Stand With Ukraine MHK

03/11/2024

02/08/2024

Dear Kansas friends,

I urge you to contact Senator Roger Marshall and kindly ask for his support in voting for Ukraine aid. Yesterday, the United States Senate voted against providing aid to Ukraine, but there is a redo vote today, and the outcome hinges on the voices of concerned citizens like you.

It was disappointing to see Senator Marshall vote against Ukraine aid. Supporting Ukraine is crucial, especially given the ongoing conflict with Russia and the harm being inflicted on innocent civilians. By voting in favor of aid, we can stand against aggression and support those in need.

I encourage you to express your concerns to Senator Marshall respectfully, emphasizing the importance of supporting Ukraine in this challenging time. Let's work together to make a positive impact. You can reach him at his Washington office: 202-224-4774.

Thank you for your advocacy.

01/23/2024

🙏🙏🙏 Please pray for Ukraine 🇺🇦

10/30/2023

–Torture of Women in Occupied Kherson–

During the Russian occupation of the Kherson region, one of the locations where they kept and tortured civilians was Kherson Police Holding Facility #1. Some holding cells there were specially arranged for women. Researchers from the human rights center Zmina established that at least 30 women were kept in those cells at various times, and issued a report on the illegal detention of Ukrainians, based on evidence provided by victims and witnesses.

Women were sent to jail throughout the summer of 2022, mostly in July-August, and held until the end of October when Russian troops began their retreat from the Kherson region. Women who worked in the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine or who allegedly had connections to the resistance movement were targeted.

Human rights activists described the detention conditions. There were three holding cells in total, each meant for 2-3 people. However, on average, 5 women were placed in each cell, with this number occasionally reaching 9. Initially, there were no showers in the cells, later the occupants introduced a shower schedule, allotting just a few minutes per person. At first, the women were fed once a day; after the rotation of the Russian soldiers, this shifted to three times a day, though all food was delivered in the mornings, it was scarce and would turn sour by dinner.

Five women were tortured. “It was beatings, using electric shocks and water torture. Water was either poured directly into the mouth or onto a cotton cloth placed over the head; once the cloth dried it would shrink and not let the air through. Tasers were applied to bare breasts,”- said Zmina human rights analyst Onysya Synyuk.

Women were humiliated and forced to undress upon detainment. Both women and their children were threatened with r**e. The tortures were carried out in front of other detainees, day and night, for intimidation purposes. “One of the victims was forced to listen to the screams of her husband, who was kept in the cell across the hall. For greater emotional effect, the doors of both cells were opened,” states the report.

Women were detained without being informed of the reasons, in violation of the legal detention procedure. Three victims stated they weren’t given any explanations, while others were detained under the pretext of document verification.

https://inshe.tv/suspilstvo/2023-07-13/779234/
07/13/2023. Abridged and translated by Olga Antonyuk.

Одним із місць на деокупованій Херсонщині, де росіяни тримали і катували цивільних, був ізолятор тимчасового тримання (далі — ІТТ) № 1 Головного управління

10/16/2023

–American Volunteer in Bucha–

I am Darrell Patrick Loveless from Arkansas, USA. I was here in Bucha right after the Russians left the city. I worked in the morgue with the Ukrainian police and the criminal investigation department of the French Gendarmerie. My job was to pick up unidentified bodies from the trucks as they arrived. We carried them to a tent, where French and Ukrainian doctors performed an autopsy.

I saw firsthand the atrocities committed by the Russians and the variety of ways they tortured and killed people. There were ligature marks on bound hands, gunshot, and shrapnel wounds. The Russians planted a lot of mines everywhere: in kids’ playgrounds, churches, in the streets, and on walking paths.
As a US veteran, I had seen everything happening in the war. But this was unlike anything I had ever seen. The sheer number of killed and murdered people was terrible. For over a month, we worked 12-14 hours daily to determine how these people were killed, what type of ammunition was used, etc. We received about 14 bodies per day, plus 200 to 300 bodies that were already in refrigerator trucks.
Probably the single hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life was helping family members get into a truck so they could inspect the body bags and determine where their loved ones were.

The majority of victims I saw were senior citizens, women, and children, not military-age men. A lot of injuries were gunshot wounds to the head—clearly execution-style wounds, not happenstance. These people were executed, not accidentally caught in the crossfire. There were torture victims, lots of graphic things, and damaged bodies. People were burned alive—doused with gasoline and set on fire. The Russians planted a lot of mines everywhere: in kids’ playgrounds, churches, in the streets, and on walking paths.

A year has passed. I still see these people in my dreams. This changed me forever. I have recently visited the parts of Bucha where I worked last year, and I can still smell death in the air, the smell of burning. I know it’s gone, but it’s still on my mind.

