“The whole world needs to know that people with disabilities in Ukraine are left behind”

Natasha: Hello and welcome to a very special episode of The Rest Room. I’m your host, Natasha Lipman. 

Today’s show is a little bit different from what we normally do, but I hope you’ll agree it’s a very important one. 

On the 24th February 2022, the world watched in horror as Russian troops invaded Ukraine. At the time of recording, more than 2.5 million people have fled the country, in what the United Nations has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War Two. 

Tanya: I wanted all world need to know that people with disabilities in Ukraine are left behind and we are valuable, and we need your support, because alone we can’t win this war. 

Natasha: It’s unclear how many of those who’ve left are disabled, but the European Disability Forum has said tens of thousands of people with disabilities “risk being abandoned and forgotten”.

Leaving your home and belongings and crossing the border to another country with nothing but what you can carry is an unimaginable task for anyone, but for disabled people that journey can seem impossible. 

And as Russia steps up its attacks on civilian centres, staying in Ukraine doesn’t seem like an option, but not everyone is physically able to leave. 

For those who can’t, it has become more difficult to get medication and basic supplies, like food. There’s reduced access to healthcare, and bomb shelters are far from accessible for many people.

For those who are trying to leave, the International Disability Alliance says there’s little evacuation support. With journeys that can take days, overflowing train stations, hours of border queues, and lack of medical support en-route, even those who do manage to get to refugee centres or shelters face many obstacles. 

The list of hurdles is endless, but includes inaccessible accommodation, difficulties getting suitable transport, and a lack of information in accessible formats such as braille or sign language. 

Charities and organisations across Europe are coming together and working tirelessly to help as many disabled Ukrainians as they can find safety – or to provide practical help to those who’ve chosen, or who have no other choice, but to stay. But there is still so much work to be done. 

I spoke to Tanya Herasymova, the project coordinator for the Ukrainian disability activist group Fight For Right. 

Their mission is to achieve effective implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and a few weeks ago the focus of their work shifted almost overnight as rumours began to circulate that Russia would invade Ukraine. 

Tanya is disabled, and made the difficult decision to leave her home. Thanks to the support of her colleagues, she’s now safely out of the country, and I was able to speak to her about her experiences and the work that needs to be done to support disabled Ukrainians, both inside and outside the country.

Tanya: I left Ukraine in February 25. This was the second day of the war. And in February 24, at morning when I wake up and my mum say that it’s a Russian invasion and we need something to do. Because I live on first floor and have no elevator in the building, so it was really dangerous for me. And also, we haven’t accessible bomb shelters in my city. This is Kamianske Dnipropetrovsk region. 

This was the only option to leave Ukraine for me, because for people with disability is not safe place. And this is the only chance to save our lives. It’s leave Ukraine, but it’s not easy decision. And I dare it only thanks to the Fight for Right team. They are support me a lot. And also people worldwide support me. This is our international community, which united for saving people with disability in Ukraine.

And now we still working on evacuation. I’m using wheelchair. And I’m going from Kamianske to Lviv and from Lviv to Poland with my mother, she also has a disability and she uses crutches. And we ride to Lviv by train. And this was hard. Hard night, hard trip. There was many, many people, some riding standing up and military airplanes flew about us. 

The only support was from my colleagues who just text me that you can do it, you strong, you should do it. And this really helped me to do it. And my colleague from Fight For Right also met me in Lviv and they took me to the border Kulyliv. And this was surprised because Kulyliv by cars was 20 kilometres to the border. And my mum just said, me, “No, I can’t walk 20 kilometres. I never do it. I better back home, but I can’t do it.”

But there was a miracle. We found a mini bus and a driver agreed to take us to the border. And we walk to the cross board with the cross board only 500 meters. And this was incredible because I was ready to walk like eight kilometers because people say that cross board, Kulyliv eight kilometers, five kilometers, but not 500 meters. 

And it was hard experience, but I’m really, really appreciate now that I can help by my experience to other people. And even I can help them to dare on this experience because some people just refused from evacuation because they scared, some people with disabilities never was abroad before, and this really hard decision. But I think that we all have to do it now to save our lives and to back home in some times, and to build up Ukraine.

Natasha: And before the invasion, what was the work that you were doing with Fight for Right?

Tanya: Before the invasion, I work with community and I was lead of the direction of the organisation, strength the community. And also I was coordinator of school for girls and women with disabilities, Liderka, this school of political participation. And now we have online course, online part. And in May, we plan to provide, third edition of the school, but our plan changes. I still hope that it will be possible to make the school how we planned, but I don’t know yet how to do it. But yes, we working a lot with girls and women with disabilities and defend our rights. Also, we had advocacy direction, analytical centre. We works for implementation or CRPD, Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities in Ukraine.

Natasha: So a few weeks ago, all of the work that you were doing had to change very suddenly. How did the organization start working to support people with disabilities in Ukraine?

Tanya: We began working to support people with disabilities in emergency three weeks before the Russian invasion. Because there was some information that invasion is possible. So we started just to monitor bomb shelters, some emergency instruction for people with disability. Our head of our organisation Yuliia Sachuk started to learn international experience. And we also tried to involve state authorities in this process. And we began to learn the situation with us, accessibility of bomb shelters, but state authorities were not so useful. And it was no surprise for us that such shelters not available. And the only way it’s to save people with disability was to evacuate them. We haven’t planned that we will do it. No, but we had planned for us, for me, how I should go if something could possible. But since second day of the war, we started to evacuate people because we saw that it’s another problem in our state authorities and no one will help us without us, so we started to do it ourselves.

