On the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion
on hope, KHARPP events, and a new project
Monday will be the three-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this week, we passed the eleven-year anniversary of the true beginning of the war with the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
With a picture looking ever-bleaker and less certain, we want to thank all of you for continuing to support our work and to stand with Ukraine. When KHARPP was founded at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we could not have anticipated that the war would still be going on after three years, and that the need for international humanitarian support from grassroots groups would continue to be so high.
The pausing of USAID funding earlier this year by President Trump has had a huge impact on the picture of aid in Ukraine, with both international and local groups heavily reliant on US support. We are, thankfully, not one of those groups, having been able to keep up our work relying only on your donations. However, the cutting of this aid has massively increased our workload. When we began our repair programme, we were for the most part the only aid group working in the majority of our villages. Over the past two-and-a-half years, others joined, both small and large, creating a network of support, each group with its own specialties and abilities. Whilst this conglomeration of small groups was never enough to fulfil all the repair needs, it was a huge improvement on the initial situation where we had been working mostly alone. The USAID freeze mean that many of these groups are facing either pausing or permanently stopping their work. As a group with such a firm base of donors, we hope that we will be able to take over at least some of this work, and ensure that the communities we work in don’t suffer too much more as a consequence of this funding loss.
As well as continuing our usual repairs programme around Kharkiv Oblast, with the recent repair of twenty homes in Derhachi (some preliminary photos above, but we will share a proper report in the coming weeks), we have also begun a new project this year. The situation in the south of the Donbas region has worsened hugely over the past few months, leading to a renewed outpouring of refugees. A few weeks ago, we were contacted by Serhii, a former farmer from Rozlyv, a village which is now just 2km from the frontline, and being increasingly pounded everyday. Now a volunteer medic in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Serhii spent all of his savings on buying three rundown cottages in rural Cherkasy Oblast, central Ukraine, where he moved his family and neighbours. However, the cottages were not, by anyone’s standards, fit for habitation, with no working plumbing, holes not only in the roof but also the walls, and mould growing everywhere. We ultimately decided that the longevity of this project meant that it was worth us funding the total repair of these cottages, to ensure that Serhii’s family and their neighbours have somewhere secure and safe to call their own. Whilst we long to see Ukraine’s territorial integrity restored, and people such as these able to return to their homes in Donetsk Oblast, we recognise that this is unlikely to happen in the short-to-medium term, and thus to be able to enable them to make a new life elsewhere is the most practical support we can provide. Next month, these repairs ought to be complete, and we we look forward to visiting the houses and providing you all with a full update and report.
It’s really wonderful to be able to start a new project, expanding our help to a new group of people. It’s particularly gratifying to be able to help someone like Serhii, who has spent not just the past three years of full-scale invasion, but the past eleven years of war, helping others, including through evacuations most dangerous parts of the country, aid deliveries across the frontline, and the organisation of homes for other refugees. He has done all of this — working for free — in the knowledge that one day soon the same fate of those he was helping would in all likelihood befall him. Now that day has come, we are so pleased that we can offer him a drop of the same kindness that has been shown him, by helping his family and neighbours. There are thousands of Ukrainians like him, who don’t get the recognition of foreign volunteers like us, but are doing 100x the work, and it is an honour to work alongside them.
We began KHARPP with the motto “helping those who leave, and those who stay behind” and a commitment to flexibility and sensitivity to the changing situation on the ground. In simultaneously assisting those in Kharkiv Oblast who can stay in their homes, and those from Donetsk Oblast who are forced to make new homes elsewhere, we hope that we are seeing this motto through.
One of the cottages Serhii is repairing.
We’d also like to draw your attention to two other events happening in Oxford over the coming weeks. The Oxford Kharkiv Association is hosting a ceilidh on 1 March with proceeds going to KHARPP, whilst, on 15th March, for the third year in a row, a “Reeling for Ukraine” event will take place at Hertford College, Oxford, kindly sponsored by Payne Hicks Beach LLP. A huge thanks to the organisers of both events - and if you are in the area, make sure to head down to one (or both!).
Today there will also be a march in London demanding the removal of Russian troops from Ukraine, of which KHARPP is a co-organiser and where we will be speaking. With apologies for the very short notice, we would love to see as many people as possible joining us there.
There is no pretending that this period is easy. In many ways, it has been the most difficult few weeks since the beginning of the war. However, we do not have the right to give up or to walk away; as long as Ukraine is fighting, we will be standing with it, and we urge you to stay with us. The bleakness is very real, but there is light too, and we hope that we will be continue to be a small part of enabling that light, with your help. Please stick with us, and keep donating, so that we can keep supporting communities that might otherwise get left behind.
AMAZING WORK, Ada! Stay safe! Laura