 Good morning and welcome to the U.S. Institute of Peace and welcome to our event on Ukraine and it's internally displaced. I sincerely want to thank all of you in the audience for your attendance today as I think we all are familiar with the challenges of getting anywhere in Washington in the rain. And I think we want to extend a special welcome to students from USIP's Academy who are here for a course on men and women in war and peace. And we certainly welcome you to this event. And a special thank you above all to our panelists who are not only experts on this issue but passionate advocates for Ukraine and for refugees and the displaced worldwide. In many ways this panel is a public launch for a joint project that the U.S. Institute of Peace is doing with the Global Fund for Women. I would like to recognize Eva Kolodner who is a member of the leadership team with the Global Fund for Women. The project is an effort to elevate the issue of Ukraine's 1.5 million internally displaced but also to look at Ukraine's IDPs from a peace building's perspective. We as peace builders know that successful IDP resettlements secure durable peace processes. We know that giving IDPs a voice introduces critical local knowledge into policy discussions. We know that building the capacity of local NGOs to provide humanitarian assistance to NGOs strengthens civil society but also connects them to local governments. Ukraine and its treatment of its IDPs allows us to imagine very important possibilities for Ukraine. Local communities have opened their homes and schools to the displaced. Could this goodwill and community openness contribute to internal reconciliation? The government of Ukraine is the single biggest funder of support for IDPs. Could this change perceptions of Kiev by populations in and from the east? In many cases NGOs from war zones I understand from Natalia have come to and moved out of war zones wholesale moving their offices and staff to locations in the west out of the war zone. And will those the relations they established strengthen civil society bonds even across the regions of Ukraine? The panel is here today to provide a clear eyed assessment of the situation with IDPs in Ukraine which is in some ways at a tipping point. While the potential for constructive engagement as I've outlined does exist winter is also here and local economies are constrained. So in first order to provide us a real-time assessment of the situation of IDPs in Ukraine I'd like to introduce Natalia Karbaska. Natalia builds, sustains and advocates for civil society in Ukraine but focusing primarily on the empowerment of women economically, politically and socially. Among the many jobs that she has in Ukraine she is the Board Chair of the Ukrainian Women's Fund and part of the Global Fund for Women. Recently in the current conflict she has worked tirelessly to advocate for the rights of IDPs, the majority of whom are women, and to welcome NGOs from the east who have been forced to migrate within Ukraine. My understanding from the Global Fund is that Natalia is connected in some way to every NGO in Ukraine and has an unparalleled civil society network in her country. So with that Natalia. Thank you very much Lauren. First of all I would like to thank USAP and the Global Fund for Women for providing me opportunity to be here to speak to you today and to be on the panel with such distinguished speakers and I know big supporters of my country. Thank you very much. I wanted to start by telling you a little personal story. I arrived here yesterday last night and last night I had a meeting with Ukrainians here and I met a person from Donetsk. He is originally a man. He is originally from Donetsk. He was there a leader of an NGO and of course when the war started he joined Donbass Battalion. He was one of those who were imprisoned, who were kept first by Russian troops and then by pro-Kremlin rebels for four months there in Donetsk. And I asked him how it was to be there. What did you feel? And he told me it was scary but we never thought about giving up. And I think this is what these are the feelings that many of us in Ukraine have now. It is scary indeed. We have many fears. We do not give up still. We will never give up because there is no way for us to give up. We do not give up despite the fear, the very basic ones for example, that because of the economic situation in the country there will be no money for families tomorrow to pay for electricity, gas or buy basic food. There is also the fear that reforms will not be implemented the way we would like them to be implemented. That all politicians are still, some of them are still in power and they will not leave. That corruption is so deeply rooted in our country that we will not have enough strength to fight it, to overcome it. Also there is a fear that Putin and his ideas to rebuild huge empire will become true. But despite all of this we are moving forward. And I was thinking that on November 23 actually next week there will be two years since the revolution of dignity started. It started on November 23, 2013. At that time we also, those of us who were there, who were at Maidan, we also had many fears. We didn't know how it will develop but we knew that we want to change, we want to change for our families, for our country. Therefore we were there. There were many sacrifices that we all made, unfortunately many people killed. But it was a way for us to get independence. And we won the revolution of dignity won. But we knew at that time that the change that we all aimed for will not come immediately. Because we were about, people who were at Maidan, we were about policy change. And we knew from our experience with the past revolution in 2004 that it will not happen, that next day we will wake up and the life will be completely different. So we were prepared to work hard to achieve policy change in the country. But there were things that we were not prepared for. We were not prepared for Crimea. We were not prepared for East. And we were not prepared for war with Russia. So of course war brought a lot of challenges again that the country was not prepared for. There was no army, there were no systems to deal with IDPs. For the first time in the entire history of the country we had this challenge. But also this was a time when volunteer movement started to develop in the country. And people were raising, mobilizing millions of dollars to support IDPs, to support army, to support those in need. And this is in the country which never ever had culture of philanthropy. So for me this is real indication of civil society in Ukraine. People mobilizing to achieve results. People mobilizing to change policies in their country. Of course my organization Ukrainian Women's Fund we work with women We do think and we don't know that women are affected the most in the situations of war. It's the same in any country in the world. In Ukraine according to official UN statistics 66% of IDPs are women. They were poor before the war and now with the economic crisis of course they get even more poor. The violence against women, again nothing new. The violence against women is increasing but there are also new dimensions, new forms of violence that we observe in Ukraine. In addition to sexual violence or any other forms of violence in the east we see the increase in the violence in families of men who come from Vodon in the west regions of Ukraine. And the challenges here are that systems policies in the country are not developed well enough to address this issue. We have quite good law on violence prevention but in the reality it does not work in the communities at the local level. And also there are really strong stereotypes in society that these men are protecting us in the east so they are untouchable. They can do whatever they want to do. There is of course unfortunately lack of tolerance in communities and we observe this more and more. Especially again coming back to economic crisis, economic situation when there are limited resources at the local level and limited number of jobs of course there is a competition. And when local people are competing with internally displaced this creates tensions. There is not much infrastructure to support IDPs in local communities unfortunately. And this is I think the uniqueness of our country. They have to basically find apartments, find housing themselves. They have to pay for apartments themselves and they have to earn money to pay for it. And of course it's always that beyond their numbers 1.5 million there are individual stories of 1.5 individuals in Ukraine. And well I can tell you the story of a colleague of mine from the Ukrainian Women's Fund who was our regional representative in Donetsk. She is a young woman. She was there until their real fights started. And she had