My latest blog entry is about a 5-year-old girl, Donetsk, spring, the land mine type "butterfly" and what it can do to you, the Ukraine, and the blockade. She is 5 years old. She was discharged from the surgical department of the regional, (now republican) Children's Hospital. She has a mine-blast trauma, shrapnel wounds on the left shin and an open boundary fracture of the left tibia.
The mine that injured her was the type "butterfly". The girl climbed over the fir cones under fir trees in one of the central areas of Donetsk. Of course, the upholders of the Ukrainian government would say that mine has been planted by "terrorists." Another concerned person of this incident is the older brother of the girl - he also got injured by the land mine.
Their mother came to me for a doctor's note for her 14-year-old daughter who took care of her 5-year-old sister in the hospital. The mother had to take care of her one-month-old baby and therefore she could take care of her other daughter in the surgical department.
The Children's Hospital has the most necessary medicine. In pharmacies they have a few drugs that got a lot more expensive. The government of DPR (Donetsk People Republic) began with payments, but these payments do not correspond to the higher prices. However, it is better than no payments from the Ukraine (Ukrainian government stopped all kinds of payments – pension, benefits, salaries in August 2014. How did people survive? Only they know…).
Prices for everything - medicines, food and other goods also got more expensive due to the ongoing Ukrainian blockade of Donetsk. Some supermarket chains closed because of this blockade.
On the photo above this blog entry you can see a house which I pass on my way to work. It is damaged by shelling, some windows are smashed, some windows are sealed with adhesive tape - it saves you from broken glass and people say it even helps to preserve the glass (my windows are also sealed - but with transparent tape). But residents continue to grow flowers on window sills and under the window.