We look for volunteers and also many organisation join us to do it. We received really a huge amount of messages from organisation of people with disability, from people with disabilities, from all around the world. And we joined them and started to evacuate people. We don’t know how to do it. We all have no such experience. We just started to do it 24 hours per day. And we looking for volunteers who can take people in Ukraine, who can provide transportation. This is the biggest issue because some people need medical transportation, and there are no such transportation in Ukraine, and no accessible transport. Now we trying to looking for accommodation for transportation abroad. Also, we have GoFundMe campaign and this is the only our resource which provide us some money, and thanks to the donation we can support people with disability, crossing borders to found some shelters, et cetera.

We just trying to do our best, so I don’t know. We will see if that’s right, but now we have more than 19 people, which we supported in different ways. We have more than 100 requests. It’s also humanitarian request or some consultation about crossing the borders because this is really a big issue to cross the border with caregivers. If this is a man from 18 to 60, also our advocacy managers working on this side of the war, we trying to help people and to gathering all resources, to help people.

Natasha: Before the invasion, how many disabled people were in Ukraine?

Tanya: 2.7 million people with disability. I’m not sure that is correct statistic because also there are a lot of people who haven’t legal disability. We have a research that every five people in Ukraine have disability experience in their family and like their friends, etcetera. This is research from 2020s, it’s really more than 2.7 million people.

Natasha: And you might not have this information now, but do you know how many people who are disabled have been unable to leave over the last few weeks?

Tanya: I don’t know. I really don’t know, but I know that many people just don’t want to leave their homes. And we trying to help them with some equipment, to found some volunteers who can provide food, water, or some other help. It’s really hard and it’s become harder and harder each day. We trying to do all what we can to do. Also, I respect the decision to stay in Ukraine. And I know how hard now to be there for people with disability.

Natasha: Are there issues on the other side as well, that when people can get to the border and they get through the border, that there aren’t accessible places for them to stay, that they can’t get the support that they need once they’ve left Ukraine?

Tanya: In Europe, it’s little bit easier than in Ukraine to found such accommodation, but it’s really hard and it’s becoming worse and worse because it’s a really, a lot of people now in Poland and Poland closed already some cities. For people with disability, Poland was first country when they are going, because it’s closer to us and we understand Polish language, it’s little bit easy. But really, a lot of organisation help us with transportation to other country, to found interpreter for people with disability and trying to found accessible accommodation. And all people which we evacuated, they have all facilities what they need. And also we have such case when a couple was using a wheelchair and they was need immediately medical care, and in Poland we couldn’t provide this care and some organisation from Germany they agreed to help the couple. Now they are in hospital in Germany and they had all help what they need

The organisation, it’s a World Institute on Disability and Global Alliance for Disaster Resource Acceleration. These people are incredible because this is not their war, but they work the same like us all day and all night. They looking for a volunteer organisation in different countries, looking for possibilities of transportation, accommodation. Also, they communicate with people with disabilities in Ukraine who can speak English and they working on cases, and the same like our team, our volunteers from Ukraine, and this support really inspired us to work and to do more because this is really so powerful. When people from all world just united for us, for people with disabilities from Ukraine, this is really incredible.

Natasha: What are the biggest challenges that you are facing at the moment?

Tanya: To take people from occupied territory, because now for someone, the only possibility to leave Ukraine, this is green corridors. People scare to leave and they have no resources to stay home, this is really hard. Also, a big issue this is transportation, because we trying to found medical transportation for people with several types of disability, and this is hard to found and this is a big money to take such transport. So we really appreciate all donation on GoFundMe because they help us to save lives. This is really important. And now we still working for, to make transportation easier. And our partners also help us. And I hope in couple days we will have our car, which will help to evacuate people from Ukraine to Lviv to Poland border. And this will be a little bit easier, but it’s hard because of many cities now were attacked by Russians, and this became harder to take people from there.

I’m trying to share information about help which we providing. And also, I’m working on cases, I have a lot of people who I know and I trying to write them directly because people even can’t imagine that someone can really help them. It’s just volunteers, it’s the only people who can help now visit evacuation, so I just trying to share my own experience and to show people that it is possible and we really can help them, and we really will support them on each step of this long way.

So this is the work which I do. And also we now doing some media work to raise this question on national and international level.

I wanted all world need to know that people with disabilities in Ukraine are left behind and we are valuable, and we need your support, all of yours, because alone we can’t win this war. We really need support from whole world. And I really want to say thank you to all who now already helps people from Ukraine, all peoples who supporting us in your country, who supported us just to write us messages. You are with us for our praise, for our wishes. We really, really appreciate it.

Natasha: Thank you so much to Tanya Herasymova for speaking to me about her experiences and the work Fight for Right is doing to help disabled people in Ukraine.

If you’d like to donate to support the work of Fight For Right, you’ll find a link in the show notes. 

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to my premium subscribers on Substack, who help make important episodes such as this one possible. If you’d like to support more work like this, you can subscribe via natashalipman.substack.com.

Please consider sharing this episode on social media so it can reach as many people as possible. Tanya and her team need all the support they can get right now. 

Thanks so much for joining me in The Rest Room. Ta ta for now!