In eastern Ukraine’s Miusynsk, pensioners struggle to survive winter
Natalia Shevchenko at home in MiusynskAnton Skyba
MIUSYNSK, Ukraine — Natalia Shevchenko, 57, doesn’t know if she and
her husband are going to survive the winter. Her last pension check
arrived in June, and since then, she and her husband have eaten through
most of the pickled tomatoes and canned food on their shelves. “Now we
understand that no one needs us,” she said.
Shevchenko lives in Miusynsk, a village in eastern Ukraine of fewer
than 2,000 people that hugs the border between Luhansk and Donetsk, the
two regions controlled by pro-Russian rebels fighting Ukrainian forces.
Elsewhere across the region, some help has trickled in. Russian
Cossack commanders have set up a soup kitchen for the elderly and
distributed a one-time payment of 1,000 hryvnia, about $63, to
pensioners in other cities. Russian and international aid groups have
delivered food, clothing and basic medical supplies to the cities of
Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian aid trucks made a delivery to other parts
just before the New Year.
Donetsk residents line up at a soccer stadium to receive humanitarian aid, Dec. 22, 2014. Alan Chin for Al Jazeera America
But it appears that no humanitarian help
has reached Miusynsk. With no money and no food aid to speak of, many
villagers here say they feel forgotten in the 10-month conflict that has
left more than 4,700 dead.
International aid organizations warn that Miusynsk is an example of
the growing risk for a humanitarian crisis this winter in the
rebel-controlled areas as the conflict drags on and the region becomes
more and more isolated.
Most of the village supported the pro-Russian movement that declared
itself independent from a European-leaning Kiev after the massive Maidan
demonstrations in 2013. They patiently waited out the intense fighting
that brought the front line through their village, just as it had during
WWII.
In the wooded park in the center of this village, there is a memorial
to Soviet veterans of World War II. Freshly cut tree stumps surround
it, a result of locals’ desperation to survive the latest conflict they
have lived through.
People say they feel desperate and abandoned, forced to cut down
trees for firewood and beg for food from the Russian Cossacks standing
guard at rebel checkpoints.
To Shevchenko, Miusynsk’s slow starvation is yet another political game being played in this conflict.
The Ukrainian government on Dec. 1 canceled all state services and
payments to rebel-controlled areas. Teachers, doctors and pensioners
were told to evacuate if they wanted their monthly salaries.
Banking services were cut off from the central banks in Kiev, leaving
many of the 3.5 million civilians who still live in the conflict zone
in a desperate situation for cash. Unemployment has skyrocketed, since
most of the region’s industries and mines were either destroyed or shut
down. With no money, civilians are finding it difficult to buy basic
food supplies.
Pro-Russian rebel leaders, while promising to continue the fight
against Kiev, now admit the self-declared people’s republics lack the
infrastructure and funding to supply enough food to those who need it.
And medical supplies are dwindling at state hospitals to the point
that “only the very basic procedures” can be performed, said Igor
Bilodid, the deputy director of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s Center
for Reconstruction.
“The Russian aid convoys are for the needy, but now almost everybody
needs help,” he said, referring to the hundreds of white Russian trucks,
which Ukraine says cross the border illegally. Ukraine, the United
States and NATO say Russia is supplying the rebels with weapons and
finances, an accusation the Kremlin denies.
Despite warnings from the United Nations and other international
organizations that the situation in the east is rapidly deteriorating,
attempts to find a political solution to the conflict have been futile.
Peace talks moderated in Minsk, Belarus, by the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe have failed. Ukrainian President
Petro Poroshenko said he will meet with Russian, German and French
leaders later this month in the hopes of speeding up the peace process,
but few people in places like Miusynsk have faith it will return their
lives to normal. The high-level talks are confirmation to them that the
conflict between the rebels and Ukraine was never about them.
“This war is about America versus Russia. That’s it,” Shevchenko
said. “No one is paying attention to what we wanted. We just wanted to
speak Russian and be left alone.”
Now several politicians in Kiev are calling for legislation to
further isolate the rebel-held areas financially. Proposed legislation
would place an embargo on any commercial trade with businesses in the
rebel-held areas.
Humanitarian workers criticized Ukrainian battalions in late December
for blocking several truck convoys from We’ll Help, a charitable fund
owned by Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov.
Rima Fila, a spokesman for the fund, said the trucks contained food
and warm clothes for civilians living under rebel control — the same
kind of aid the organization has been distributing for several months.
He said We’ll Help has been one of the biggest aid organizations
operating in the region. Without new shipments, they would would run out
of supplies within two to three days, volunteers said.
But the battalions, backed by several newly elected Ukrainian
parliamentary deputies who showed up to the checkpoint to inspect the
convoy of 23 trucks, accused Akhmetov’s fund of sending supplies for the
rebel fighters, including what they said were cigarettes and camouflage
pants and jackets.
“We can’t allow the financing of these terrorists by allowing unknown
shipments to cross over without Ukrainian approval,” said Hennady
Moskal, the Kiev-appointed governor of the Luhansk regions that remain
in Ukraine’s control. About 40 percent of the oblast, or administrative
territory, is still part of Ukraine, but there are daily firefights
along the border with the rebels.
If the civilians living in the rebel-held areas are unhappy in their
situation, they have the right to rise up against the “illegal terrorist
groups” ruling their lands, Moskal said.
“Don’t underestimate our babushki,” he said, using the Russian word
for grandmothers and referring to the large elderly population that
remains in the rebel areas. “They supported these armed, illegal
bandits, and they can rise again and toss them out.”
Moskal’s blunt stance is little consolation to the pensioners in Miusynsk, however.
Valentina Semynina, inside her bakery kiosk. Anton Skyba
“We’re looking out for one another and help
one another when we can. That’s all we can do,” said Valentina
Semynina, 66, who sells baked goods from a kiosk on the village’s
central street. “Just the other day, we heard that one of the pensioners
— an old man — was stuck in his house and unable to move about. So we
sent one of the Cossacks over there to tend to him and bring him a
little food.”
In anticipation of a cold winter, Shevchenko said she used most of
her remaining savings to purchase as much coal as she could afford for
the small stove that heats her home. She is worried she will run out of
the coal she has, so until the cold temperatures truly set in, she’s
heating her two-room, first floor apartment with an electric space
heater in the bedroom. A coiled hot plate keeps her small kitchen warm
enough as temperatures hover just above freezing outside.
“Maybe if I ever get a pension, I’ll buy a bus ticket to Kiev and
stand outside the parliament and scream at them like they did during the
Maidan. I’ll tell them they should come see how we are living here
now,” she said. “All we wanted was for them to listen to us and to let
us live the way we wanted. Isn’t that what democracy is for?”
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