There is the war going on in Donbass for a year, according to the data of international organizations, the number of the deceased military has reached 6 thousand people and the system of granting aid to their families still works only partially and not for everyone. “Pod Pricelom” tried to figure out how to confront the grief, when it is needed to wage a war against officials, and what can be changed in order not to do the last-mentioned.
Promised by the law
Financial assistance for the families of the deceased military by acquiring the bereaved family status is a sufficient sum to support near relatives at the first after tradegy.
According to the legislation, family of the deceased is liable for monetary benefits and subsidies. A jurist Irina Loyuk notes that relatives of a combatant have to receive three monetary payments: 609 thousand hryvnyas as one-time payment in case of death of the military; 500 hryvnyas as one-time payment for the funeral of the deceased; and social security benefit in the amount of 1800 hryvnyas for the time when the family members of the deceased are considered to be unemployable.
Volunteers are counted for nothing
Irina Loyuk
Presently, it is virtually impossible to estimate objectively the number of the deceased in Donbass. According to the data of the UNO, 6100 people, 400 of which were civilians, perished in the ATO zone as on April 17. The official data of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff differ from the ones mentioned above. Prior the President of Ukraine Petr Poroshenko informed that 1549 military deceased in the ATO zone as on March 9. 1232 of them were servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 99 – Ministry of Internal Affairs, 132 – National Guard, 63 – State Border Service, 7 officers of the Security Service of Ukraine and 16 servicemen of the State Emergency Situations Ministry.
“These numbers aren’t final, today it is virtually impossible to count the amount of victims,” the head of the non-governmental organization “Juridical Hundred” Lesya Vasilenko said, it is because there were a lot of unregistered volunteers in the country last summer and it is also hard to find bodies of the deceased in the territories occupied by the terrorists.”
Alena Shkrum
According to the specialists, today families of the deceased volunteers are especially in a hard situation because they cannot reckon on any aid from the state, as they have no possibility to submit the needed set of documents proving involvement of their spouses or children in the military activities. Thus, the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from faction Batkivshchyna Alena Shkrum notes that despite the law No.1688 adopted on April 7, 2015 that provides rights of combatants of the volunteer battalions for acquiring the status of the participants of the military actions, families of such military still have large difficulties.
“This law is executed very slowly and when monitoring it, we realize that most of its provisions remain declarative and are not executed. Ministers tell me that all volunteer battalions have the status of the ATO participants, however, at the same time I met two volunteer battalions that were not registered during my last visit in Donbass. There are more than 200 combatants in one of them, only 100 of which are registered and are on provision. They have been trying to resolve this problem already for two months,” the deputy said.
Alena Shkrum suggests to make the permanent initiative to gather deputies from different factions together with public members for discussing current problems twice a week.
The deputy is sure that in such a way, it will be possible to solve emergent difficulties faster and more efficiently.
Non-existent references for the Armed Forces of Ukraine
However, not only relatives of volunteers have problems with execution of the bereaved family status. People who had to collect documents after death of their family member themselves say that this process often is aggravated by several factors.
Thus, for example, Alena Shkrum says that the Ministry of Defense often refuses the financial payments for a bereaved family because of lack of a reference proving the fact of mobilization, although this reference isn’t mentioned in the list of the required documents.
The director of the non-governmental organization “Wings of the 8th Hundred” Irina Mikhnyuk confirms emerging difficulties:
“I volunteer and often face such situations, when a sorrowful family cannot collect required documents. The law “On status of war veterans” isn’t executed. For someone it works only partially. It even happens that a family has all documents, the deceased was awarded with an order but the family cannot prove that he was a military serviceman. What can be said when in order to collect documents regarding my husband I had to go to the Lugansk region. And it is despite the fact that he wasn’t a mere private soldier,” Irina Mikhnyuk says.
Forgotten missing in action
Lesya Vasilenko
Relatives of the combatants who are considered to be missing in action face, probably, the most significant problem while executing the bereaved family status. Both volunteers and deputies agree about that.
“Families of the missing in action got into the most appalling situations. Even in those cases when there were evidences of husband’s participation in the antiterrorist operation, his death in consequence of an explosion but it is not possible to find his body and there is no remains, he is still considered to be lost in action,” Lesya Vasilenko said.
As the matter of fact, a family, whose relative is considered to be lost in action cannot expect any kind of assistance within half a year from the day of his disappearance. Payroll stops to be provided for such a militant at the enterprise where he used to work and the social benefits from the state for the family will be provided a lot later.
Such situation appeared in the country because the notion of missing person isn’t the military one but the civil one as martial law wasn’t officially implemented in Ukraine. By the martial law, family does not have to wait for half a year for the official confirmation of the lost in action status, they can expect assistance already 15 days after the disappearance.
To solve this problem, specialists suggest to revise legislation in the missing persons sphere specially for the present situation in the country.
