‘This Is My Third War’: Ukraine’s Elderly Are Conflict’s Forgotten Victims

• 04, 17, 2022
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Shuffling down the corridor of a refugee center in Ukraine with his gray tracksuit sleeve rolled to his shoulder, 71-year-old Vladimir Lignov reveals the remains of a severed limb he says he can still feel.

“It was on the 21st of March, I went out to smoke. Then a shell hit. I lost my arm,” he says, recalling the strike on his home in Avdiivka, an industrial hub in east Ukraine and a military priority for invading Russian forces.

Now in relative safety in the central Ukraine city of Dnipro the former train conductor is among what aid workers say is a particularly vulnerable segment of the population — the elderly.

In the Dnipro maternity hospital, hastily opened to accommodate people fleeing Moscow’s forces, Lignov is struggling to come to terms with what happened and why — not to mention what might come next.

Medical staff at the Myrnorad hospital near ongoing fighting and where Lignov was treated after the strike say he should return for treatment in a week.

Staff in Dnipro, he says, told him he should return in three days.

“I don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe it’s better if I just go to the graveyard. I don’t want to go on living,” he says, as another elderly man hobbles past him in the corridor. 

A van arrives from the east ferrying three elderly people groaning in pain as volunteers lower them gingerly into wheelchairs.

Other passengers are erratic. One man, dazed, reaches for his cigarettes as soon as he gets out of the van and grabs his belongings as if he is rushing to safety.

“The hardest are the people who spent long stretches in cellars,” says Olga Volkova, the volunteer director of the center, that houses 84 residents, most of whom are elderly. “A lot of people were left on their own. We helped them before the war, but then they were left to fend for themselves.”

The elderly are “often forgotten, very vulnerable” in times of war says Federico Dessi, the Ukraine director of the NGO Handicap International, a group that provides equipment and will financially help the Dnipro home.

“Cut off from their families” and “sometimes unable to use telephones or communicate” they are particularly vulnerable in conflicts, Dessi said.

Leaving aside physical health, the elderly often require “additional help, which is often not available.”

Aleksandra Vasiltchenko, an 80-year-old ethnic Russian from Ukraine is luckier than most of the other new arrivals.

For one, she is sure on her feet, despite other ailments, and her grandson comes to pick her up as soon as she arrives at the Dnipro home.

She was relieved to have escaped after spending weeks alone in her three-room apartment in the eastern Ukraine city of Kramatorsk, where Russian strikes recently killed nearly 60 people trying to flee by rail.

“I was hiding all the time in the bathroom. I was constantly crying. I was imprisoned in my own flat,” she tells AFP, saying she wished death on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children.  

Perched on a bedside, her hands gripping a walking aid, Zoya Taran considers herself among the lucky ones — that’s despite having only one working kidney, precarious balance, diabetes and poor eyesight.

That’s because her rock musician son quit a career in “show business” two decades ago to care for her.

“I am that elderly babushka,” she says smiling. “My son is my eyes, my hands and my legs. I have nothing on my own.”

So as Russian strikes edged closer to Sloviansk, Taran, who had initially hesitated to leave, finally decided it was time in order to “save my son.”

“Why do we need this war? What do they want from us?” she says, sobbing.

Citing Ukrainian government figures, Handicap International estimates that 13,000 elderly Ukrainians or people with disabilities have arrived in the wider Dnipro region since Russia launched its invasion in late February.

Another hub, mainly for evacuees from the besieged and destroyed port city of Mariupol, and their children, has also offered shelter to elderly residents from the east. 

“Even if you open 10 places like this, they will all be full,” says Konstantin Gorshkov, who runs the center with his wife Natalia.

Among the 30 new arrivals joining the roughly 100 existing residents is 83-year-old Yulia Panfiorova from Lysychansk in the northwestern part of the Lugansk region, under attack by Russian forces.

The former economics professor — now hard of hearing — was “very scared” by the sound of shooting in her town and the three shells that stuck close enough to her home to blow out her windows. 

“This is my third war,” she said, referring first to World War II, then the outbreak of fighting in 2014 between the Ukrainian army and pro-Kremlin separatists.

“Lysychansk was freed from the Nazis in 1943. I remember how we returned home. Of course, I have some memories about it.

“They were Nazis. Then our country was invaded, and now our country has been invaded by a foreign state. Then the freedom of our state was at threat. Now it is the same. We should fight… But the war is so scary.”
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Ukraine Refuses to Surrender Besieged Mariupol to Russian Forces

• 04, 17, 2022
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Ukrainian officials say their forces in the besieged city of Mariupol will not submit to Russian demands to surrender. They are also calling for more help from Western allies. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Pope Urges World Not to Surrender to Evil, Violence in Easter of War

• 04, 17, 2022
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On Easter Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus, the victor over sin, fear and death, called on the world not to surrender to evil and violence. He made an impassioned plea for an end to the war in Ukraine and urged the faithful to appeal for peace and the end to cruelty and senseless destruction.

