The old woman is missing part of her left foot. She wears an old coat that is drenched from the rain. She sits next to a wooden crutch on the wet, cold stairs leading to Kyiv's Shuliavsky metro station and shouts: "Help me, please. Give me some money. I don't have anything to eat."
Her cup is empty, however.
Kyivans are hardened to such images because they are so familiar. And, while reliable numbers are hard to come by, this winter has exposed already a large number of homeless people on the capital’s streets. The number of homeless is easily in the thousands, exacerbated by Ukraine’s economic crisis and Russia’s war in the east.
“Since this year we have seen a rise of homeless because of the war in eastern Ukraine,’ explains Natalia Ivanenchuk of Ukraine’s Emergency Ministry, putting the official homeless number at a conservative 12,000 people (not counting those displaced by war).
The homeless don’t get much sympathy.
Valeriy Kochernik, 19, says homeless don’t want to work. “Also, I believe that they’re alcoholics. Look at that woman. She
doesn’t seem 100 percent,” he says.
Aleksey Zakka sits on a blanket with a McDonald’s
cup filled with some coins, counting the drops of rainwater collecting in a bucket. He still wears his
summer jacket, as he doesn’t have money to buy a winter coat. In a small
plastic bag he carries some unwashed clothes. He used to work full-time in a supermarket, making
little money and taking mainly care for his mother who had cancer. His dad was
an alcoholic who left his mother when he was only a little kid. He doesn’t have
siblings.
Three years ago, his mother died when Zakka was 25 years old. He became homeless. “I just want a normal life, but I don’t know
how. Nobody is there to help me. Nobody would even
care if I die here on the street.”
Hundreds of Ukrainian
homeless people have already been sent to various hospitals for cold-related
afflictions. Zakka stays warm by staying near the Maidan metro station, where many homeless stay overnight.
Help seems far away for these group though, as the
number of homeless people keeps growing because of the severe economic crisis
and the war in eastern Ukraine, leaving many more people displaced, spread
throughout country. In Kiev alone, officially there are some 12,000 – if not
more – people living on the street.
Government officials are clearly not meeting the needs of the increasing numbers of homeless.
Zakka is not hopeful for any help.
“All
politicians are the same. They only care for their own money. They don’t care
about people like me. My country would do nothing for me. It’s a shame,” he says, glancing into his cup again only to see that he still has no money in it.
Stefan Huijboom is a freelance journalist in Ukraine.
