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MCC country representative Walter Bergen reports that on February 14, Russia cut the Ukraine's connections to the integrated electricity grid, causing widespread power outages.
"Industry is at a standstill, and hospitals in all but major centres are not functioning or are functioning on an emergency footing. All this in the midst of the worst cold snap since before World War II," Bergen says.
MCC worker Mary Raber, who teaches at Donetsk (Ukraine) Christian University, visited parts of the Ukraine and neighbouring Maldova in December and January.
"This place is unraveling," Raber states frankly in a written report. "Conditions have worsened for most people even since the summer. People who were optimistic and energetic seem much less hopeful. Feeding families is a full-time occupation; many people are without basic necessities."
"Electricity goes off at designated times during the day," Raber continues. "Most people cannot afford coal and spend their free hours cutting wood for fuel. Many people are in debt."
Raber says public institutions are in disarray, lacking essential supplies and funds to pay employees. Transport workers, teachers, hospital personnel and many others sometimes wait months for a salary.
"I have no way of confirming this but I have heard of prisoners starving and of abysmal conditions in orphanages. Certainly many more children, from infants to adolescents, are being abandoned than ever before," Raber writes.
People sense the government lacks control and/or compassion, Raber says. "The general feeling is that no one is driving the bus anymore, that the whole system is just careening along."
Christians want to help their neighbours, Raber says, but often are barely managing to support their own families.
Raber returned from her trip with suggestions for MCC involvement in various Christian endeavours, including providing material resources for a proposed children's shelter in the Donetsk suburb of Makeevka.
"We've been monitoring the situation with a growing sense of alarm," notes Bergen, who also travelled to the Ukraine in January, when two containers of MCC relief and medical supplies arrived in the port city of Odessa. A third container of milk powder and canned meat went to Donetsk. A container from MCC B.C. arrived in the Ukrainian city of Zaporosh'ye at the end of January.
"MCC worker Ruth Ann Stauffer and I were able to personally observe distribution of parts of three of the containers," Bergen says.
MCC material resources coordinator Kevin King says, "We expect to respond soon with a shipment that will include canned beef, medical supplies, school kits and possibly items of personal hygiene."
"The big picture looks bleak in the Ukraine," says Bergen, "but we do see signs of hope." For example, he says, more and more church leaders are seeing the value of a project done in Odessa. Three years ago, MCC helped the Odessa Theological Seminary buy printing equipment as part of the Old Testament Commentary project. That equipment now prints books, calendars and stationery that is sold, providing a substantial portion of the seminary's operating budget.
As seminary director Sergei Sannikov remarked to Bergen, "That's money we make with our own hands, even in these hard times. We need you (MCC) in these days but we also look forward to the day when we can stand on our own and work as equal partners in mission."
Emily Will, MCC Communications
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