Editor’s Note:

Ben returned to Kyiv in August of this year after organizing the  sister city project between Ashland and Svyatohirs’k, Ukraine, motivated by his first trip in the fall of 2022. This journey took him to Warsaw, Kyiv, Izium, the Donetsk Region, Kharkiv, Svyatohirs’k, Apostolove, Odessa and many villages affected by the war that are in serious need of food and water.  He returns to Ashland at the end of this month. In some areas he participated in delivering supplies with groups such as the Aqua Ducks.

His original goal was to set up an acupuncture clinic to do treatments for those who needed care. On both trips he hoped to use his skills as an acupuncturist to support those injured in the war.  
Still, he most often found himself assisting with deliveries of essential food, water and supplies to outlying villages along the eastern part of Ukraine, not far from the Russian border. 

Below are Ben Stott’s recent journal entries and photos thanks to WhatsApp. We plan to publish a second installment in Clear Actions next week. Ben returns at the end of September.

Trip 2, Part I of Ben Stott’s narrative and photos August 10 through September 11, 2023.  

Kyiv, Ukraine, August 10

I am trying to discern what has changed since December is difficult. Kyiv is still full of cars, most stores seem open and there is no curfew. I saw municipal road repair crews and landscaping  maintaining the civil infrastructure. But there are less people in the streets, no-one smiles, I hear stories of crime and corruption and there’s this- the underlying poverty which predates the war.

Ashland’s sister city project is interfacing with the nonprofit  Ukraine International, which has a hands on approach to managing donations and controlling resources and deliveries. This woman is the Allison, Kyiv Coordinator for Ukraine Aid International’s Ashland-Svyatohirs’k Project.  
  
Ben is aware of the challenges faced by NGO’s trying to get aid to those in need. 

He writes: 

Here’s an example of the kind of corruption that is rampant here. An NGO was providing water to the communities down by Kherson who lost their wells when the dam got blown up and saving lives. Another group came in saying they were from the government and were in charge of all water distributions so the original NGO had to funnel all their water deliveries (made by their purification system) through them. This group then sold the water to the same people who had been getting it for free. When the original group tried to complain and stop the rip-off they got run out of town. This is why it is so important that UAI has the regional director of the anti-corruption police supporting their work. Let’s see if that’s enough. It’s already clear everything is not all rosy over here. We just have to work it through and not be naive.

Kharkiv, August 13

Today I met with three Aid workers who’ve been here for a long time. Much of what they shared was the frustration of trying to get anything done. They said there were four enemies, not just one: the Russians. The others are corruption, apathy and bureaucracy. All of these relate to the first. Under the Soviet system, the government owned everything, decided everything, controlled everything. Like when we were kids when everything was decided for us. So as citizens they never learned that they could make things happen themselves. Individual initiative was frowned on or punished. Speaking out, feeling empowered, wanting to change the system led to the gulag. Hence apathy. The only way to get anything more than was allotted to you was to join the party/government and steal it. Because people hated the government stealing was cool, like Robin  Hood. These attitudes remain in institutional settings and among older people invested in the way things were. 

So there is much more collaboration and spying and questioning the war than gets written about, especially because the present government is doing next to nothing to provide social services to the sick, elderly, internally displaced and disadvantaged. They are relying exclusively on the goodwill of international aid groups and I suspect we’re encouraging everyone (except men) to leave the country and be someone else’s burden so they could focus on the war. In the old days there was at least food and some medical care provided usually and people compare. But they also remember the Russians purposefully starved 3-4 million Ukrainian farmers in 1932-33, a genocide second only to the Holocaust, called the Holodomar, but where is that recorded. Did you hear about that in school? 

So talking to these guys I got a lot of context and a wider view of what it’s like here now. Paul, the older guy has started kids programs for the many young people living in shelters, who you see wandering the streets. None have been to school since the war began and  many in the 5-8 range haven’t learned to read or write. Their parents who’ve lost their homes and livelihoods and are living in small rooms with multiple kids in shelters often drink out of despair so child abuse is rampant also.

The kids I  met in the park yesterday told me they spent every day there. At first they attacked me for filming them and tried to take my camera  but being an American they wanted to be friends. They told me they come to this park every day.

Kharkiv, Aug 18

On a personal note, a small wonderful teaching, characteristic of trying to find one’s way in doing something useful in this frustrating lovely country. For some time, actually since August 19, I’ve been looking for a new project. When I was here before the situation was different, more urgent, disorganized and chaotic and there was need of drivers and helpers of all kinds. I didn’t realize things had changed so much and that aid work was more organized with lots of Ukrainian charities having taken over providing for the needs of cities now many months post liberation. So I have spent 10 days doing very little and truthfully was doubting my reason for being here and was thinking of quitting, but with a sense of failure or at least unfinishedness. 

