected of living in non-government controlled territory when, in fact, she had not been there for more than a year.

Burkalo, who trained as a biology teacher, is now too weak to work.

“I used to work, I paid taxes,” she said. “This is my pension, which I earned. Why do I have to feel like a second-rate person?”

* Surname withheld for protection reasons

Galina Dzhikayeva, an internally displaced person, from Simferopol, Ukraine, performs at her theater in Kyiv. In her most controversial play, “Militiaman,” she plays a pro-Russian man from Donetsk who captured, tortured, and killed Ukrainian soldiers. Through discussions with the public she tries to understand what motivates him, and aims to find an approach that will help people like him reintegrate when the war ends.

Two years ago this past April, the words “internal displacement” first appeared in the Ukrainian media. The term was brought by UN agencies that, along with local nongovernmental organizations, worked on a legal framework to regulate the phenomenon, which was completely new to Ukraine. Before then, journalists, volunteers, and even government officials called those who were fleeing occupied Crimea or hostile areas in eastern Ukraine “refugees” or “migrants.” Ukraine now has 1.7 million internally displaced persons.

Today, three IDPs in Ukraine share their memories of how they left their homes, how the past two years have changed their lives, and what needs to be done to reintegrate IDPs.

Galina Dzhikayeva, Simferopol

“I did not want to leave, but they left me no choice,” sighs Galina Dzhikayeva, a former director of the Karman art center in Simferopol. When Russian soldiers lacking insignias first appeared on the streets of Sevastopol, she began organizing pro-Ukrainian meetings. Later, she collected food and medication for Ukrainian sailors, and assisted the first international journalists covering the events.

“In case my worst fears came true and war began, I organized first aid courses in our theatre,” says Dzhikayeva. “They accused me of terrorist activities as a part of the ‘Oleg Sentsov terrorist group.’” Sentsov is the Simferopol filmmaker who was jailed by the FSB on suspicion of plotting terrorist acts in Crimea.

Members of the battalions invited Dzhikayeva to an “informal conversation,” the kind that was once routine for the Soviet-era intelligence service. “The conversation lasted three hours. They used tough psychological pressure; they wanted me to testify against Sentsov and other activists. I said and I signed nothing, because any word I said would have been used against us.”

Dzhikayeva left Crimea a few days later. “All the way to Odesa I thought I would cry and kiss Ukrainian soil when I saw our flags, but I did not. Only when my mother sent me some of my things from Crimea did I finally understand what happened and started to cry.”

Dzhikayeva’s parents could not move to the mainland because her father is confined to bed. Galina herself has not registered as an internally displaced person, nor has she applied for social assistance. “I have my hands and I have my brain, so I will earn money,” she says. She also has a theatre, and that gives her hope and strength.

In her most controversial play, “Militiaman,” she plays a pro-Russian man from Donetsk who captured, tortured, and killed Ukrainian soldiers. Through discussions with the public she tries to understand what motivates him, and aims to find an approach that will help people like him reintegrate when the war ends.

The theater is located in an old building in the historic part of Kyiv. “When we played in December, the walls were covered with ice. Still, we were sold out—the audience sat fully dressed under electric heaters,” Dzhikayeva smiles. The theater does not bring money. To survive, she works as a managing editor at a local TV channel. But she says she is lucky because she has enormous support, and inspiration from her art.

“For two years, I’ve felt like I’m living in a horror movie, waiting for it to end,” says Iryna Stepanova. Before the occupation, she worked as an engineer at a local plant and regularly went to church. She and her family belonged to a Protestant community that pro-Russian militia targeted, considering them sectarians.

Combatants converted her church into an armory and a firing point. “My children went to school twenty meters away from the armed barricade. I feared the worst—a repetition of the Beslan tragedy, when terrorists entered a school and shot kids. So my children stopped going to school.”

In early May 2014, Stepanova’s church organized an evacuation for women in the Protestant community with children. “There were about twenty of us,” she recalls. “When we were about to leave, some women came to stop us. They yelled at us and rocked the bus. The route to Dnipropetrovsk [about 231 km] took us twenty hours. When I finally saw Ukrainian flags, we started crying.”

From Dnipropetrovsk, Stepanova moved to a small town near Kyiv where she settled in a hostel. She was part of one of the first waves of IDPs fleeing occupied areas. Back then, prejudices against IDPs had not yet formed. She cries recalling how generous everyone was. “Once a local pastor came to our hostel,” she says. “He asked if we had children and pregnant women. We did. The next day at 6:00 am, the pastor brought us fresh milk and cheese; he did so every day for two months.”

Stepanova began going to local volunteer organizations, NGOs, and regional administrations and councils to meet people and offer her help. Soon, members of the Ukrainian parliament, ministers, and representatives of international media became her friends. “Some MPs truly surprised me by showing their human faces—many times they would come to IDP settlements with trucks loaded with food, medication, and other essentials,” and they came without journalists.