to escape to run to Kiev with the three weeks old daughter when it became life threatening for her to stay there. So she lived in a nice big apartment in the center of Donetsk. And now she had to move with her family to a small village, to a small house in the village 250 kilometers from Kiev. No jobs, no job, nothing, small social security money from the government and that's it. So that's the reality that many IDPs are facing now. They moved there with her parents and with her brothers and his family but they basically after when the ceasefire was announced they decided to move back to Donetsk. And I'm thinking which, because it was really difficult for them to stay there without any job, without, without anything. Many people in one small house. So I'm, I'm thinking what attitude towards Ukraine these people are bringing back to Donetsk and Luhansk if they had to leave from their peaceful communities because it was difficult for them there to survive. In terms of NGOs, indeed NGOs are doing a lot. They mobilized. Many of us changed our strategies since the war started. I think NGOs are working, especially women's NGOs are working in two directions now. First one is that they are providing emergency support to those in need. They are responding to the basic needs of people, of IDPs and people in the host communities. They are running job skills programs. In addition to these, well, you can train people how to get jobs but if there are no jobs in community what should you do, right? So there are initiatives that Ukrainian NGOs are running in terms of the area of small and medium business development. Because we do think there is a potential now in Ukraine in developing of micro enterprises and small enterprises so that they could give places to work for local people and for IDPs in particular. NGOs are running initiatives to prevent violence in communities. Also, the thing that started in Ukraine and definitely we think there is need to work more in this direction is to support organizations of IDPs. NGOs run by IDPs because they are in the same situation. They had to move from their regions and they are basically starting from the very beginning. They have to re-register organizations, get new offices if they are able to get offices actually because it's quite expensive. And basically start from the very beginning in new locations. The other direction that organizations are working in Ukraine in is promoting, especially women's organization, promoting women's participation in peace building and reconciliation through dialogue and also increased role, women's role in decision making. Why dialogue? We think that women could be actually agents of change and could play a huge role in peace building. Simply and also because we saw many of us saw when there were these referendums in the East so-called referendums about creating the Netsk and Luhansk republics. Majority of those who stood in lines with happy faces wanting to vote for independence for the Netsk and Luhansk republics, there were women, majority of them. It was so obvious on TV everywhere. And women's movement, we were asking why women were there and the answer is simple because they want a better future for themselves, for their families, for their communities. And the only information about better future that they were getting at that time and still are getting in the Netsk and Luhansk republics is propaganda from Russia. That Russia brings this better future. So we do think it's important for us to start talking to these women. Start talking maybe not necessarily from, you know, this is your position and this is my position because it will never result in a good conversation. Start talking from neutral topics like if there is a woman who is running small cafeteria, small coffee shop in the Netsk, for example, or in the Netsk complex. And another woman who is running similar coffee shop in Lviv. Let them get together and start talking about coffee shops and how to engage more clients, how to bring more clients and from these conversations come to bigger, broader conversations about joint future in this country. Why we think it is a momentum to bring more women in decision making in Ukraine, that's another strategy, is that we see that society is really ready for a new faces in politics. For a new values in politics and we do think that women could bring these values. So there is definitely a need to increase participation of women in decision making. It didn't happen unfortunately with the last elections which we had a week ago. Local elections, although we had quotas in the election law but this for the first time actually in Ukraine these quotas were introduced but they were not real quotas. It was just one sentence in the election law saying that there should be 30% of people of another gender in the list of candidates without any measures, without any punishment for not following this. So the situation is still the same, the same number of women in local councils. As lower the level is as the more women is there because well it's traditionally in Ukraine and as the higher the level is like the parliament as less women is there. Presently we have 11% of women in the parliament. So we think it's really important for us to prepare for the new elections and there are some conversations in Ukraine going on that there will be parliamentary elections in March or well in spring. So we think if there are elections then definitely we should lobby for the changes in the election law so that quotas, real quotas are included there. And another thing which is really important to lobby for in the new election law is to give IDPs possibilities to vote. I recently heard an example of Croatia where IDPs received possibility to vote for MPs representing their regions and it really helped the country a lot at that time. So I do think that Ukraine should follow this example and we should lobby and also put a pressure from international community on Ukrainian side to basically implement this measure to change the law. Also in terms of support from international community it is important for us that you all do not give up on Ukraine. You keep pressure on Ukrainian government to implement commitments that it made. You help us to introduce supportive policies like this possibility for IDPs to vote, like supportive policies for small and medium and micro enterprises development because this will really help to support people on the ground, to support people in communities, especially women because they are the owners of usually the majority of those who run small and micro enterprises and IDPs as well. There is also a need in support of initiatives to build tolerance in communities. We also see that with the decentralization reform in Ukraine when a lot will depend on local communities and basically money will be distributed at the local communities. We need to train local people, IDPs, women, other marginalized groups, how to analyze local policies, how to develop the new ones that will be of benefit for different target groups and how to lobby for change. We also, it's important also not to work because recently we observed this in Ukraine that there are many initiatives to support IDPs but they are run mostly in the east of the country where majority of IDPs live, like the Nied Luhansk Oblast, Nipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv. But there are, you can see at this map, IDPs are in other regions of the country as well. So somehow these regions got neglected and it is really important to pay attention to these regions as well. Also it is important for us that international community knows about situation in Ukraine and here. I know that there are many terrible events happening in the world these days but I do think, I do believe that they are connected. After Paris events last week, prokremlin separatists in Ukraine became more active, it is obvious, it is visible. There are more people being killed now in the east and there is a danger that ceasefire will not be kept until the end of the year, until the end of the year. It will be broken very soon. I remember when there was war in Georgia, many of us in Ukraine were thinking that well we feel for these people, we support them but this is far from us, this is kind of a different reality. And now we know that it is not, we all live in the same reality. And what looks like a local problem, the problem of one country might become global problem in just one day. So I think it is important for us to think about this, to know this and to keep, to keep, actually to keep going and not giving up. Thank you. Wonderful, thank you Natalia. Our next speaker is Don Calabia. Don has advocated on behalf of refugees and displaced persons worldwide and from multiple institutions including the United Nations and its High Commissioner for Refugees, the US Catholic Conference Migration Office, the House International Relations Committee, and from our own NGO, the Women's Refugee Commission of New York and Washington. Don is currently a Special Advisor at Refugees International and is just back from a field research mission in Ukraine and has published her findings in a report that we have available for all of you out of the front table. Don. Thank you very much and I'd like to thank the Institute of Peace for holding this event and to thank Natalia for coming. She was the first person I met in Ukraine. So you know I got a good picture of what was going on in the country and the particular concerns of women. And I'll never forget what you said, our whole country is in shock. The psychosocial needs of our society are incredible because we've been hurt. We're alone. We feel alone. We have a, and she didn't say this, but others said, we have a very powerful neighbor. And I asked one elderly lady what we could do to help her. She said, get us a new neighbor. So Ukraine has 44 million people. 