The Russian soldiers who were here and committed these crimes must be held accountable. Vladimir Putin must be held accountable because everything depends on him.

https://khpg.org/en/1608812651
8/18/2023. Abridged by Lena Nekludova

Patrick Loveless came to Bucha immediately after its release: he helped to sort the corpses in the Bucha morgue and saw and felt the consequences of what the Russians did. What he saw shocked him so much that he could not forget about it.

10/10/2023

–Deadly Russian attack on every family in Groza village–

On October 5, 2023, in the village of Groza (Kharkiv region), with a population of 344, a Russian missile destroyed the building housing a general store and a café, killing 52 people.

‘This is a glaringly brutal Russian crime: a rocket attack on a regular grocery store, a deliberate act of terrorism in the Kharkiv region,” stated Volodymyr Zelensky.

The attack occurred at 1:24 p.m. “There were local customers in the store, and a funeral reception was going on in the cafe,” said acting Minister for the Interior Igor Klymenko. “Every family in the village had someone present at that reception.”

The reception was for the reburial of a deceased Ukrainian defender. Initially, he was buried in Dnipro, but his relatives wanted to inter him in his native village. The funeral was organized by the family of the deceased. His son, who also served in the military at the beginning of the war, died together with his wife and mother when the rocket struck. All other fatalities are civilians.

A day after the attack, rescue workers continued to find body fragments as they searched through the rubble.

Seven people who sustained severe injuries have been transported to a Kharkiv hospital; one of them died within a day.

“It is a small building; there was no shelter in there; that’s why the death toll is so high,” said regional chief of police Volodymyr Tymoshko. “It cannot be called anything else but a genocide or a crime.”

October 6th through 8th are announced as mourning days in the Kharkiv region.

https://suspilne.media/587707-rf-zavdala-udaru-po-kupanskomu-rajonu-vidomo-pro-47-zagiblih/
By Ganna Tsiomyk, 10/5-6/2023. Translated and abridged by Olga Antonyuk

Понад 50 людей загинули внаслідок удару по селу Гроза Куп'янського району на Харківщині 5 жовтня, повідомив президент Володимир Зеленський. Є поранені — Суспільне Х...

09/28/2023

-First day of work–

In April 2022, Petro Burban volunteered for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He served for a year and a half, and, in August 2023, he returned home to Lviv to his wife and three children, aged seven, five, and two and a half. After returning from the front, Petro spent two weeks looking for a job. He found a position in a humanitarian aid warehouse. On the night of September 19, Russia struck an industrial enterprise where the warehouse was located using Shaheds (Iranian-produced drones). The warehouse burned to the ground. Petro was killed on his first day of work.

https://life.pravda.com.ua/society/2023/09/20/256641/
By Yana Osadcha. September 20, 2023. Translated and abridged by Marianna Epstein

Через атаку росіян на Львів 19 вересня загинув військовий і працівник складу 32-річний Петро Бурбан.

09/26/2023

-Kharkiv Pediatric Hospital During the War–

Doctors of the Kharkiv Children’s Clinical Hospital remember their patients with mine-explosive, bullet, and shrapnel injuries. Dr. Natalia Romanova recalls, “The first wounded child, fourteen-year-old Sasha, was admitted to the hospital in a near-death condition at 8:20 a.m. on February 24, the first day of the Russian invasion; there was a direct hit on his house. A second injured teenager was admitted the next day. While riding in a car, the boy shielded his little sister with his own body against an assault and received a penetrating chest wound with damage to his vertebrae and lungs.”

Dr. Vadim Ionin, head of the intensive care department, reports that the hospital has admitted many patients in critical condition. However, the most memorable aspects for him are children and their stories rather than the severity of a case. Dr. Ionin recalls a six-year-old boy who was brought by ambulance in April 2022. ”The boy had been staying in the basement since the first day of the war with his grandmother, grandfather, and mother. The grandmother kept saying, “Until all this is over, I will not leave the basement.“ But then it seemed that the shelling had quieted down. And they all went outside together for the first time. Just as they reached the playground, a rocket hit it. The grandparents were killed on the spot; the mother was fatally wounded and died in the hospital. The boy received injuries to his limbs and chest but survived. After a while, his other grandmother came for him; he has no other relatives.”

When asked if the war has changed him, Ionin replies that it has changed everyone, and he is no exception. “There will be time to think about myself when the war is over. If you dwell on it, you can go crazy. Now you just must live and work,” he says. After a pause, he adds, “During one of the attacks, in March, I was walking along a hospital corridor with explosions sounding on all sides. I was passing a ward and saw a nurse covering a child with her body. She knew what she was doing. I hadn’t expected such generous self-sacrifice from people.”

https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2023/07/16/7411442/
By Dmitro Kuzubov. 7/16/2023. Abridged and translated by Lina Bernstein

До 24 лютого 2022 року в Обласній дитячій клінічній лікарні №1 Харкова лікували дітей з “мирними хворобами”. Повномасштабна війна все змінила. Лікарям довелося жити ...

