Deepening Poverty Grips Ukraine, Spurs Resilience

BORODYANKA, Ukraine—Lines snake outside churches and aid stations that hand out bread and secondhand clothing. Several restaurants in Kyiv offer free meals for the elderly, whose meager pensions have been squashed by surging inflation. A group on social-media platform Telegram offers free toys, medicine, books and even underwear to people uprooted by the war.

Russia’s invasion has pushed the number of Ukrainians living in poverty to nearly a quarter of the population, according to the World Bank—the most acute economic hardship the country has experienced since independence in 1991.

In waging war on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to break the country’s resolve and trigger an exodus.

One-fifth of the country is now reliant on humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations, with 44% of households saying they didn’t have enough money to meet essential needs. One-third of the population of 44 million is displaced within Ukraine or abroad, while 2.4 million have lost their jobs.

Ukraine’s Western allies have stepped in with billions of dollars to prop up the economy, which shrank 30% last year.

Locals have stepped up, too. Volunteers have turned a Protestant church in the town of Irpin near Kyiv into a hub providing aid to those in need, including some of the 25,000 people displaced from other parts of the country.

On the grounds of the church, a field kitchen serves 100 free lunches a day. A free mobile dental clinic caters to pensioners who can no longer afford basic treatment such as fillings, the cheapest of which costs the equivalent of $27.

“It’s hard to define if the person is poor. All are equal now,” said the church’s deacon, Roman Ilnytsky. “A person could have had two cars and a house but lost everything.”

But despite losing property and income, many Ukrainians say they have gained a sense of unity and belonging as society mobilizes in response to the war. Priorities have also shifted from individual well-being to the survival of family members and the state.

A poll conducted by the Rating Sociology Group published in February found that confidence in the future had increased among respondents, even as two-thirds said they had become poorer. A record 80% of respondents said the country was moving in the right direction.

Ukrainians have known hardship before: from the economic turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union to the Soviet famines, repressions and World War II. “Some say that good times create weak people and bad times create strong people,” said Ella Libanova, head of Ukraine’s Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies.

Returning to their hometown near Ukraine’s capital last year, the Udovenko family found little of their former life had survived Russian occupation.

A rocket had blasted through the multistory apartment block where they lived in Borodyanka, burning down their flat. Russian soldiers who occupied the town in the early phase of Moscow’s invasion had already looted their belongings.

Reeling from the loss, they nevertheless rented an apartment and scraped together funds to expand the family’s cake-making business, selling their car and opening a new cafe near the shattered town’s main square.

“What if it gets back to normal in 10 years?” said Anna Udovenko, 35 years old. “Life passes by. We should live now.”

Outside the entrance to Udovenko’s cafe on the first floor of an apartment block, residents line up for coffee and cake. The adjacent building is empty and in ruins, with its middle section torn out by a Russian rocket.

Udovenko had been up most of the night preparing for the cafe’s opening. Her husband made coffee behind the counter while her mother helped in the kitchen. A poem written on the wall opens with the words:

“Ukraine is undefeatable. Ukrainians are resilient.”

Costs have soared, but Udovenko must keep prices low because her clients have little money to spare. Many of the young people who used to buy her cakes have left Borodyanka, she said.

Even so, Udovenko has few complaints. Her losses pale in comparison to those whose loved ones have been killed during the war, she said. “Poor are the people who have no friends, relatives, or family happiness,” she said.

Her customers were similarly upbeat. At one table, 40-year-old Lyudmyla Shymko discussed plans for the summer with her sister and a friend. Since they can no longer afford to vacation abroad—or even elsewhere in Ukraine—the women joked they would spray each other with water from a hose.

Shymko, a Ukrainian language teacher, said her standard of living had fallen by half over the past year, as both her and her husband’s salaries decreased while prices went up. She can no longer afford to spend the $20 it costs to visit a local swimming pool and only buys new clothing for her 14-year-old daughter. Still, she finds the means to donate to the country’s armed forces.

Shymko said she had received food parcels provided for the teachers at her school by a Protestant church on two occasions, but declined offers of free prepared meals or clothing.

“There are people who need it more,” she said.

On the eve of the invasion, 35-year-old Ivan Karaulov took out a bank loan of about $13,500 and invested it in his bar in the southern city of Berdyansk. Months later, Russian forces overran the Azov Sea port city, wiping out Karaulov’s investment and prompting him to flee.

After moving to Kyiv, Karaulov opened a new bar last summer, hiring others displaced from Berdyansk to work there. At first, he struggled to pay his employees as Russian missile attacks kept customers at home. But business gradually picked up as residents of the capital adapted to the new reality, and air-defense systems supplied by Kyiv’s Western allies helped shield the city.

While still repaying the bank loan, Karaulov is now applying for a government grant worth $6,700 to develop his small business. He intends to use those funds to purchase equipment and hire two more employees.

“The war has shown that money is nothing. People are the greatest value,” he said.

In Borodyanka, more than 300 locals and several dozen people displaced from the war elsewhere live in mobile homes installed by Poland and Lithuania last year. Volunteers regularly come to provide free food, medication and equipment.

Nina Korol, an 85-year-old resident of the shelter who received a free haircut from volunteer hairdressers, walks cautiously with the help of a cane. She broke her leg last year while running to safety as a Russian plane bombed Borodyanka. She also injured her arm in a recent fall and has such poor vision that she can’t see her new look in the mirror.

As a former elementary school teacher who also taught Russian and German, she remembers World War II and believes the country is now even more devastated than it was back then.

Korol lives in a small but tidy room and relies on a meager pension, the median level of which in Ukraine is about $125 a month. But she doesn’t consider herself poor and regularly donates to the Ukrainian army. She has savings, including the money she has collected for her own funeral so that her children don’t have to worry about it.

“I live comfortably,” Korol said. “I’m used to calculating my budget.”