1.5 million are registered with the government. Refugees International looks at displacement issues around the world and goes to places like Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic. And it's very rare for a government to actually register its internally displaced people. But of course Ukraine is in Europe, which is something we can forget and the people remind us constantly of. And so Ukraine under pressure from its own civil society as well as the United Nations and some of its donors and some of the governments concerned about Ukraine insisted that the government come up with a registration policy and also that it passed an IDP law which it finally did in November. And at that point Ukraine had 574,000 people registered as internally displaced people. What does it mean to be internally displaced? For some of the people I've met, it meant that they got on a train in Donetsk and they wound up in Mariupol in their pajamas because the shelling had started at night and they had fled. So they got to Mariupol which is a city of 500,000 people and they were met at the station by the mayor and lots of church groups and civil society organizations. The deputy mayor said to us, we didn't know what we were going to do. What do you do when 5,000 people come on a train in the middle of the night? And she said, so we called the people we knew and people came out to respond to the needs. And that's what happens in most internally displaced situations when there is conflict. The local community is the first person to give support. I talked to some of the volunteers in Harkiv and they said, we don't agree on almost anything else except that we should help other Ukrainians. And what we say to them is welcome to Harkiv. This is a nice city. You are nice people. We welcome you to join our community. She said we can't do much more for them. We try to refer them for housing. We try to help them find jobs. We try to help them find medical care for their children, which often is an issue. But what we can do is welcome them and make them feel that we want them as part of our society. And that's a form of peace building. That's a form of saying these are people from different places, maybe with different political opinions, maybe very strong political opinions. But these are human beings and they deserve our support in helping them find shelter, helping them find access to education and other services for themselves and for their families. And in some many cases, the community is well ahead of the government in responding to these kinds of things. And as Natalia was saying, there are lots of organizations in Ukraine and there are lots of organizations formed by women and now there are lots of organizations formed by IDPs themselves. And why do the IDPs form organizations? As Natalia said, most of them are women. They're female headed households. They're taking care of their elderly members and usually children. And they realize that most people don't know what it's like, what they've experienced. They look the same on the outside as everybody else in Ukraine, possibly not as well dressed, but that they have real needs and their isolation is really difficult. The government in the UN decided that early on that would be better for people to try to find private housing than to put them into institutions or camps. So in Ukraine, per se, there are almost no camps. There are a few large sanatoriums and there are one or two camps which are used as temporary shelters. But for the most part, people are living with their friends and family. A study the UN did this summer basically said that 66% were living with friends or families or doubled up with other IDP families. Housing and shelter is a primary need. The IDPs that we met in our visit, which was mostly in the eastern part of the country, said they wanted peace. They wanted the country at peace. They wanted to find jobs to be able to support themselves and their families. And they wanted to find shelter because the shelter situation is very difficult. Well, you can imagine, just think of how the US dealt with the Katrina population that was forced out from a hurricane. Lots of those people, the biggest need they had obviously was finding shelter and finding jobs and getting places for their children in school. When Ukraine adopted its IDP law, it did three things. It said basically that IDPs were not to be discriminated against. It said that IDPs who qualified based on their family size and financial situation could get a small social welfare payment from the government of $100 a month for a family. They also said that the children should have access, priority access for education and that wherever possible they should priority access for kindergartens. In Ukraine, kindergartens are really day care. It enables the family or the woman to go back to work because the children can be in care all day from their age of two to six. And what's in most short supply in Ukraine is kindergartens because the population was aging, it was shifts, and a lot of the kindergartens were closed, the property sold. And so the access to kindergarten is a very tense issue. Those of you who have children in Washington know how hard it is to find day care. You have to make your reservation usually when you get pregnant or before and it's the same in Ukraine. So families that counted in Harkiv are going to a particular day care center or kindergarten now find that IDPs are actually taking their places which is a source of some tension. So the UN agencies are trying to expand kindergarten spaces to repair those that have been damaged as a result of the war. But they're coming nowhere near the needs. One of the other things that Ukraine did in the face of the conflict was to invite the United Nations to come in and provide humanitarian assistance. And so the UN started in the summer of 2014 trying to deal with the housing and food and medical needs of the displaced populations and trying to help Ukrainian institutions which were overwhelmed and are still overwhelmed by the shifts of population. But surprising for the UN, it became very difficult to raise funds. The response internationally was extremely poor and extremely slow. In February of this year, they put out another appeal for $316 million. To date, they received 45% of that funding, much of it given in the second quarter of the year. 45% means that services, unfortunately, are where the populations are largest and many communities where there are significant numbers of IDPs are not receiving active UN agency support. The UN agencies, in addition to appealing for funds, came in with their own staff which are generally small and generally contract with international organizations that are used to doing UN procurement following UN procedures. What they failed to notice was the level of civil society development in Ukraine and the willingness of many of these organizations to work in conjunct and as partners with the United Nations. And also the willingness, frankly, of local government to respond to the needs of the internally displaced and their own communities. And so the UN is sort of now, that it's been there for over a year in an active capacity, has recognized that fact. Some of the NGOs that I met in Ukraine were pretty angry and they said, please tell your friends in the international organizations and the big international NGOs that this is not Africa. This is Europe. We have systems, we have good organizations and you should understand how our culture and our systems work and work alongside of us. So that is happening now. One agency, UNHCR for instance, now has 45 local agencies. Some of them started by community groups which have now registered with Ukraine to provide information