Ukraine, Divided
"People queued for days to get money from the rebels and some fought each other. They had to fire shots into the air to make everyone leave once the cash ran out."
Lidiya, 61, Donetsk, Ukraine
"The conflict has wiped off relatively comfortable living standards achieved in the last two decades."
"[A persistent stalemate may lead to mass migration in the face of a] slow and painful recovery."
Lilit Gevorgyan, senior analyst, IHS Global Insight Inc.
"This has drastically worsened the plight of people living there [Donetsk and Luhansk 'republics'], seriously affecting access to basic services and food."
United Nations report
"[Aid is] distributed in the centre and people living on the outskirts just don't get to it in time because city transport isn't working."
"We brought 130 packages of food to Debaltseve and a long line appeared near our bus in minutes. Those people were really hungry."
Dmitry Filimonov, Debaltseve
Life is no longer what it once was, within Ukraine's breakaway republics. Between the ceasefires, embargoes and broken supply lines, a meagre economy has arisen, afflicting people with shortages in all basic commodities, let alone inflicting upon them the necessity to take extraordinary measure to do their banking, and to receive government benefits and services, cut off since December in rebel territory.
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| A woman cleans shattered glass after a shop was damaged during recent shelling between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces in Donetsk. The devastation is on full display in Donetsk, the combat zone’s biggest city, where billboards have vanished from streets, replaced by banners for conscription to the rebel forces that wield control. Photographer: Petr David Josek/AP Photos |
The pro-Russian insurgency that has riven Ukraine has left people living in the self-proclaimed republics in dire economic straits. While the antagonists face one another in their geopolitical conflict, the people living in the area find it a struggle to accomplish once-mundane tasks taken for granted. Lidiya, for example, pays a local middleman to fetch her pension across the front line from a bank in government-controlled Kharkiv. She now grows food in her garden in Petrovskoe, 63 kilometres from Ukrainian territory.
Life has become a subsistence trial for most of the population. Who have seen the existential need to resort to a subsistence economy of trade, barter and the hiring of middlemen capable of passing through lines separating rebel territory and Ukrainian territory. The underground economy that now prevails of necessity has arisen in the shadow of ceasefires and conflict.
Normality of civil life has been elusive. Streets are littered with garbage, cash machines no longer are filled. So Soviet-era survival techniques are being tackled as a means to overcome the need to somehow attain cash, medicines and necessities of life, couriered from government-held territories to pass through rebel lines. Artillery has been mostly silenced by the February truce, but Ukrainians face a struggle to access food staples.
The government in Kyiv requires people now to carry with them travel passes to identify separatists and keep them at arm's length, leaving many citizens effectively stranded, deepening an already existing humanitarian crisis. Social Minister Pavlo Rozenko stated it takes a month to obtain papers enabling entry to government-controlled territory. Without a pass options are outlined on flyers at bus stops and through social networks.
In Donetsk, businessmen use contacts at border checkpoints to shuttle their clients in minibuses 65 kilometres to Konstantynivka, Ukrainian territory where cash can be withdrawn and local shops visited for items from antibiotics to baby food. The markets and stores open in Donetsk and cities like Debaltseve are known for their shortages. Humanitarian aid helps but it is insufficient; Dmitry Filmonov collected $2000-worth of donations from Moscow and Kyiv, gone in an instant.
Pension tours taking the elderly to Ukrainian banks to receive their monthly payment of about $65 has the service charging $13 for transport. Before the fighting, the trip from Petrovskoe to Ukrainian territory took four hours; now it is a 36 hour drive. "I have to pay penalties for crossing the border illegally", said Oleh. "We're looking now for the best routes."
"Once every two weeks, Mariupol steel workers get paid at the same time as buses arrive from Donetsk carrying people to take out cash. You see lines of 50 to 100 people at ATMs and there can be scuffles", said Eduard Horlov. People have resigned themselves to the miserable inconveniences that have interrupted their lives.
"It costs a lot for me, of course", Petrovna from Petrovskoe agreed. She paid 1,000 hryvnya ($42) to arrange for her pension to be re-registered in another town. "But I can't do it myself. It's good there are people who're dealing with this", she sighed.
Labels: Conflict, Economy, Russia, Secession, Ukraine
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 08, 2015
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