How the fuel crisis has changed life for people in the occupied territories of Ukraine

How the fuel crisis has changed life for people in the occupied territories of Ukraine: a report by Verstka

Since the beginning of summer, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have sharply increased the number of strikes on roads in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, making routes that until recently were considered relatively safe deadly dangerous.

Because of logistics problems and the constant threat from the air, humanitarian missions helping civilians in the “DNR” and “LNR” have also suffered. According to volunteers, transport costs have risen sharply, while donations have noticeably declined. There is a particularly acute shortage of gasoline: without fuel, coordinators estimate, they can visit only two or three people a day.

According to Verstka, in June the military distributed a special instruction to volunteers warning them about drone attacks and the danger of traveling on the Belgorod-Mariupol and Rostov-Simferopol highways. On roads where repair work was still being carried out not long ago, there are now machine-gun positions, shelters, anti-drone nets, and mobile air defense crews; many gas stations are no longer operating.

At the same time, elderly and low-income people remain in frontline cities destroyed by Russia, such as Avdiivka and Yasynuvata, for whom delivered water and food are the only chance to survive. Locals say their lives are gradually returning to the level of the most active fighting in 2014-2015, when people survived only on “humanitarian aid.”

Read about how the escalation of fighting and the fuel crisis have changed the work of volunteers on the Verstka website (with VPN):

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Verstka

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Traveling on the old roads has become more dangerous, and it is now harder for volunteers to reach those in need