which is one of the biggest needs that the IDPs talk about. Because they're not living in camps or settlement situations, they're isolated. There's very little public information available about their benefits and their rights or what they can do. Access to job training and stuff have been very limited because of the old propuska system and having employment books which the parliament just addressed a couple of weeks ago. Basically saying that if you had lost your employment book, you now could come in and get a duplicate that you could go into training programs that the government would accept you registering to look for employment and that it would also consider financing training programs and relocation for people to find new employment, something that before IDPs were not eligible to do. So the government is trying to cope and as Lauren said, is the major supporter of internally despised people. Internally despised people under international law and custom are the responsibility of their government. And the government of Ukraine, it was slowed off the mark but is now catching up. And it's catching up mostly because of the pressure, frankly, from local organizations and from local village administrators or blessed administrators of rayons who are saying, these are people who are here. And all of a sudden our local hospital has three times the patient load it had before and you have not increased support to the local hospital. The government is responsible obviously for the IDPs but local government is actually the part of the government that is providing the services and is not getting any additional assistance at this point in time. Ukraine as you all know has gone through very tough economic times and it's still not out of the woods. The IMF says it is living up to its agreements and we're hoping that the U.S. this December will release another $1 billion loan guarantee payment. Excuse me, I'm saying $1 billion. Thank you, investor. In reality, Ukraine probably needs about $13 billion to be able to function really well. What Ukraine really needs is economic development assistance. The UN put out a plan last February which called for a billion and a half dollars from banks and governments to help with economic response in terms of repairing infrastructure in the areas which are now safe and secure under government control and also to restore social services. Part of the IMF reductions of government spending required Ukraine to lay off 12,000 social service employees at the end of last year just as the IDPs were hitting organizations looking for assistance and it also cut pensions and benefits to save money. The parliament this year restored 8.8% in terms of a slight increase in the benefits to families but Ukraine's economy is really very, very difficult. Inflation this year is running at 45%. The government also, as you know, cut off all benefits to people living in the non-government controlled area. Ukraine has a very difficult situation in trying to decide how it's going to treat Ukrainians who are living in the non-government controlled areas. They call it an anti-terrorist operation. People in those areas are considered separatists but at the same time, they are human beings. There are several thousand people living in what were formerly Ukrainian institutions, kindergarten sanatoriums, orphanages, boarding schools who have been cut off from all assistance from the government of Ukraine and are now dependent either on international organizations or aid from Russia. Russia is providing humanitarian aid in the non-government controlled area but food prices are 40% higher than they are in Ukraine and medicine is 60% higher if it's available. So there are still lots of humanitarian needs. The UN is appealing for additional funds for the ranger of this calendar year and is hoping to be able to continue operations next year. Many governments are saying, well Ukraine is in Europe and so they should be handling more of the responsibility for their own people. But at the same token, we have to understand that Ukraine is a country that has opted for a more democracy for improved governance. As Natalia said, there's a lot of corruption, there's a lot of difficulties. At the same token, there's a willingness and a commitment, particularly at the local level, to get the country going and to deal with the needs of the internally displaced. In most situations of internal displacement, once it's safe, people go home. Even they go back to places that have been totally destroyed because that's home. Every time there's a ceasefire in Ukraine, more people go back to the area that was under siege. And as Natalia said, unfortunately, almost every time the ceasefire has broken down and some of those people are displaced again. The war is a shelling war, it's an artillery war. So when you're traveling around what you see are damaged houses. There are over 12,000 damaged houses in Donetsk and Luhansk. Over 250 schools have been damaged or destroyed. And so there's a lot of rebuilding to be done. And I would hope that the U.S. government would join with the EU and with the Germans and some other governments in trying to assist Ukraine in repairing the war damage and in getting some of the unemployed IDPs but also unemployed people living in the host communities where the IDPs are because unemployment has doubled in Ukraine and getting them back to work repairing houses, repairing buildings. I think this is a country that wants to make it and I think that with some timely assistance and encouragement and working with local organizations a lot can be done. And I thank you very much for coming today. Thank you, Don. Our next speaker is Ambassador Taylor. Bill is the executive vice president of USIP and has served in several critical coordinator positions in the U.S. State Department, Middle East transitions, Afghanistan assistance, assistance to the former Soviet Union. He served as ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and since then has actively informed the U.S. public and policymakers on a wealth of issues on Ukraine ranging from investment in climate in Ukraine to the policies of the Poroshenko government in public opinion in Ukraine on the possibilities for cohesion and reconciliation. Bill. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you very much for having me here. It's great to be on the panel with Natalia Don and Ambassador Papier looking forward to it. We're here to talk primarily about the 1.5 million internally displaced people that are individuals. We keep that in mind that these are people that we have all seen and met and they are individual people that we have to help one by one but also as a greater group. This problem of internally displaced people and more broadly refugees is an issue that affects Europe, it's affecting the United States, the political discussion here is something that we can observe every day about how to deal with IDPs in Ukraine, refugees in Europe, Syrian refugees in the United States. And we have a lot to learn, I think, from the people in Harkeith that you talked about that are welcoming people in. Natalia reviewed the way that we got here and I'll just say a little bit about that. Don asked the question, Don was asked the question when she was there, how can we get out of this? Well, a new neighbor. Well, this is hard. But I think it's worth, as we think about solutions, I think we do have to keep in mind what the situation was, what the problem is, what began this, how did we get here. And we got here by Ukraine wanting to join European institutions, as both Natalia and Don said. Ukraine is a European country. If you take a look at the map, the broader map, if Europe goes from the Atlantic to the Urals, Ukraine is at the heart, is right in the middle of Europe. And Ukraine wanted to join European institutions. And the neighbor that Don's friend said they can't get away from said no, said we will not allow that. So the Russians did not want Ukraine to move into European institutions, which led then to the clashes, led then to the Maidan, led then to the deaths on the Maidan, led then to the president of Ukraine at that time fleeing the country, abandoning ship, leading then to the invasion of Crimea, leading further to the invasion of Donbas. We just keep this in mind as we're thinking about solutions, not only to the IDB problem, but to the broader economic and political problems that both Don and Natalia have described in Ukraine, what we can do. This is the source. Today, my own view is that the Russians have decided that they're going to back off a bit in Ukraine, in Ukraine. The international community put on pretty tough sanctions. That together with falling oil prices has put a real strain on the Russian economy. The Russian activity, invasion, occupation of Crimea