Help fading for Ukraine war, says West Country Ukrainian
Zhenya Shkil, who is from Kyiv but now lives in Bathford is urging people to continue helping her country
Last updated 5th Jun 2024
A Ukrainian woman living in the West Country says it's increasingly difficult to garner support for her country, as the war with Russia rumbles on.
We caught up with Zhenya Shkil who created the Bath based group Friends of Oleksandriya to fundraise for the Ukrainian city of a similar size to Bath.
The group is currently looking to raise £80,000 to buy a bus for schools in the surrounding villages.
She said: "It's more difficult to get new people involved (now)," she said.
"It's an interesting detail but when we had the concert in the Abbey on the 24th February this year, there was a demonstration next door to the Abbey about the war in Gaza.
"There is sort of, I don't like using this word but almost like competition about which war is more important and who needs more help, which has undermined quite a lot of our efforts and makes it more difficult for local politicians to support us.
"And some local people because they can't be seen being sort of more supportive to the war in Ukraine, rather than what's happening in Gaza and Israel."
The latest headlines out of Ukraine do not make good reading.
Russian forces are weeks into a summer offensive, with the frontline edging increasingly close to Kharkiv as Ukraine's military is outgunned.
It's thought Putin's Russia now has as many as half a million soldiers inside Ukraine, with not far off 10 per cent of Russia's entire economic output dedicated to supplying them.
Meanwhile, the US has now agreed that Ukraine can use some weapons supplied by the West to hit targets inside Russia, though the policy change does not include long range weaponry capable to striking hundreds of miles over the border.
Even so, the entire situation currently has Zhenya worried.
"I think this war is far from over and I'm really scared lately, feeling that it might spread from the territory of Ukraine and it will stop being just a problem of Ukraine and Russia...." she said.
"Everyone gets exhausted and people here are exhausted so that's why I try....I try to do my best to organise things."
On the fundraising, a little over £3,000 has been collected towards the bus so far, with people being offered the chance to sponsor a seat, either as an individual or an organisation.
The Friends of Oleksandriya website explains the need for it.
It says: "There are 45 children between 3 and 15 years old in Oleksandriya Territorial Community living in remote villages i.e. Pishchanyi Brid, Pustelnykove and Korolivka who fully rely on the services of the school bus to get to their school and preschool every weekday.
"The bus that Oleksandriya currently uses has only 32 seats which is why some of the children are always late for school as the bus must do 2 trips to transport all the kids in Izmailivka village where the school and preschool are located.
Iryna Cheremys, the Deputy of the Mayor of Oleksandriya said: "This bus has been operating for more than a decade every working day and driving on bad country roads which badly degraded since the war started.
"It is in a very poor state and needs repairs regularly. Countless times, the children failed to get to their school or were disturbingly late due to its breakdowns.
"Back in 2023 we appealed to the Ministry of Education to provide us with a new school bus, but because of the war we do not know whether the state can help us, and the future of our country, our children by then will have missed on crucial education.”
Zhenya knows all to well how in danger civilians in Ukraine are.
Recently she was liaising with a printing company in Kharkiv about creating a children's book about a friendship between two people, one in Bath and one in Oleksandriya, before the company was hit by a missile strike.
"It's heartbreaking because you speak to people, you make plans and then you find out either they were killed, or injured or they're just out of business because their main facility was under attack and destroyed.
"I've heard that there are some people injured but I'm not sure if anyone was killed."
If you want to find out more about the Friends of Oleksandriya group, click here.