The stress of the economic crisis is becoming too much to bear for some Ukrainians.
The stress of the economic crisis is becoming too much to bear for some Ukrainians.
Among them is Simferopol resident Dzhamilya Yurmanova. She and her husband took a leap of faith in the nation’s economic future three years ago to open a clothing store in the Crimean city. The family borrowed $80,000 from a bank, using their apartment as collateral. The investment didn’t pan out.
A fire in 2006 wiped out a good part of the business, while the current economic downturn may finish off the job. Unable to make the loan payments, the bank has seized the family’s apartment – and their hopes.
“We were naïve enough to believe in our own country, in Ukrainian banks, in launching a loan system and in the opportunity to start a business in the allegedly forming market economy,” Yurmanova said. “Our past belief in Ukraine has turned our present into a nightmare. The thought of becoming homeless is unbearable.”
Now Yurmanova, whose family also includes two children and a pensioner mother, is struggling against exhaustion. “We are so tired: Tired of the struggle for survival, of fighting for improvements, of fighting against the new corruption,” Yurmanova said. “We are tired of giving our children hopes for better lives and having them destroyed.”
Yurmanova came to Kyiv last month in a fighting mood. She joined a news conference of the Party of Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses. Declaring Ukraine’s economy to be in a state of emergency, the association is calling for a one-year suspension of payments on bank loans.
“It is a general national woe and not the woe of people who don’t want to pay the loans,” said Yaroslav Misyats, head of the Party of Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses.
Banks are, understandably, opposed. “[It would] lead to bankruptcy. Delay [of repayments] is possible in one scenario only: if government picks up the debts, like governments have in many other countries,” said Serhiy Shumylo, a spokesperson at the Ukrainian Association of Banks.
While Yurmanova is responding to crisis by organizing, protesting and fighting back, others have given up the struggle. Still more are not coping with the worsened conditions as well.
Authorities say they are noticing a rise in economic crisis-related problems, including suicides, family violence and acts of self-immolation.
During one week in February, Zaporizhya Oblast police registered two crisis-related suicides. One of them involved a 41-year-old resident of Semenivka village, the father of three children, one of whom is disabled. The father hanged himself on the way home from a labor exchange. Neither he nor his wife had a stable source of income. In his suicide note, found in the dead man’s car, he wrote that he decided to take his life after he lost his last Hr 500 at a slot machine. It was his final hope for improving the family’s financial situation.
That same week, also in Zaporizhya Oblast, a man laid off from his job hanged himself in his garage on Feb. 17 after he was unable to pay off a Hr 10,000 bank loan
Meanwhile, also in February, 31-year-old Serhiy Balyk from Mariupol in Donetsk’s Oblast set himself on fire in a lobby of a collection agency, according to local police. Balyk survived with burns covering 15 percent of his body. He told Inter TV that his inability to pay off his loan and threats from loan collectors drove him to the extreme act of self-violence.
His inability to get his own money out of the bank prompted 55-year old Volodymyr Pekarev of Sevastopol to another extreme. The man chained himself to the staircase of Ukrprombank’s lobby after numerous attempts to withdraw his deposit. The nation has frozen early withdrawals of deposits, while other banks have limited withdrawals, fearing a run on assets.
According to information agency “E-Crimea,” Pekarev lost his job. His $20,000 deposit – money earned from the sale of an apartment – is all that he has to live on. E-Crimea told the Kyiv Post that, after Ukrprombank made unspecified concessions, Pekarev left the bank’s premises.
These unhappy events are multiplying in Ukraine.
“The number of people seeking help at our place increased by one-and-a-half in the last several months,” said Lyudmila Krupchynska, director of Kyiv’s state-run Center of Social-Psychological Assistance.
Psychologist Oksana Safronova believes domestic violence is on the rise. “There was a serious outbreak after the New Year. Times are stressful now. The media are fueling the despair. People vent their anger on the closest ones: their families. That’s why constant family support is of vital importance today.”
Some, of course, emerge through times of crisis even stronger.
“Stress mobilizes all human abilities. If one makes it through, he becomes significantly stronger,” Safronova said. “Crisis reveals the true faces of things and are the best time to find out who you really are. We’re not enduring totalitarianism, war or the Holodomor. We will survive.”