is expensive. And that is having an effect. The sanctions are having an effect. They would like to be out from under the sanctions. And my own sense is they recognize that and they're moving and they've shifted their attention to Syria. And they have taken some of the troops that were in Ukraine, some of the special forces troops that were in Ukraine and sent them down to the next front, to the Syrian front. This, by the way, has had the effect of increasing the flows of refugees out of Syria, and exacerbating the problem in Europe. Natalia said that Ukrainians won't give up. And this is important, and we can help them as they are fighting this. We need to push the Ukrainian government and support the Ukrainian government as they push for reforms. Reforms are tough. Economic reforms are never easy. Democratic reforms, the decentralization we talked about, tricky. The corruption that Natalia mentioned is certainly true at the national level. It's also true at the local level. Decentralization solves some problems, may not solve all those problems. But support from the international community, economic support, but also political support for these kinds of reforms is going to be increasingly important. I think we need to keep the sanctions on. We have talked about the effect of the sanctions on Russia, and having had some effect, they are still in Crimea. They are still in Donbass until they have gotten out of Donbass and gotten out of Crimea. The sanctions ought to stay on. I just read the paper this morning that the Europeans have indicated that they're going to agree with us and keep the sanctions on until the Minsk agreement is fully implemented, which is, we're not seeing that now. We see the violations of the ceasefire over the weekend have gone up. So we should maintain the pressure on the Russians. The Ukrainians, Natalia says the Ukrainians won't give up, and I think we shouldn't either. We should maintain them. So thank you very much. Thank you. Our last speaker is Ambassador Milan Bravier, who is currently director of Georgetown University's Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and has spent her career elevating the status and position of women globally. She also connects women throughout the world and mobilizes international support for their advancement through a previous leadership of organizations like Seneca Point Global, Vital Voices Global Partnership, and is first-ever U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Issues appointed by President Obama in 2009 and working with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ambassador Bravier is also here today because of her special connection to and affection for Ukraine and its people. Thank you. Well, thank you so much and good morning, everybody. You know, when you're the cleanup hitter, it's almost all been said. So I'll just do my best to underscore a few of the points. But I particularly want to say what a personal pleasure it is for me to be back with Natalia, whom I've known for more than a decade. She is symbolic of the vibrant leadership of civil society in Ukraine and has struggled mightily to put together a lot of the response mechanisms over many, many years and doing that in a very strong way today as well. So, Natalia, we're happy to have you here. Don has been just an exceptional leader in this space, and I think we're privileged that she could come and give us the perspective, not just from her recent visit, particularly in eastern Ukraine, but from the vast knowledge base from which she operates over many decades. And sitting next to my former colleague here in the State Department, I remember in my years in the White House in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, Bill Taylor was in that pivotal role on humanitarian assistance response to Ukraine. And I'm just sitting here thinking, are there lessons learned from that experience that we could, instead of reinventing the wheel constantly, bring to this experience, particularly in terms of that wide humanitarian response that I think we worked very effectively to impact. And I want to thank you, SIP, because in many ways this session is emblematic of what happens here every day, but I think with respect to this issue, in many ways it's still an invisible war, it's an invisible humanitarian crisis, and discussions like this, and particularly reactions to discussions like this when we leave the room, will have hopefully impact. Let me just again say that we're looking at a country that is dealing with a massive humanitarian crisis, at least a million and a half displaced people, but at the same time it is dealing with staggering challenges, economic challenges, challenges having to do with an ongoing war. As Bill said, the ceasefire is not a ceasefire that holds. I was just with the OSCE last week and there have been any number of recorded breaks in that ceasefire that impact people and their lives on the ground. And the massive need for reform in terms of dealing with this ongoing corruption that does pervade so many of the efforts that have to be made. It impedes those efforts because of its existence. So I think we have to keep in perspective that this is a country struggling on many fronts. I think with all the progress that's been made, I still think that we need, or Ukraine needs to establish a more effective national strategic policy when it comes to this coordination effort that's required to deal with the IDP crisis, both in terms of ongoing policies, in terms of the implementation of those policies, in terms of the allocation of resources, and it's already been said just how critical it is for these resources to support what's going on, particularly at the local level. I was there just a few months ago and in meeting with the Ministry of Social Planning, which has a huge part of the responsibilities for this area of support of the displaced, you could feel how oppressive the situation was, and you could feel, and then they went on to talk about it, of course, how difficult it has been to coordinate support and to do what needs to be done, and this is on areas ranging from housing to safety to employment to all of the things that we all know, but there is a real overload situation, and I feel still a lack of the kind of coordination that is required. And the situation in the eastern part of the country also has the benefit of this plan and I think Don alluded to where the international community, several of the international major institutions, have come together with the Ukrainian government to focus on recovery and peace-building in that part of the country, which is going to be even more important as the days go forward, and I think we need to ensure that that process is one that's going to be effectively implemented, as well as the recognition, and I think this is worth saying, recognition of the role that the local NGOs are playing. They are pivotal, they have been ignored initially for the most part by the international community, they are extremely capable, and all of my conversations with the NGOs, both those like Natalia, who are working on the national level, but also many who are working in eastern Ukraine, you cannot sit with them and not leave impressed at their wide understanding of what needs to be done, their capabilities, but what they don't have is the kind of support they need to be critical players in that effort. I want to reinforce the fact that women are tremendously victimized by this crisis. As Natalia said, they are the great majority of the impacted, a great majority of the displaced. Women are impacted differently by war, and I think we have to recognize that both as a result of that, they have different needs that have to be met. The loss of livelihoods is a critical one because many, many more of them are assuming the bread-winning roles, and that is in a time of lack of the kinds of opportunities they need to access, something that is a really top concern, as you've already heard. The violence as apparent as it is during the conflict, and this is an issue. The OSCE is the only regional security organization that has the special monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine. It has been impeded in significant ways because it can't go into all of the areas where the conflict is still taking place. But even with all of those monitors, many of us have been trying to ensure that there is a greater effort paid in documenting these cases that Natalia mentioned of sexual violence, other kinds of violence to women. The trafficking is on an uptick in very significant ways. That documentation needs to be done, particularly in terms of responding appropriately to the needs that are there on the ground, but ultimately also in documenting the evidence base for future accountability. So the whole area, both