She returned to destroyed Slovyansk immediately after its liberation. She became involved in volunteer activities and the social life of her town. “Once I was asked to accompany the Swedish Ambassador to Ukraine to basements where pro-Russian militia had kept prisoners. The ambassador’s brother was one of the International Committee of the Red Cross team who had been kidnapped and kept there for several days. It was horrible; the walls were scribbled with blood of prisoners.”

In July 2014 the Ukrainian NGO Right to Protection CF invited Stepanova to join a project assisting internally displaced people, where she remains today. She fears that someday she might be forced to leave home again, as the front line slowly moves toward Slovyansk.

Oleg Gorbachev is one of the founders of a hospice for elderly people; it helped homeless people, older Ukrainians, drug addicts, and other vulnerable groups. When the conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, the hospice was at the epicenter of the hostilities, and pro-Russian militia began plundering it. It was the only home for its patients, some of whom were bedridden. “I decided to evacuate people, although the thirty hour route to Kyiv seemed unachievable,” says Gorbachev.

But he made it. He managed to evacuate twenty pensioners from Artyomovsk and the so-called “gray zone”—towns along the front line governed by neither the pro-Russian militia nor the Ukrainian army. “I even transported a deceased grandfather from the hospice who died right before the evacuation.” Gorbachev did not have any means of transportation except an old, Soviet-era Volga automobile. He drove the deceased patient, who sat in the backseat of the Volga, to the government-controlled area to bury him respectfully.

Gorbachev is an IDP himself. He and his family left the home where they had happily lived before the war. Still, he does not have time to despair; he has to take care of the twenty pensioners he evacuated.

Today they live in a small town near Kyiv, while he actively seeks a new site for the hospice. “We are short on money,” he says. “Of course, I do fundraising. Every day I have a number of meetings, calls, I send hundreds of emails, but I have the impression that the government does not know what to do with us.”

Conclusion

Most IDPs are not like Galina Dzhikayeva, Iryna Stepanova, and Oleg Gorbachev, and most need care. Many IDPs in Ukraine, especially those living in remote areas, feel helpless as the war drags on. Over the last two years, IDPs have learned that they can rely on volunteers, local and international NGOs, and the media. Many feel abandoned by the government because it has been reluctant to help them and does not communicate well. Some IDPs are still unaware of their rights. Good communication might motivate IDPs to take responsibility for their lives by looking for new jobs or taking courses to learn a new skill.

NGOs are busy providing legal work and social assistance, but the government has put unnecessary obstacles in their way, from making it difficult for relief organization to enter areas that aren’t controlled by the government to dragging its feet on official legislation to narrowing the rights provided by the law on IDPs to introducing cumbersome bureaucratic procedures. Ideally, the government should accept nongovernmental actors as full partners and communicate its policies more clearly. Minister of Social Policy Andriy Reva recently noted that 350,000 IDPs don’t receive pensions and more than 15,000 do not receive social payments all due to “inconsistencies in legislation.” It’s time to finally get on top of these problems. Ukraine’s most vulnerable people deserve nothing less.

Kateryna Moroz is an alumna of the University of Miami School of Law and a Fulbright scholar.

Following the establishment of the new Ministry of Ukraine on Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, the Project “Strengthening the Human Rights Protection of Internally Displaced Persons” organized a High-Level Visit in Strasbourg on internal displacement in Ukraine. The visit took place on 24-25 May at the headquarters of the Council of Europe, with the aim of promoting constructive discussion on ongoing challenges and strategic vision for the national response to internal displacement. The discussions focused on the ways in which the Council of Europe and relevant stakeholders can support Ukraine.

Fostering Council of Europe cooperation with the newly established Ministry and other key national and regional partners is a key element.

The Ukrainian delegation consisted of the newly appointed Minister of Ukraine on Temporarily Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, Mr. Vadym Chernysh, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Ms. Iryna Gerashchenko, and the Chair of the Parliament Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities, and Interethnic Relations, Mr. Hryhoriy Nemyria. Among the members of the delegation were also the Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Valeriya Lutkovska, Members of Parliament, Ms. Iryna Lutsenko, Ms. Nataliia Veselova, and Mr. Sergyi Taruta, Mr. Andrii Kravchenko, Deputy Head of the Anti-Terrorist Centre, Security Service of Ukraine, Mr. Maksym Kononenko, Deputy to the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the Council of Europe, Mr. Andriy Baziv, First Secretary of the Department of International Organisations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Zhanna Lukianenko, Representative on Internally Displaced Persons of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Yuri Buznitskiy, Chief Adviser of the Secretariat of the Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and Interethnic Relations, Ms. Olga Lishyk, Deputy Head of the Luhansk Regional State Administration, Mr. Igor Stokoz, Deputy Head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration, Mr. Vitalii Lytvin, Adviser of the Head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, and Ms. Olena Vynogradova, Legal Expert, NGO Right to Protection.