09/18/2023

–“Russians break people; I experienced it myself”–

Russian forces accuse Ukrainian clergy of organizing resistance on the territories occupied by the Russian military, espionage, sabotage, and assistance to the Ukrainian army. They are also trying to persuade them to cooperate in order to have influence over the local community through the church.

On March 2nd, 2022, Father Sergiy Chudynovych, the pastor of the Svyato-Pokrovsky Cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kherson, stood in the middle of the cemetery in the field. He saw a convoy of heavy Russian military equipment passing by. On that day, 67 men of the Kherson Territorial Defense were being buried there; these civilians had died the day before, trying to defend their city.

From the first days of the war, the Svyato-Pokrovsky Cathedral in Kherson became a powerful social center. “I saw my main task in Kherson as reducing panic and calling for calm, because only then can people think rationally and act effectively” - says the priest. There was a parish hairdresser salon, a coffee shop, and a grocery store opened at the cathedral. Also, there was a medical office where medications were collected from the very first days.

On March 30, 2022, Father Serhiy was taken from his church by men in Russian military uniforms “to talk”. With every minute the conversation became harsher. He was taken to a dark and cold cellar. He was denied water and toilet. They threatened his family as well. ‘They twisted my arms, said that my life is over, that they will kill me, shoot me, tear me apart. They took me to another room. There, they started hitting me in the chest with a club, demanding information. They hit my legs and choked me. They undressed me, made me kneel, pressed my head to the seat, took a club, and said that they will r**e me with it. I did not know what to do, I said goodbye to life and prayed. I was very scared’ - the priest recalls. “Under torture, the Russians forced me to sign the document about ‘voluntary cooperation’. I am ashamed of my weakness. I was scared. I hope that the state of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine will forgive me for my flaws."

On April 7, 2022, Father Serhiy managed to escape from the area occupied by Russians. He went through Russian checkpoints by pretending to be a priest of the Moscow Patriarchy. The first thing he did upon arriving on the Ukrainian-controlled territory was go to the police station, where he told everything that had happened to him.

https://suspilne.media/amp/277550-de-mij-vitalik-tri-istorii-pro-voenni-zlocini-rosian-v-ukraini-ta-comu-voni-zagrozuut-svitovij-bezpeci/
By Maria Semenchenko, 10/12/2022. Translated and abridged by Olga Antonyuk

Росія зневажає міжнародне право та порушує закони та звичаї війни. Розповідаємо три історії — про викрадення, катування і вбивство, про тортури і примус до співпра...

09/15/2023

–Do What You Can–

Maria Chupinina is a volunteer for the Kharkiv-based charity organization DobroTak which helps chronic patients. When the war broke out, the volunteers started driving the patients from Kharkiv to other cities then considered relatively safe. The volunteers also helped hospitals, and Maria observed the staff hiding the babies in the basements to keep them safe during bombardments.

“This is all wrong," she says. “A damp basement is no shelter for infants. Any infection they catch can become lethal. Our part of the city was attacked daily, with cluster bombs regularly falling and a new fire starting each night. I knew that the evacuation was being implemented according to plan. Still, those babies were right before my eyes and I wanted to protect them in some way, at least within my square meter of influence. When they say, 'you can't save the world', choose your square meter and do what you can."

By the time the full-scale invasion started, Maria’s family had consisted of three almost fully grown kids. For the previous five years, she had been thinking of creating a family-based children’s home. With all the documents in place, she was able to quickly take in seven kids, three of them younger than 2 years old. Most of these children have special needs and are diagnosed with epilepsy, cerebral palsy, impaired vision, or other problems. The first child to be adopted was called Mria (“dream” in Ukrainian).

“She has several serious diseases, which do not bode well for her future health or longevity. However, we are making good progress and hope for the best. My older son Denis, now a high-school student, has nine handicaps that could potentially interfere with physical activity and mental growth, but so far he has been doing very well.

“Denis was the reason we could not quickly evacuate at the beginning of the war. He needed round-the-clock neurological help, as well as access to dialysis. There was very little chance we could get these services en route or in a camp for displaced persons. All his doctors remained in Kharkiv.

“Everybody helps now, both friends and strangers. People who send humanitarian aid know that I have children in my care and stipulate a separate account for them. I am quite skillful at managing the funds, and nobody goes hungry. As the new children arrived and I began to run out of stocks, everybody was coming to my rescue.”

https://fakty.com.ua/ru/ukraine/suspilstvo/20230514-internaty-mayut-znyknuty-nazavzhdy-volonterka-z-harkova-u-povnomasshtabnu-vijnu-pryhystyla-simoh-ditej/
by Tetiana Dotsiak, 5/14/2023 Abridged by Lena Nekludova. Translated by Ella Shmulevich

Во время полномасштабной войны волонтер из Харькова Мария Чупинина стала мамой семерых приемных детей. Всего в ее семье 10 детей, и только самому старшему Яну она — ...