in terms of what is still happening in the east and what happens to displaced women, no matter where they move in the process, is that they are tremendously vulnerable. And often in conflict and post-conflict, you see an uptick in this violence. The conflict maybe have been viewed as ending, but in many ways the violence against women grows, and domestic violence largely increases. But I don't want to just stress women as victims because women are agents, critical agents of change. They have agency. They have the ground truth. They know what is needed on the ground where they are leading their lives. And many of them are the first people to seek out the assistance to organize within communities to work in a cross-division way to begin a healing process, and that is going to be extremely important in the reconciliation efforts in Ukraine. I want to underscore the impacts on the host communities. I have heard about this in so many different contexts, both in Ukraine and outside of Ukraine. There is a tremendous response, as you heard, a very positive response, a spirit of volunteerism, the religious community coming together across all representative faith groups. But there are also tremendous pressures on the host community. Many of them are feeling challenges themselves. These are not good times. They want to do better, but the difficulties they have in absorbing the influx of the displaced is also a significant struggle for them. And I found it interesting that in meeting with the women parliamentarians who are, though 11%, a very impressive group of the future possibilities in Ukraine, because they are coming together across party lines to really work to address the situation, and on their own, traveling to the east almost every week in groups to do their own assessments of what's going on. But they asked me, they pleaded, are there examples of what has been done through other crises on the part of host communities to deal with the influx of a displaced and officials in the foreign ministry asked me the same questions. There is this longing for best practices, if you will. What have we learned from other experiences in the past that can help us in Ukraine today to deal with this? I want to mention something that's not been mentioned, which I think will compound this problem. And that is you're beginning to see the demobilization of the military and the reintegration of soldiers and volunteer soldiers into the broader community. Without viable employment opportunities, we're going to see an exacerbation of domestic violence and other kinds of critical social pressures on the community, dovetailing with an already serious IDP problem. And again, in my discussions, I really did not see, in all of the ministries that have relevant responsibilities in this space, a real focus on what needs to be done. The situation in the east is one that has probably the most significant impacts on the people. And there are any number of issues. There's been mention of the lack of information. The propaganda that Russia is pouring into the east has, if you talk to Ukrainians there, they will tell you, we don't really know what's happening. Our only source of information is coming from Russia. And that also has to do with information they need for their day-to-day existence, the kind of on-the-ground support in terms of where to go, what to do, what's available. The movement, the inability to move when there's a desperate need to be linked up with relatives or with medical facilities. Ukraine, understandably, is very suspicious of movement that will aid in about the so-called separatists, but at the same time many of the restrictions that are in place are really negatively impacting the Ukrainian population there that has a serious need to hook up. And then there are those pockets of very challenged population groups, people with disabilities, children, the elderly who are basically trapped and not really getting anything like what they need to be able to survive. So there's any number of challenges, but I think there are certainly avenues in place. There's good work going on. I would just say in ending my own remarks that this is a critical time for our own country. The international community, for all the reasons you heard and know, needs to do more. But in the next week or so, our Congress is really focused on the 2016 funding and there are negotiations that are ongoing on the needs of Ukraine in particular are being weighed on the macroeconomic level, on the military equipment level, but also on this humanitarian level. We need to do more and this is a critical time when the Congress is deliberating on this very thing. We'd love to open the conversation up to you all in the audience. We have folks with microphones, so if anyone has a question, please raise your hand and we'll get you the microphone. And when you ask your questions, please identify yourself as well. This is a Zoom contour, Library of Congress. With the approaching winter cold and lack of adequate food, there is an immediate need in eastern Ukraine. And emergency requires immediate action. We've agreed that it's an emergency. There was an article yesterday in the Washington Post about homeless living right near here, near the Kennedy Center. So what can we do here in Washington to deal with this immediate emergency? Clearly, it requires part of this coordinated humanitarian response and you're exactly right as the cold is going to set in and grip the area, winterization and repairs to be able to allow people to be able to have wherever they are finding themselves and more are returning. In the last several weeks we've seen, for reasons that are fully understandable, people wanting to go back to their homes, but they're not in any shape to live in them, particularly through the kind of fierce winters that they are accustomed to. So this is a real major aid challenge in ensuring that in this little time before we're going to see the frigid conditions take over, that as much attention as possible is going to ensuring that kind of winterization, those kinds of repairs, that kind of ability to keep people from actually dying in the cold and exacerbating this problem. But it's a combination of the coordination and the resources, I think, and Don, you probably have more to say on this. The USAID may increase contributions about $15 million for this last period of the year. And a number of the EU and international organizations that are operating, UNICEF in particular, I would say, and the World Food Program, are geared up to provide assistance. One of the difficulties has been access, access both in the buffer zone or the gray zone along the border between the Ukraine government side as well as on the non-government controlled area. The separatists, unfortunately, have made it extremely difficult to bring international convoys of relief goods, particularly into Donetsk. The Luhansk authorities' separatists recently agreed that the UN could resume providing assistance. But there's no doubt it's going to be a cold winter. One of the difficulties in Ukraine, because it is a developed society, is that people have heating and they have water and they have electricity and gas lines. And a lot of the shelling has destroyed access, has destroyed individual parts of water pipelines. When I was there, 1.3 million people lacked access to clean water. The numbers dropped to 700,000 because of the ceasefire, because they've been able to make some repairs. And the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe goes around negotiating on the ground, ceasefires between various conflict organizations. To say, we're going to fix the electric pipeline, we want to fix the water today, we want to get the gas lines back, working again. If they can continue that, it will mean a much better winter for a lot of people. The UN is looking for about $6 million to buy coal, a couple of million tons of coal, because people can use that, many furnaces can be converted for coal. And they're also doing cash assistance to people in the government-controlled areas to let them buy clothing or heating supplies. But you're right, it's going to be a difficult winter, and obviously food with prices so high makes it difficult. Yeah, I also want to add, well, clearly there is no one solution in this situation, there are many. But I can tell from the Ukrainian Women's Fund experience, we actually faced this problem last winter. It was the same cold winter. And I think based on our experience, again, that one of the solutions is to support people to get together to organize and lobby for change. A very concrete example in this, there is an organization of women IDPs, those who are people with women with disabilities, not only women, people with disabilities, and majority of the members are women on wheelchairs. So