For the crowds this Easter was a true resurrection after two years of pandemic that brought Holy Week events to a standstill.

Pope Francis made a strong plea for peace in what he called this “Easter of war.” Tens of thousands turned out in a sunny but windy Saint Peter’s Square this year to attend Easter mass, hear the pope’s words and receive his blessing.

In his Urbi et Orbi [to the city and the world] Easter message the pope called for peace to return in war-torn Ukraine, so sorely tried by the violence and destruction of the cruel and senseless war into which it was dragged. Francis called on the world not to get used to war and said “may a new dawn of hope soon appear.”

Let there be a decision for peace, Francis said, may there be an end to the flexing of muscles while people are suffering. He urged everyone to commit tocall for peace from balconies and streets and expressed the hope that the leaders of nations will hear the people’s plea for peace.

The pope’s thoughts went to the many Ukrainian victims, the millions of refugees and internally displaced persons, the divided families, the elderly left to themselves, the lives broken and the cities razed to the ground. Francis added that amid the pain of war, there are also encouraging signs, many acts of charity as families and communities open their doors to welcome migrants and refugees throughout Europe.

On Easter Sunday believers mark the most joyful day in the Christian calendar which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus three days after his death on the cross.

Today, more than ever, the pope said, we hear echoing the Easter proclamation so dear to the Christian East: “Christ is risen! He is truly risen!” Today, more than ever, he added, we need him, at the end of a Lent that has seemed endless.

Francis said the conflict in Europe should also make the world more concerned about other situations of conflict, suffering and sorrow, situations in many areas of the world that cannot be overlooked or forgotten. He mentioned the Middle East, racked by years of conflict and division and specifically Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and Myanmar. The pope also urged peace for the whole of the African continent and for assistance to be given to people suffering from social conditions in Latin America. 

Francis ended his Easter message with powerful words: “Peace is possible, peace is a duty, peace is everyone’s prime responsibility.” 
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Pope Prays for Peace as Ukrainian Mayor, Lawmakers Attend Easter Vigil

• 04, 17, 2022
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Pope Francis on Saturday invoked “gestures of peace in these days marked by the horror of war” in an Easter vigil homily in St. Peter’s Basilica attended by the mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol and three Ukrainian lawmakers.

The pontiff noted that while “many writers have evoked the beautify of starlit nights, the nights of war, however, are riven by streams of light that portend death.”

Francis did not refer directly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but he has called for an Easter truce in order to reach a negotiated peace. That call appeared in vain Saturday, as Russia resumed missile and rocket attacks on Kyiv, western Ukraine and beyond in a stark reminder that the whole country remains under threat.

At the end of his homily, the pontiff directly addressed Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov and Ukrainian lawmakers Maria Mezentseva, Olena Khomenko and Rusem Umerov, who sat together in the front row.

“In this darkness of war, in the cruelty, we are all praying for you and with you this night. We are praying for all the suffering. We can only give you our company, our prayer,” Francis said, adding that “the biggest thing you can receive: Christ is risen,” speaking the last three words in Ukrainian.

Fedorov was abducted and held for five days by Russian troops after they occupied Melitopol, a strategic southern city. Fedorov and the lawmakers have been visiting European capitals asking for more aid for their war-torn country and met earlier Saturday with the Vatican’s No. 2, Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.

For Christians, Easter is a day of joy and hope, as they mark their belief that Jesus triumphed over death by resurrection following his crucifixion.

“For with Jesus, the Risen Lord, no night will last forever; and even in the darkest night, the morning star continues to shine,” the pope said in his homily.

Francis, who has been suffering from an inflamed ligament, did not participate in a candle-lit procession up the aisle of the darkened basilica at the start of the Mass. He instead sat in front of the altar on a wooden upholstered chair in white robes. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re said the Mass instead.

Arrayed before the steps of the altar was a row of cardinals, wearing ivory robes and face masks for the first Easter vigil Mass with the faithful present since the pandemic.

Among those in the basilica were seven adults who were baptized by the pope during the Mass. The Vatican said these new faithful are from Italy, the United States, Albania and Cuba. From a shell-shaped silver dish, Francis poured holy water over the bowed heads of the seven, after they walked up to him one by one and listened to him calling their first names.

On Sunday, Francis celebrates Easter Mass in the late morning in St. Peter’s Square and gives a speech from the basilica balcony, known by its Latin name “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and to the world), in which he recounts the trials and conflicts facing the world.
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