This morning I had packed my bags and decided to head south through  Dnipro, Micholiav and then come home. As a final goodbye to my friends in UAI here I went with them to a meeting with a group of Ukrainians setting up a new rehabilitation clinic. The meeting was in a large old mansion (see pictures below) an involved lots of talking…For some reason my friends left and I remained with the group to explain my intent to treat a cohort of soldiers with PTSD to see if it could add value to the other modalities of therapy already at han

And all of a sudden at the last moment, the stars aligned, two clinic directors arrived to discuss the idea and as of now I’m lined up to do some test case treatments tomorrow with an invitation to teach doctors here the methodology. That I laughed at, as they had no idea what acupuncture training entails, but their enthusiasm was sincere. I had offered to give five patients five treatments each, to evaluate the benefit of acupuncture for rehabilitation and as of tonight it looks like the door has opened finally to offer my particular skill set here, not just truck driving. 

Last trip I never got this close to opening hospital doors to Chinese medicine. So the blessing and teaching once again was that when I was pushing and struggling to find a project, it seemed all doors were closed but when I gave up, even reluctantly, the clouds parted and something potentially wonderful appeared out of the blue. This perhaps sounds like a trite lesson, but when it happens viscerally, unexpectedly, as it did today, I’m left feeling happy and in a new rhythm of trust in the mysterious way things happen here- perhaps everywhere, but easier to notice in these peculiar circumstances. So I will stay here in Kharkiv as long as this project lasts…”

Svyatohirs’k, August 21    

This town is two two years from its 500th anniversary.

A bizarre encounter I had was with an old lady sitting on the side of the road who suddenly started talking to me in English. At first she was friendly but it suddenly changed into a tirade wherein she was convinced that Biden was controlling Putin and forced him to start the war so the US was responsible for everything bad happening. This is pretty much the party line, blaming the US as the great satan and thinking of Russia as a victim of western machinations. It was the fervor of her convictions I found uncomfortable. Her mind was made of stone- the power of lies repeated over and over till they seem true. Some variation of this trope is a unifying theme in the stop the war wing of both the far right and the far left. Everything about the US is bad. We’re a dark force manipulating everything happening on the world stage and only interested in domination and profits.  

This is the essence of Russian disinformation  war, getting us to doubt and turn against ourselves by leveraging half truths and theories which seem plausible but are unproven or unprovable and letting them gain credence by being spread widely in social media. Bot farms are real and nefarious. Interesting that the mayor heard everything she said but remained unperturbed. That’s the difference between Ukraine and Russia that is most notable. They don’t foster the culture of fear where people can’t speak their minds for fear of imprisonment or death. At least I haven’t seen signs of it.

I’ve completed my job and seen a good part of Sviatohirs’k. The town has a lovely feel nestled in the trees by a meandering river, extremely lush and green and sort of protected by this beautiful monastery (lavra) nestled in the hillside just across the river.

August 24, Apostolov

Strange economic quirk that I’ve seen over a dozen gigantic solar banks here in Apostolove, that otherwise looks like the town that time forgot.

Like all the infrastructure I’ve seen here it’s old Soviet equipment at least 50 years old, funky but solid, like all the apartment buildings. I don’t know who actually built this but it reeks of the USSR and shows how pervasive their influence has been.

The well where water comes from to serve a whole small town. The municipal water system was destroyed when the Russians blew up the big dam and dried up the canals that brought water to hundreds of small towns like Apostolove, all of which are now dependent on groups like Aqua- Ducks, a massive humanitarian effort. Now larger NGOs are stepping in to create longer term solutions, primarily by drilling wells and providing water purification devices to treat contaminated local water resources, like lakes. The long term solution will be to pipe water from another reservoir 50 miles or more to the north. The Dnieper River is pretty much an infinite source of water if it can be re-harnessed.

The following is a small gallery of photos that Ben supplied to show some of the realities of volunteer relief work in Ukraine.

Here’s a little comparison that perhaps captures the puzzle of Russia’s actions in Ukraine. My friend Igor explained to me that the Soviet Union was very good about caring for people with disabilities, particularly blindness. They provided housing, work training, even sanitariums at the beach for blind citizens to rest and vacation, all with braille signs and other things that made life easier for them. Just now when the Russians blew up the Kokoshka Dam and flooded much of Kherson, they allowed 1500 blind people and others in wheelchairs in the town of Oleshski to die the most terrible death by drowning (in foul water) without doing a thing. Imagine being unable to walk and seeing the water rising up your body inch by inch.

-Ben Stott