they were located, as Don was saying, there are some places in Ukraine where people live in sanatoriums. So they were located in sanatorium in Odessa. And the place is basically summer resort, so there was no heating there. And when winter came, many organizations, we were buying them heaters so that they could stay there and be in a good situation in nice conditions. But another problem appeared. There was nobody to pay for electricity for these heaters. There was no money in the budget of this sanatorium to pay for electricity. So what the management of sanatoriums said that people who were there, they had to leave this facility. And they suggested that they would put women in the houses for elderly people. But there are kids, there were many families there, women with children and men as well. So they said that the kids, according to legislation, they cannot stay in the houses for elderly people. So what they suggested, that they will separate families and put women in the houses for elderly people and children in orphanages. Can you imagine? That's reality, 2014 Ukraine in the middle of Europe. So this organization basically, what they did was with the support from the Ukrainian Women's Fund, they organized community, they organized these people. And during one week, they organized huge advocacy campaign. They involved media, they involved decision makers, they screamed about this issue, about this problem. And in two weeks or three weeks, there was money in the budget of Odessa government to pay for electricity in this facility. So I do think, I do believe in the power of civil society, I am sure that this is one of the solutions to this problem. And they just need support, local NGOs and NGOs who work with these people. They just need support and encouragement from international community. Good morning, I'm Ben Jubler with the Public International Law and Policy Group. Many see corruption and ineffective governance in Ukraine as kind of exacerbating this whole situation. And my question is twofold. First, how much government reform in Ukraine is necessary prerequisite to an effective response to the IDP crisis? And second, what do you see as being the most effective path to viable reform in Ukraine? Several of us have talked about the importance of the issue that you raise. In the big picture, in the macroeconomic picture, the international community, the IMF, other international donors have conditioned a lot of the assistance for Ukraine on cleaning up corruption. Corruption is a problem that suggests that if you invest in there, invest in Ukraine, you won't get a return. It's not a good investment if the courts are corrupt, if the prosecutors are corrupt, if there is not a system of dispute resolution where people can go to court and get a resolution. That is an investment problem in the first instance. And then the international community's support for the IDPs, the winterization that we've talked about here is also an important component of that kind of contribution. This course has to be done by Ukrainians. And the Ukrainian government, to its credit, has recognized this, and there have been steps taken inadequate, as you've heard. And Natalia has described how there's disappointment among Ukrainians about how it's not going fast enough, that the reforms are not going fast enough. That's good. That's good. That's what the government needs to hear pressure. They need pressure from Ukrainians. They need pressure from the international community. They need pressure from donors, from the IMF. That kind of pressure, I think, is important. But the steps have to be Ukrainian steps. Now, there's another piece of the corruption answer, which is journalism and media. Corruption is not a problem only for Ukraine. Corruption is a problem including in this country. Let's be clear. You can't go to any, you pick up the Washington Post, you pick up the Boston Globe. There is corruption in every city, in every part, whether it's local mayor, or there's a senator going to jail, or, you know, we have this problem over. What they have to do is investigate that and put pressure again on the government, local government, as well as the central government to take action on this. So I think this is well recognized. There are multiple levels of corruption commissions that have been established. Misha Sakashvili, now the governor in Odessa, has taken some serious steps and is pretty popular. He's getting a lot of support. Yeah, there's some tough steps that have to be taken against the range of things. I'll just give you a very quick story. The day I arrived in Kiev was the day that the reformed police force took to the streets. And this is an effort now. It's gone beyond Kiev now and eventually all the major cities and rural areas. But for the first time, you've got even 27% women in the force cleaned out what existed before. I have never seen such euphoria over law enforcement in my life anywhere. People were taking pictures with the local police because they felt that for the first time, there might be somebody who really will, without a bribe, do what needs to be done to protect them and secure them. I think those kinds of steps are critically important to raising the morale of the people and the conviction that life will indeed get better and this reform effort is serious. The May Don, as it inspired the world, in many ways was about ending the corruption as it existed. So the May Don itself and all the people that represents continues to be an internal monitoring force for the changes they want. And this is, I think, and Natalia, you speak from this every day. Something's got to be done about the prosecutor's office in a very significant way on down to really give people the confidence that the local police have given in a number of the cities now. Sir, will you pass your microphone to the gentleman in front of you? I think he was next. And then I do have... Okay, thank you. My name's Zeryl Staniford. I spent almost 20 years in Moscow and first I would say that 20 out of 30 members of our management team were women. And I would say Russian, Ukrainian women being married to Russian for 20 years this week are an incredible resource. So I'm sure that as the 11% goes up and up, things will get better. Two questions. The men coming back from the front and the infrastructure repair needs seems like it's a match. What is the one thing that can be resourced? The one thing that we could do, that Congress could do to link those up, get funding quickly so that those people coming back from the front, those men coming back from the front could be put to work to repair those resources. And secondly, supporting the Ukrainian economy seems like one of the few things that we could all politically in the United States agree about right now. What's being done for private sector support? We know that Congress is slow in USAID. What about private sector charitable support? What are the channels that are developed and working that could be further developed to get the American people and American business supporting the development of the Ukrainian economy? Well, one of the reasons the UN uses international and non-governmental organizations is because they do their own fundraising to some extent. And so they bring some resources to the table. But I think also church groups and different charities are operating in Ukraine. There were a number of Polish charities focused mostly on the needs of children in every place that I went. So they were there. I agree with you that you would think that this is something everybody could agree with and certainly demobilized soldiers. And I would say one of the real critical needs in Ukraine still is medical care for injured soldiers and for people who have been injured. 8,000 people have been killed. 