“We are left without a future” – Friday’s update as morale is low in Ukraine

One million people have fled Ukraine in seven days. The EU believes that 18 million Ukrainians will be affected by the conflict, nearly half of the country’s population.

“We are left without a future,” says Serhii Lukashov, national director of SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine.

The situation in Luhansk region is worsening, the staff of SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine report. Sievierodonetsk and Popasna are continually shelled, and Starobilsk is occupied. Colleagues say that the shops in the towns are nearly empty, the ATMs are out of cash and payments by card are not accepted. Payments of state benefits are said to have stopped.

The staff continues to remotely contact the families from the programmes, but this becomes increasingly difficult as they too are in a very bad emotional state and need support.

In Kyiv Region, the banking and other services are functional for now. Heavy fighting continues in certain parts of the city.

The team of SOS Children’s Villages keeps getting smaller, as more colleagues evacuate to the western regions. The workload of the colleagues increases, and they are also in dire need of psychological support.

SOS Children’s Villages and local partner organizations coordinate the evacuation of children from residential institutions in Kharkiv, Berdyansk and Slavyansk to Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine. The children, number to be reported, will stay in a shelter in the city of Dnipro where SOS Children’s Villages and the partner organizations are to provide basic and psycho-social services.

SOS Children’s Villages Ukraine and the Ukrainian Child Rights Network established a hotline service for providing remote psychological support to foster families and social workers.