August 18, 2017

Criticism shifts to Ukraine’s authorities, while Russia’s war in the east continues

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The president of the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, Larissa Kyj (center, left), is presented a thank-you letter by Lt. Col. Yuriy Podolyan on behalf of the Kharkiv Military Hospital. The UUARC was able to buy $140,000 worth of rehabilitation therapy equipment for injured soldiers being treated at three hospitals thanks to a donation by the late Gregory Malinowski.

With the war so far away for most, the Ukrainian population’s attention has turned away from Russia and the war to the failures of Ukraine’s authorities and the country’s economic woes.

The president of the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, Larissa Kyj (center, left), is presented a thank-you letter by Lt. Col. Yuriy Podolyan on behalf of the Kharkiv Military Hospital. The UUARC was able to buy $140,000 worth of rehabilitation therapy equipment for injured soldiers being treated at three hospitals thanks to a donation by the late Gregory Malinowski.

The president of the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, Larissa Kyj (center, left), is presented a thank-you letter by Lt. Col. Yuriy Podolyan on behalf of the Kharkiv Military Hospital. The UUARC was able to buy $140,000 worth of rehabilitation therapy equipment for injured soldiers being treated at three hospitals thanks to a donation by the late Gregory Malinowski.

KHARKIV, Ukraine – The Kharkiv Military Hospital has settled into the routine of this simmering war. Around five to 10 patients arrive each week. The head doctors say eight out 10 soldiers admitted, which include those sick as well as wounded, recover – though not necessarily psychologically.

The injured soldiers lie bandaged up on modern-looking hospital beds. Demoralized, they say they are being used as fodder because under the Minsk agreements they are rarely allowed to answer enemy fire. While they understand that without Russia there would be no war, they lament that Ukraine’s authorities have no strategy to end it.

“If they wanted to end this war, they could in two weeks,” said Artur Dedchenko, who lies with his leg up in a cast. “Everyone who wants to leave [the occupied territory], should leave and then they should close up the block posts.”

Mr. Dedchenko’s chances of making a full recovery have just improved thanks to a $140,000 donation by the late Gregory Malinowski to the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee. The money was used to buy and ship American physical therapy equipment to three hospitals, including the Kharkiv hospital, and hospitals in Poltava and Dnipro. Before, soldiers would have to try to receive treatment at one of the three rehabilitation centers in Ukraine. Now they can use one of these gym-like rooms at the hospitals.

“Unlike at the beginning of the war, we don’t have problems with basic equipment and food,” said Yuriy Podolyan, a lieutenant colonel and military doctor at the Kharkiv hospital. “What we need is volunteer psychologists and medical equipment.”

The 2014 revolution and the subsequent war sparked an unprecedented outburst of active patriotism in Ukraine that has been difficult to sustain.

With the war so far away for most, and the threat of all-out war less acute, the population’s attention has turned away from Russia and the war to the failures of Ukraine’s authorities and the country’s economic woes.

More than 60 percent of the population say their household income has significantly or somewhat worsened since 2014, and the majority named price increases as their primary concern, according to a July survey on the public mood by the International Republican Institute (IRI).

“It used to be 8 hrv to the dollar under [former President Viktor] Yanukovych. The country feels like it’s going down into a bottomless pit,” said soldier Yevhen Pasichnyk, as he woke up from a general anesthetic, echoing many Ukrainians’ pain about the national currency’s devaluation.

Only 4 percent, according to the same IRI survey, blamed Russia for the current situation in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and the government received 61 percent of the blame.

In addition, Ukrainian attitudes towards Russia are improving, according to a recent survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. In fact, more Ukrainians now view Russia positively than negatively for the first time since the war began.

Before the war, from 2008 to 2013, the number of Ukrainians who had a “very positive or mostly positive” attitude towards Russia fluctuated between 80 and 90 percent. This number dropped significantly for the first time to 52 percent in April 2014, and then hit an all-time low of 30 percent in May 2015. Since then, however, the number of Ukrainians with positive attitudes towards Russia has been slowly climbing, and as of May 2017 it stands at 44 percent, with just 37 percent holding a negative attitude.

“I think those who answer ‘positively’ think of Russia as simply Russian people – their friends, their relatives and not the Russian government,” said Anton Hrushetsky of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, who carried out the research.

“It is only when the war is in a ‘hot phase,’ like in May 2015, after Debaltseve, that people connect the two,” said Mr. Hrushetsky. “The war is, unfortunately, part of normal life: One or two soldiers die in the east everyday. Not much changes.”

Ironically, Russians’ opinion of Ukrainians have continued to worsen. The Russia-based Levada Center’s poll from May found that only 26 percent of Russians have a “very positive or mostly positive” attitude towards Ukraine.

A Ukrainian soldier with a spinal injury (left) learns to walk again at the Ukrainian Research Institute for Prosthetics and Rehabilitation. The institute’s director, Antonina Salieieva, (center) explains the process to Larissa Kyj, president of the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, and Vera Prynko, head of the UUARC’s Kyiv office (right). They are accompanied by Yuriy Podolyan (center), a lieutenant colonel and military doctor at the Kharkiv hospital.

Isobel Koshiw

A Ukrainian soldier with a spinal injury (left) learns to walk again at the Ukrainian Research Institute for Prosthetics and Rehabilitation. The institute’s director, Antonina Salieieva, (center) explains the process to Larissa Kyj, president of the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, and Vera Prynko, head of the UUARC’s Kyiv office (right). They are accompanied by Yuriy Podolyan (center), a lieutenant colonel and military doctor at the Kharkiv hospital.

Yevhen Fedchenko, director at the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism and an expert on Russian propaganda, said this can be explained by the fact that influential Ukrainians haven’t matched Russia’s level of propaganda.

“If you watch Ukrainian television, you won’t hear a top politician or government official preaching to hate Russians or to kill Russians,” said Mr. Fedchenko. “Also, Russia’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda didn’t happen overnight with the Maidan.”

Mr. Fedchenko added that, in some ways, Ukrainians are still influenced by Russian propaganda, although recent events have made them more resilient: “Well, 44 percent view Russia positively, so they definitely do not think that only Russia is responsible for the war,” Mr. Fedchenko observed.

But when they look at what are considered Russia’s liberal classes, for instance, Ukrainians are increasingly disappointed, according to Mr. Fedchenko. Giving the example of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny agreeing with the annexation of Crimea, he commented: “All those people who they used to see as a different part of Russia, they now understand they are the same and that the problem is with the general political culture in Russia, rather than with Putin or individual figures.”

Back in Kharkiv, the hospital and its neighbor, Ukraine’s only prosthetics research center, soldier on. The prosthetics center is having increasing success. The equipment is modern; the staff are organized and eager to build on their skills. One soldier we met, whose leg was amputated at mid-calf, was able to walk two months later.

Lying in the Kharkiv hospital, Hryhorii Gunko, who also lost half of his calf and is awaiting his next operation, asks me: “How long do they say it will take? For the prosthetics? I want to be home for the New Year.”

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