Ukraine (2020): Elderly Lives Frozen by Conflict. By Paula Bronstein.

"Ukraine has the world’s highest proportion of elderly affected by war. The ongoing conflict has a staggering human toll on the elderly. 3.4 million people depend on humanitarian assistance, and one third of those people are over 60 years old. 

In 2014, many young people left when violence broke out, while the elderly stayed behind, just barely surviving.

Ukraine’s elderly are trapped in a war zone, listening to the occasional bursts of shelling near the line of contact separating the Ukrainian government forces and the Russia-backed rebel forces. For pensioners who have exhausted their resources, economic difficulties add to the stress of daily life. 

Recent government measures led to hundreds of thousands of elderly losing their pensions (their only financial security). Caught in this bureaucratic nightmare, the elderly are forced to travel across eastern Ukraine, waiting in long lines to collect their pensions. Often reluctant to leave their homes and the last to flee from danger, they are left abandoned without resources of family care.

As a photojournalist for three decades, I examine under-reported human, economic and political issues to expose silent victims of conflict in a variety of war-torn countries. This series focuses on the vulnerable, fragile, elderly population in Ukraine that is frozen by conflict; trapped in a war, impoverished, and abandoned to survive in dilapidated homes."

Paula Bronstein, photographer

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photographs and (c) by Paula Bronstein via and via and via