thomas de wouters

Luhansk, not far from the Russian border, the social outcasts of a revolution and of the press.

 

Luhansk, as also Donetsk, is one of these self-proclaimed republics of the Ukraine, in conflict since May 2014. But unlike Donetsk, Luhansk has no “press-marketing”, no infrastructure, no central authority and an even more tragic humanitarian situation which nobody talks about.

 

In Donetsk, fighting is mainly concentrated around the airport, whereas the fighting frontline has extended over the entire republic of Luhansk, destroying villages and industries and leaving the population dormant.  These social outcasts… families doomed by the conflict to manage as they can, handicapped  people afflicted today more than previously, children without a future and elderly people without appeasement in their old age. Two million people stuck between a porous Russian border and a frontline which ignores a real cease-fire. No more food in the shops, Russian humanitarian aid obtainable via black market rather distributed to the needy, lack of medicine which MSF try desperately to dispatch, the only NGO in this oblast.

 

The aim of this report is to show their daily life in the madness of this deadly war, to show the courage and handling of those who have remained in order to help, without any financial support from Kiev since the secession.

 

Photographs which show the hardness of their lives, with however a respectful sensibility for these men and women standing in front of my camera.

 

April 2015