During the intensive two-day program, the delegation exchanged views with the Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Gabriella Battaini-Dragoni, during which the Deputy Secretary General underscored the Council of Europe’s commitment to helping Ukraine to improve the human rights situation of internally displaced persons. In the meeting with the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Nils Mužnieks followed up with the participants regarding issues raised during his preceding visits to Ukraine. The delegation also met with the Director for Human Rights, Mr. Christos Giakoumopoulos, the newly appointed Special Adviser of the Secretary General on Ukraine, Mr. Régis Brillat, the Director of Programmes, Ms. Verena Taylor, and representatives of the European Court of Human Rights, profile Committees of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, as well as the Department on Anti-Discrimination, and Department on Equality and Human Dignity.

All participants to the meetings highlighted their commitment to improving the human rights of internally displaced persons through coopeation with a view to achieving the main objectives of the project, in particular strengthening the national legislative framework on internally displaced persons and its successful implementation in practice.

In 1944, following the liberation of the Crimean Peninsula by the Soviet Army, nearly 200,000 Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic minority, were unjustly accused of aiding and abetting the Nazi regime and ordered by Joseph Stalin to be forcibly expelled from their homeland to remote areas of the Soviet Union

The deportation of the Crimean Tatars began on May 18, 1944. They were exiled to Central Asia, sent on overcrowded trains not designed to transport people. Many died of starvation, diseases and inhuman conditions during the 10-14 day journey. The majority of the deportees were elderly, invalids, women and children.

During and after the exile, 46% of the total Crimean Tatar population perished. More than 100,000 died during the first year and a half, according to some reports.

72 years later, on May 18, 2016, Ukraine held ceremonies to remember the Crimean Tatar people who lost their homes and their lives.

“They were slandered, destitute, deported, deprived of all rights, including the right to a homeland,” said Alexandr Galkin, Director of Right to Protection (R2P), HIAS’ partner agency Ukraine. “Armed soldiers went from door to door. They woke up sleeping Crimean Tatars and gave some only 15 minutes to get ready for their exile to unknown destinations.”

The Ukrainian Parliament adopted a resolution recognizing the event as a genocide on November 12, 2015. The resolution also designated May 18 as a national day of remembrance for the victims.

R2P regularly provides assistance to internally displaced persons, including those from Crimea, like Crimean Tatars. Although some Crimean Tatars later returned to Crimea, many faced systemic discrimination after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and were again forced to leave their native peninsula.

Despite poor weather, more than 1,000 people attended a rally in Kiev’s central square. Commemorative actions devoted to the memory of the victims of deportation were also held in cities across Ukraine.

“On behalf of the Jews of Ukraine and the world, I want to say that we are with you,” said Ukraine’s Chief Rabbi, Yaakov Dov Bleich, at the May 18 rally in Kiev. “We must raise our global voice, not hush up, as the world did during the Nazi regime. The world must hear and respond. We have to shout so that our voice is heard around the world.”

At noon TV and radio stations in Ukraine stopped broadcasting as the whole country honored the memory of victims with a minute of silence.

“It is important to remember the crimes committed against an entire nationality. Almost 200,000 people, discriminated against on ethnic grounds, for many years deprived of home and basic human rights, deserve to be remembered,” said Galkin.

This year’s winner of the Eurovision song contest, Jamala, is a Crimean Tatar singer from Ukraine. She won the with a song about those tragic events, called 1944. You can watch it below.

The event was initiated by activists of the community of internally displaced persons living in Huliaipole, and supported by the project “Advocacy and legal assistance to internally displaced population in Ukraine” implemented by DRC in partnership with “Right to protection” and supported by the UNHCR.

– Our project covered 20 regions of Ukraine, — says Victoria Salomatina, head of the regional office of the project “Advocacy and legal assistance to internally displaced population in Ukraine”. -Among the priority problems of IDP’s in need of heaters, warm clothing and shoes. The project is the integration of the IDP into local communities, in the Zaporozhye region in participation of 678 persons.

IDP, people living in remote areas, often have difficulty with socialization. For example, in Huliaipole there are more than 350 IDP women. Many of them are faced with the lack of communication, to ensure that women have the opportunity to communicate, to consult, in Huliaipole opened a circle of needlework.

The initiator of the establishment of the club is Lyudmila Goloborodko. She explains:

— For the women, who were forced to leave their homes as a result of military conflict, it is very important to have htheir own area. Here we can come together to share experiences in needlework and chat over a cup of tea.

Now women of IDP will be able to come together not only to create beautiful pieces of jewelry, toys and paintings, but also for the joint solution of actual problems.

Girls, who are children of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from eastern Ukraine, react as they take part in International Children’s Day celebrations at a volunteer center in Kyiv, Ukraine June 1, 2015. Internal displacement is a relatively new phenomenon for Ukraine, and the problem may only worsen with local elections this fall. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko