A Dubliner who founded Ukraine’s national suicide prevention phoneline has said he never considered leaving his adopted homeland when war broke out.
Paul Niland, who has lived in Ukraine for 20 years, said the number of people seeking support on the Lifeline Ukraine hotline has surged from 1,000 a month before the full-scale Russian invasion, to 6,000 a month in recent times.
Mr Niland is part of the small Irish community that remains in Kyiv as the conflict continues to rage.
Another is international law enforcement expert Maura O’Sullivan from Limerick.
Ms O’Sullivan, a former lecturer at the Garda College, is deputy head of mission with the EU Advisory Mission (EUAM) in Ukraine and is playing a key role in advising police and prosecutors on war crimes investigations and around the challenges of restoring law and order in areas abandoned by retreating Russian forces.
Anne Maire Kerrigan-Deriche, from Greystones, Co Wicklow, also lives in Kyiv, working with the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, helping millions of people forced to flee their homes in the east and south of the Ukraine.
Mr Niland, Ms O’Sullivan and Ms Kerrigan-Deriche met Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on his visit to the Ukrainian capital last week.
Mr Niland made it clear he was “not going anywhere” despite the war.
He is the director of Lifeline Ukraine, which he founded four years ago.
“We were at the point before February 24 of last year (Russian invasion) when we were averaging 1,000 calls to the hotline per month,” he said.
“In the last couple of months, it was close to 6,000.
“So, the effect on the psyche of the people, on the emotional conditions of people who’ve stayed in Ukraine, or even people who’ve left Ukraine as well, people who have become refugees and suffered this sense of loss, because of all of the things that they no longer have around them.
“We’ve been at war since 2014, but this phase of the war has made the problem even more acute.
“My colleagues do a wonderful job of taking the workload on their shoulders, and they’ve now managed to provide more than 6,000 instances of support every month.”
Mr Niland said he never considered leaving despite Russian tanks advancing on Kyiv.
“My thinking is that this is home and I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
“I really didn’t think that they would attack Kyiv, because it was an insane thing to think that they could pull off. But they did. But I decided long before that I was staying, and I did stay.
“And I’m privileged actually to have witnessed the way that the people of Kyiv specifically, but Ukraine in general, have responded to this most awful period of immense personal and national tragedy that’s been foisted upon them.
“And it’s great to have the support of the international community coming here and showing Ukrainians that they’re doing the right thing.”
Mr Niland said Mr Varadkar’s trip was important symbolically, as it demonstrated the level of international solidarity with Ukraine.
Before the invasion last year, the mandate of Ms O’Sullivan and the advisory mission was work with the law enforcement agencies, implementing civilian security sector reform.
Once full-scale war broke out, the mission had to adapt its focus to support activity moving goods and people in and out of Ukraine.
The EUAM is also advising on war crimes investigations.
Ms O’Sullivan explained what that work involved.
“It’s working together with the prosecutor general’s office, with the police on the ground, going out with them so that we can advise them on how to put together cases, how to investigate, advising on the legislation that’s in place, making sure that everything is in line with international humanitarian law with the international standards,” she said.
“We’re also advising on conflict related sexual violence – victims and witnesses and how this is all going to work as well in the future.”
Ms O’Sullivan also highlighted the mission’s work supporting Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies on plans to restore stability in areas of the country that have been de-occupied by the Russians.
Ms Kerrigan-Deriche is senior external relations adviser at the UNHCR.
The refugee agency has been in Ukraine since 1994. Last year it helped 4.3 million internally displaced people within Ukraine.
“We’re assisting the people who fled the war to the western parts of the country,” she said.
“Some of them have gone back, in fact many of them have gone back to their villages, but there’s still a considerable portion who remain in the western part.
“We are also responding along the frontline areas with humanitarian assistance.
“So in the liberated and regained areas there, we go in with convoys, as part of the UN inter-agency response, to give people the critical items that they need like bedding, like hygiene kits, like water, etc.”
She said the agency, working with partners, has already helped rebuild 12,000 homes in the eastern, central and southern parts of Ukraine.
Ms Kerrigan-Deriche, who has lived in Kyiv for the past year, said a recent survey showed the vast majority of refugees and internally displaced people wished to return home.
“What will enable them to return, besides the war being over, is having a house, having a job and having access to services,” she said.
“So that’s where our priority is, that’s where our focus is in helping them to be able to do that.”
