Help still needed for those stuck in Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has continued past one hundred days, for those still in the country or those now displaced help is still needed.

Maryna Khrennikova, who now lives in Montreal is pushing for more support for her country and says organizations like the Kharkiv Youth Council can continue to aid those still in Ukraine – which she adds everyone can lend a hand in.

Before Khrennikova was forced to leave Ukraine she was the first deputy of the head of the Kharkiv Youth City Council under the Kharkiv Mayor. The organization allowed youth to create positive changes in Kharkiv.

Now during the Russian invasion, they are using their office spaces to provide Kharkiv citizens and people of the Kharkiv region with humanitarian aid.

“In Ukraine, in Kharkiv, there are a lot of people who need help,” says Kirill Chikiriakin, part of the Kharkiv Youth City Council in Ukraine.

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One of her colleagues in Ukraine Kirill Chikiriakin showed CityNews around the once office spaces, with boxes and products packed all throughout. Khrennikova says “it didn’t look like this before.”

The Council now has over 100 people on their team helping with logistics and storage of products including medicine, food, hygiene, and products for babies.

“We started to help children and elderly people. We have thousands of requests a day for help. We started to take humanitarian aid from other countries, from other cities to Kharkiv,” says Chikiriakin.

While the organization has gotten help internationally, Chikiriakin says the amount of individuals in need of help is growing by the day and the transport of humanitarian aid is proving to be a challenge. Adding the bulk of the funding is going to buying petrol and medicine.

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“Per day, we spent some $1,000 on petrol,” he says.

Khrennikova says everyone can help. Not only big organizations, “people here, they can think that they don’t have enough money, they can’t donate… but actually €1 here, it’s like nothing even like coffee here, it costs like five or six euros. But in Ukraine, that’s really a lot.”

For her, the work done by the Kharkiv Youth City Council ensures that she will one day be able to go home, something she says everyone can help accomplish.

“I like everything here, but I really want to go back to Ukraine in the future, in several years because I want to finish my degree here, but I want to live in Ukraine and I understand that to live in Ukraine, we need to help Ukraine now a lot because we need to literally save our home,” she says.

For more information or ways you can help the Kharkiv Youth Council you can visit their website.