“Money Slipped through My Fingers Like Water”

Seventy-eight-year-old Galina lives in a city on the front line separating Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed armed groups in eastern Ukraine. Before the fighting began five years ago, collecting her Ukrainian pension was as simple as a five-minute walk to the bank. Since her husband died in 2014, Galina relies on that pension more than ever. But she now has to take two buses, stand in passport control and security lines for hours, walk almost four kilometers and scale a partially destroyed bridge into Ukrainian-controlled territory just to get it. On a good day, it’s a 10-hour trek. Sometimes,…

© Human Rights Watch - vendredi 14 juin 2019