Priests of various denominations, civic activists, musicians, and journalists have already visited Mariupol, Vuhledar, and Krasnoarmiisk. On arriving to Mariupol, the caravan’s participants held a roundtable with volunteers and representatives of religious organizations, visited a family-type orphanage, and presented a concert. “Mariupol saw such events before, but they used local resources only. This caravan, on the other hand, has been organized in Kyiv, so the locals were very interested in the project. Any peace-building initiative is welcomed here, for Mariupol is a frontline city and has it really hard now,” Viktoria Hordiienko told us; she helps the caravan as it is touring Donetsk oblast.
A performance of the Ukrainian rock band Nemo that is traveling with the caravan project brought approximately 600 spectators in Mariupol. People liked the musicians so much that they would not disperse after the concert ended. The priests, in their turn, were warmly greeted at the family-type orphanage. Hordiienko admitted: “We were impressed by the children joining the guests as they sang religious songs.”
The Peace and Unity Caravan suffered a delay as it entered Vuhledar, because the activists’ buses were checked at a roadblock. During the roundtable, both the project’s participants and the local community’s representatives talked a lot about displaced persons’ situation. It is a pressing issue for Vuhledar, as this city with 15,000 residents took in more than 2,000 refugees from the eastern Ukrainian conflict zone.
“This summer, we were flooded with refugees as fighting had broken out just 30 kilometers from our town, in Mariinka, Kurakhove, and Donetsk,” secretary of the Vuhledar City Council Valerii Voitsekhovsky recalled. “Instead of waiting for orders from above, our community created a temporary accommodation facility and canteen for people from the conflict zone at a school. We fed about 160 people twice a day for over a month.”
Citizens of Vuhledar are now deliberating on which charity projects are most urgently needed in the city, and the people would like to get advice and support from the caravan’s participants. Voitsekhovsky listed the proposals: “There are proposals to support the first category disabled person or collect food for humanitarian aid packages. We also celebrate St. Nicholas Day every year with children from poor families and orphans, and I think we will be hard pressed to purchase gifts for them this time. I hope NGOs will help us to celebrate this feast. As we build links across Ukraine, it will allow people to get targeted assistance.”
City officials are now concerned that Ukraine may terminate welfare payments to residents of the occupied territories in the country’s east. “Should pension payments stop in the warzone, people will swarm us. Hundreds of thousands of citizens will find themselves in a difficult situation. This is our biggest issue, as we can resolve the rest by ourselves,” secretary Voitsekhovsky maintained.
The small city of Vuhledar was never shelled, but it sits on the “border” between Ukrainian-controlled territories and those controlled by the DNR, so residents are tense. Support for the DNR has fallen since spring, and nobody is holding any rallies. Voitsekhovsky said: “People are scared. Everyone is afraid of war, wants peace and tranquility. We all lack confidence in the future.”
Meanwhile, the Peace and Unity Caravan is continuing its tour of 20 cities and towns in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The activists want to support the patriotic sentiment in the east and get other regions of Ukraine to know more about these people via online broadcasts. One bus of the caravan is filled with gifts and humanitarian aid. The activists visited town of Rodynske and city of Dymytrov on November 18. The caravan’s tour will end on November 23.
