On its Dec. 14 cover, Time Magazine deemed 2020 the “worst year ever.” The obvious reason was the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 1.7 million people worldwide.
The logic of Time’s pronouncement was straightforward: Most people alive today have never experienced anything like 2020.
Ukraine’s experience is slightly different. When it comes to bad years, Ukrainians have a point of reference.
The truly disastrous year for the country was 2014, when over 100 protesters were killed during the EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych from power, and the Russian army invaded Ukraine, taking over Crimea and part of the eastern Donbas region, and throwing the country into a still ongoing war that killed over 13,000 people.
In some senses, the 2020 pandemic – which killed 16,500 people in Ukraine – was a lot like the tumultuous 2014.
This was the case for Maria Kraynyak, a civic volunteer from Ternopil Oblast, some 400 kilometers west of Kyiv. Ever since 2014, she has been raising funds for the Ukrainian military. But when the pandemic struck Ukraine, she switched to helping doctors battle COVID-19.
In spring, Kraynyak managed to raise Hr 740,000 ($27,400) to equip doctors in her local Monastyryska hospital, which was then the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in Ukraine.
“I barely ate and slept for two months,” she recalled.
Ukraine found itself unprepared for the coronavirus. Hospitals lacked masks, protective suits, and oxygen concentrators. Thousands of patients and doctors likely died as a result. In 2020, the disease killed at least 16,500 people in Ukraine.
Unlike the war, COVID-19 did not pose a direct threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty. But it did significantly shake the country. And if Russia’s aggression revealed that Ukraine’s defense and security were in ruins, the coronavirus exposed that healthcare was falling apart, too.
To save it from collapse, Ukrainians mobilized the same way they did when the war started.
Helping vs. harming
Not all Ukrainians, of course.
Some were so scared by COVID-19 that they took to the streets to protest the government’s response.
In late February, the residents of the town of Novi Sanzhary in Poltava Oblast, located 345 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, clashed with police as they protested against the arrival of evacuees from Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus originated.
The evacuees — all of whom tested negative for COVID-19 — were supposed to undergo a two-week quarantine at a local sanatorium. But locals feared they would bring the coronavirus to the town.
Angry residents of the town blocked roads and threw rocks at buses carrying Ukrainian and foreign citizens to the sanatorium. It later emerged that the locals had fallen victim to rumors suggesting all the evacuees were infected.
A man gestures to riot police officers as the residents of the town of Novi Sanzhary protest against the arrival of evacuees from China, where coronavirus originated, for quarantine at a medical facility on February 20, 2020. (AFP)
The government, in turn, faced fierce criticism for failed communication with the public. Part of the reason for the panic was that the evacuation had been shrouded in secrecy.
Similar protests happened in other places, too. But the unrest soon eased and many people sought to help each other fight the pandemic.
Volunteers started crowdfunding to buy protective gear for doctors and supply hospitals with the oxygen needed for treating COVID-19 patients.
After the government imposed a comprehensive lockdown and canceled public transport, people with cars started driving medical workers to hospitals for free in a bid to help.
Businesses opened their pockets, too. They donated fuel for ambulances, lung ventilators for treating pneumonia, a common complication of COVID-19, and food for pensioners stuck at home all alone amid the lockdown.
Health authorities’ mess up
While engaged citizens struggled to help doctors, the authorities at times demonstrated irresponsibility and unprofessionalism.
“Assessing the effectiveness of the Ministry of Health in curbing COVID-19 I would give them 2 out of 10 points,” a former deputy Health Minister and currently a member of parliament with the 20-member Voice faction Olga Stefanyshyna told the Kyiv Post.
From the very start of the pandemic, misleading statements by Ukrainian authorities undermined the seriousness of the anti-coronavirus measures, leading citizens to disregard the rules.
In March, Deputy Health Minister Viktor Lyashko, the country’s chief sanitary doctor, advised the nation against wearing medical masks because this “creates a false impression of protection.” He said that only patients with symptoms of respiratory illness should wear them.
Soon, the authorities changed their minds. Now, all people in Ukraine must wear masks in public places.
But few took it seriously. Even top state officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, often broke the rule, appearing in public without a medical mask. On one occasion Zelensky, together with Lyashko visited a cafe that ought to be closed amid the lockdown. They did not wear masks.
The government imposed fines for not wearing a mask in public. But, initially, the fines were excessively large — upwards of $600 — and required a judge’s ruling to be implemented. That made them impractical to impose.
Later, the fines were decreased to $6-9. Currently, they can be imposed on the spot. But people still flagrantly violate this rule.
Medical workers wearing protective gear escort a man to the infectious disease ward of Kyiv’s Oleksandrivska Clinical Hospital on Oct. 12, 2020. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
The government’s poor response to COVID-19 has provoked sharp criticism of Zelensky.
One source of anger was the decision to use money from the COVID-19 fund for other purposes. Over half of its budget of Hr 66 billion ($2.3 billion) went toward road construction — Zelensky had campaigned on promises of renovating roads.
Other officials also failed to set an example. Since March, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov had emphasized the necessity of having officially registered a family doctor, something required for receiving treatment for COVID-19.
But when he contracted COVID-19 in November, it turned out he didn’t have one. Only after this did Stepanov come up with the initiative to give everyone access to treatment, regardless of whether they have a family doctor. He later said that his wife was a doctor; hence he did not need to sign a declaration.
Another weakness in the state’s COVID-19 response is testing.
The authorities aimed to administer 75,000 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests daily by the end of the year, but ended up conducting around 36,000 tests per day in December.
“This is inaction. This is the minister’s biggest mistake because he did nothing to prepare the system and make everything work,” Stefanyshyna said.
“He had the money and he had the time. In six months, using this money it was possible to organize testing and help the hospitals,” she said, adding that the ministry failed to spend the money it had. The ministry has not responded to the Kyiv Post’s request for comment.
As Ukraine fails to test its population, some countries have already started vaccinating their citizens. The Ukrainian authorities also have plans to vaccinate about 20 million people — half of the country’s population — for free.
So far, however, they have only arranged for a supply of vaccines for 4 million people, which they will receive for free from COVAX, an international project for vaccine development.
The country plans to start vaccination in April-June 2021.
Going online
Despite vaccination beginning in some countries, there is little hope that life will return to normal anytime soon.
The COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed the world, depriving it of simple joys like hugs with elderly relatives, parties with friends and vacations abroad.
Meetings with family members became rare. Gatherings moved from bars to Zoom, and domestic trips replaced international ones due to travel restrictions.
Concerts, lectures, and work meetings all moved online. Those businesses unable to move online or switch to remote work often had to shut down, sparking a sharp rise in unemployment. In Ukraine, 71% more people lost their jobs in January-November compared to the same period in 2019.
Maryna Kosenko, 51, a frontline worker had to quit her job as a mechanic in Kyiv underground in August. It was after she had been forced to take a two-month-long unpaid leave during the spring lockdown when the public transport stopped.
“It was like the 90s. I have never thought that I would have to experience this once again, taking an unpaid leave like I did then,” Kosenko said. “It was very sudden.”
COVID-19 and its impact on Ukrainian’s lives caused a rise in anxiety, fatigue and insomnia, according to the findings of the Rating sociological group published in April.
“People became more aggressive recently,” Kosenko noticed. But she tries to keep positive:
“What can I do? Getting upset will not help much.”
