The impact and needs of the elderly and vulnerable as the war in Ukraine marks second year

As the early winter morning light slipped through the curtains of the small ninth-floor apartment in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine, Elena, 64, awoke and typed hurriedly the message she’s been sending to her two children every day for almost two years. “Are you alive?”

In the frenetic pace of alarms, shelling and strikes, life has taken on a particular fragility. Hearing the two beeps on her phone almost simultaneously, she exhaled heavily.

As she entered the dimly lit kitchenette and the worn wooden floor creaked slowly beneath her slippers, she began preparing her grandson’s breakfast.

Elena hastily placed a few biscuits, a banana, and a cup of green tea for her grandson Sergiy on the tiny kitchen table, and walked out the apartment door in a hurry, afraid of being late for her doctor’s appointment.

Since the war started, she has already experienced a heart attack. “For two years we’ve been living in mental torture,” she shared, her deep blue eyes moistened.

With a pension of only about 100 USD per month, it has become increasingly difficult to cover her basic needs, not counting the costs of her medical bills, and treatments.

She must undergo monthly blood tests and scans, leaving her with no means to cover food and utility expenses.

Elena has recently benefited from World Vision’s multi-purpose cash assistance, meant to support internally displaced people (IDPs) in Dnipro, Kharkiv, Chernivtsi, and Mykolaiv Oblast.

The project, funded by Aktion Deutschland Hilft, targets 35,000 individuals affected by the ongoing war. “Sometimes you don’t have any savings left for buying food,” Elena explained.

“World Vision’s cash assistance enabled me to complete my January treatment and pass a number of tests, which were essential given that I had recently had a heart attack,” she added.

She survives month to month on her meager pension and social and humanitarian support.

“I’m very grateful for all the help, since there are times when you wonder whether you can afford these medications, food, or basic services. Sometimes the answer is no, and your life depends on it,” she shared. 

Multi-purpose cash assistance (MPCA) enables IDPs to prioritize their most urgent needs, such as food, housing, medical treatment, and other essentials.

“Instead of relying on predetermined relief packages, IDPs decide individually how to use the financial support, allowing them to rebuild their lives with dignity,” said Yana Demchenko, World Vision’s Cash and Voucher Programs Officer.

“Ukraine has developed a well-functioning financial market for goods and services. Therefore, multi-purpose cash assistance is the best tool to help IDPs. It allows them to cover the needs that are most urgent for them,” explained Pavlo Robota, World Vision’s Cash and Voucher Programming Coordinator.

“Even animals didn’t last in those days”

Before the war, Elena was a professional dancer who also taught dance classes. Having lived most of her life in the city of Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, she had a deep passion for dance, music, art, and simply life.

Perhaps it was also this passion that helped her survive the 21 days she spent in hiding. All she could recall from those early days of the war was the acrid smell of burning debris, and a grey sky full of restless smoke and dust.

She was watching silently as her beloved city was gradually turning into ruins.

During those days, underground shelters, which had previously been storage sheds for her children’s bikes and old toys, served as residences for her and other dozens of neighbors.

“Many of us who were hiding in the basement were never able to come out,” says Elena.

At that time, her son volunteered to help people relocate, using escape corridors. On March 17, 2022, Elena received a call. “Mom, you have five minutes to pack and leave,” her son replied with a slight tremor in his voice.

And they were among the fortunate few who, after several attempts, were able to get the luxury of a phone call. Within hours, the phone and internet connection were gone. Family members were unable to contact each other. They didn’t know whether their loved ones had survived the strikes.

While Elena and her son gathered those in need of evacuation, the artillery and shelling never stopped. “In the few miles we drove through the city, the road was littered with shrapnel and bomb craters,” she recalls.

“Even the animals didn’t last in those days, like something out of a horror movie,” she goes on.

As the bus rattled along the road outside of Sievierodonetsk, the atmosphere inside was tense. Among the passengers, Elena’s attention was drawn to one figure. It was a man with a few belongings, holding a dog in his arms.

From the start, she could hear a sort of whining coming from the dog’s side. After a while, she noticed complete silence. In those scorching hours, the whining stopped as did the dog’s heart.

“It was too much even for animals, let alone children, humans,” said Elena.

The bus halted close to a deserted field. For a split second, time seemed to stand still. Stepping onto the barren field, the man carried his dog’s lifeless body in his arms. “We were not allowed to stop, but that was the least we could do for him,” recalls Elena.

What is left?

After settling in Dnipro, Elena found out that her son’s apartment was gone. It burned to ashes. “We lost everything: family, friends, houses,” she says.

After a few weeks, she discovered that all the windows in her fourth-floor apartment blew out. There is nothing left of the balcony and the roof now.

In a scattershot attempt to preserve what was left of her old home, Elena asked her remaining neighbors to attach some cardboard to the windows.

There is currently a large community of internally displaced in Dnipro, with 3.7 people relocated throughout the entire country. They all assumed they were just going to stay here for two weeks before returning home. But it has already been two years.

“With every alarm, every second that passes, you ask yourself only one thing,” shares Elena. “Did your family survive this attack?”

But what about the next one? “You never know,” she continues.

Every time they go through the same ordeal. The fear that you’ll never see your loved ones again. “And that fear is experienced over and over again every day,” adds Elena.

To date, World Vision has reached more than 1 million people inside Ukraine with basic needs assistance, mental health, protection, education, cash and vouchers, and livelihood programs.

World Vision Ukraine Crisis Response has supported over 380,000 people with cash.

Cover photo: Pavlo Robota, World Vision’s Cash and Voucher Programming Coordinator guides Elena on the multipurpose cash assistance criteria and registration in Dnipro, Ukraine.

Story and photos by Laurentia Jora, Communications Coordinator