Samantha Morris*, a doctor from Maine, went to Ukraine in May to try to help provide medical training for soldiers. “The first time I crossed the border from Poland, I had to hide my medical supplies under mattresses and diapers to prevent them from being stolen,” she said. “The border guards on the Ukrainian side will just take things, and tell you, ‘we need this for our war,’ but then, they just steal the items and resell them. Honestly, if you don’t hand-deliver donations to the intended recipients, the items will never reach them.” Morris and a few other American medical professionals began to hold training courses in Sumy, a mid-sized city in northeastern Ukraine. “We drew up a contract with the governor in Sumy, though all they provided to us were meals and lodging, and the lodging was just us sleeping in the same public university we held our training courses in,” she said. “The Sumy governor had a friend, a local businessman, and he demanded that this businessman be added to the contract as a ‘liaison’ between us and the city of Sumy. And as a liaison, he would get a percentage fee of the contract. Our lawyers tried to negotiate the businessman out of the contract, but the governor of Sumy wouldn’t budge. We ultimately just signed the contract so we could hold our trainings.”
In the two months she spent in Ukraine, Morris says she encountered theft and corruption more times than she could count. “The lead doctor at the military base in Sumy has ordered medical supplies from and for the military at different points in time, and he has had 15 trucks of supplies completely disappear,” she said. The military first aid kits she had intended to give to soldiers once they graduated her training program were stolen. She saw the same kits for sale at a local market days later.
Damn! Those Russians even got their sneaky hands in the Ukrainian black market.
