Source: OCP News Service
December 14, 2015
For almost a year a group of Orthodox Christian volunteers from Minsk, Belarus have been helping the people living in Donbass. Belarusians have been collecting humanitarian aid and money and organizing various vacations for the children living in the region devastated by fierce fighting.
In the second half of December the volunteers are going to visit Donbass again. Their main aim is to give humanitarian supplies to the people living in the Oktyabrski district of Donetsk and in the small town of Spartak located at the fronline. Speaking about the life in Spartak, volunteers say that “nothing is working there, there is no electricity, no water, no heating. Obviously, shops aren’t working either. Yet there are 92 people living in the town including 2 children – the girls who are 9 and 14 years old. There are fires each day. We saw a shell hitting a gas pipe, and, as a result of the attack, 5 houses got burned down. People are surviving there only thanks to the help of the good people though almost nobody manages to get there”.
One more place which receives help from the volunteers is the Iviron monastery in Donetsk. During hostilities the convent was almost completely destroyed. Only the altar of the monastery church survived during fighting and now people come there in order to pray Theotokos.
Belarusian Orthodox Christian volunteers are also helping 2 boys from Donbass – a 15-year-old Igor and a 21-year-old Ruslan. The boys got mine-blast traumas during hostilities and now they need medical treatment and prostheses.
Volunteers say that today it is extremely important to bring as much help to Donbass people as possible. In the conditions of the aggravating of the hostilities these people need all the help we can give them, even if it is only a prayer.