17,000 people have been injured as a result of the war. And Ukraine has very poor facilities for rehabilitation. The UN, in putting out this plan with the World Bank and the EU, basically said, yes, as peace breaks out, there will be demobilized soldiers. As you know, some of these soldiers were volunteers. They were not even paid. They're not on the books as government, as employees of the government. So they're coming back to very straightened situations. And you would hope that part of the peace process would be dealing with the needs of demobilized soldiers. And as you said, linking them up to the repair of infrastructure. That was part of the plan. And so far the U.S. has not supported that on the feelings that you can't do any repairs or reconstruction until there's total peace in the country, which I disagree with. No, I have these two here. And then Steve, and then I've got you two as well. Thank you. My name is Jenny Holm. I'm here from Internews and you've all spoken about the difficulty of getting information to IDPs and to those communities about available resources. I'm wondering maybe this question is for Natalia and for Dawn. What strategies you've heard about that local NGOs are using to get information out about their services that are successful. And how they might be able to scale up those strategies or change them with additional support and whether there's gender differences in how men and women are getting information about what's available to them. I can tell about one specific example that Ukrainian Women's Fund together with other organizations is doing now. And it is about reaching out to people in the five regions which are affected by war and also border regions. And also to the territories that are not under Ukrainian control. And the idea is to provide as much information as possible for people on the issue of violence prevention. So what we do is that we partner with mass media. There we partner with journalists and we also use social media a lot. That's the only it looks like, especially talking about the areas that are not under control of Ukrainian government. That's the only way to get the information there. So social media and well actually many of us think those who were at my done in back in 2013. We keep saying that social media at that time actually brought us there because people were on Facebook and you know we were communicating and there was one journalist who invited people at my done at that time. Back in 2014 through Facebook and this is this is how it started. So definitely one of the strategies is to use social media more effective. Can I just just answer that in terms of what's before the Congress right now in terms of this package for Ukrainian assistance, a significant element is dealing with counteracting the Russian propaganda and enabling the people to have the information that they need just to be able to survive more adequately and get the assistance that they need. So that's another element. Hello, my name is Zach Moody and I'm a student at American University. My question for the panel is that it seems that the US often promotes a message of forwarding Putin or fighting against Putin strategies. And have any have you have the panelists found that this idea that we should be focusing efforts on opposing Putin has that impeded our ability to promote humanitarian aid. When we are focused on fighting the Russians or are they working in conjunction or are they sure great odds. Thank you. So Mr. Putin has indeed invaded and annexed Crimea and he has sent his troops into Donbas. But the Ukrainians have not asked anyone for troops to fight Mr. Putin. So they're just on your point about are we fighting Mr. No, we are putting economic pressure, as I mentioned earlier, which I think has had some effect. And I think that should continue. Your question is does that keep us from providing humanitarian assistance? And I think the answer is no. There's a problem as several people have described here with getting humanitarian assistance into occupied territories. It's eased a bit in one part, but there's still problems getting humanitarian assistance into another part. Now, Mr. Putin does send in these big humanitarian convoys, which you won't let anybody take a look at to be sure it's actually humanitarian as opposed to other kinds of things. But nonetheless, there is a major effort going on on this thing. There is a question. I've talked to Ukrainians. Natalia, I'd be interested in your sense of this, too. There's a view within Ukraine that, you know, Donbas is not worth sending our people, our young men from Lviv into a fight. They don't want to be part of Ukraine anymore. I think that's not correct, but there is that view that is difficult to provide the assistance into an area that is controlled by the separatists and supported by Mr. Putin. But others will have thoughts on this, Don. There was a problem at the beginning of the conflict, and that was the feeling in some in the State Department and in Congress that any criticism or any admission that there were severe humanitarian needs in Ukraine would give the Russians further ammunition to say they had to go in and help more Russian-speaking people who are suffering lack of food or electricity, etc. 17% of the population of this part of the country, I mean, 17% of the Ukraine is Russian-speaking population. So let's not criticize Ukraine, let's not make too much publicity about this. There was some feeling in the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian authorities as well, that they shouldn't speak up and ask for international assistance, and it took things getting pretty bad before they did. And there remains a concern that if you play up the humanitarian needs and that somehow you're weakening the government in its ability, the Ukrainian government itself does not publicize very well what it's doing to protect the rights of people from this area who've been forced to leave. And the Ukrainian government has made it very difficult at times for international organizations who are doing assistance to get into Ukrainian-controlled areas because of security concerns. Obviously, if your military takes over and you think you're saving the country from further invasions, it gets very tough that the UN wants to bring a convoy with food and medicines, etc. And you want to mine the road. And one of the problems right now, frankly, for humanitarian assistance, particularly along the conflict line, is that the area is so heavily mined and there's so much unexploded ordinance that more people are being killed by that right now from unexploded ordinance than from the shelling. So, yes, these issues go back and forth. Should Ukraine ask more publicly for more assistance? Should the international community beat the drums harder? Which side does that strengthen? We're reaching the end of the program. The two women in the back, you've been very patient. So, could I ask you to provide both your questions to the panel and then Ambassador Steiner will end with you? Oh, I'm sorry. Good. Then we'll take these two and Nadia and we'll wrap up. I asked a notice with the Lithuanian American Community Incorporated. The ambassadors probably have this question, and that is the Republic reports that many of the Russian Special Forces and agents who came in to create the insurgency have withdrawn. And my question is, is there any evidence that the Russians are bringing in their own administrative teams to sort of solidify their control of this area? And the quick second question is, the Yazidis and the Kurds have people who are going into Islamic State territory and smuggling people out who need to come out. Are there Ukrainian NGOs that are still going in to try to pull people out of this occupied territory who need to come out? Okay, can we get the next and then Nadia your question? In the light of the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe, is Ukraine a threat of immigration for European Union and other Western countries? Thank you. Okay, and Noah, can you? Well, not so much a question, but a couple of updates. There are several coalitions that have formed, and one I think, Mom, that you've been referring to, which has been organized by Open Society, has been having meetings on the Hill. We're a part of that coalition. I'd like to just stress something that Dawn didn't say today, but I heard her say before, that I actually used yesterday with a ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, and that is Ukraine is fixable. And that whatever we invest in Ukraine, it's not that we're looking, that we're going to be there for decades. And I think this is a very important message to give to our appropriators and others, that if we do the right thing now, we will succeed, and Ukraine will succeed. And on all sides, on the military side, we're not going to have to train Ukrainians to want to fight. They're fighting, and they're just asking for defensive weaponry. So I think that's an important message that I got from Dawn. Second, on the humanitarian situation, yes, both the Ukrainian government and our government are not talking about it. There are five million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and we had this forum in September to talk about it, and of course that's when I met Dawn. I'm very interested in your discussion of this, and we came up with a concept where we're calling zones of vulnerability, which includes things like Odessa, because of Balsarabia, and then Zakarpattia, and Kharkiv. So it's not just those zones that are right on the border, but these zones which Putin is continuing to support separatist movements. And our mission in the Foundation is to focus not only on levels of assistance, but a strategy of assistance to look at these areas and employ everything that we have, be it exchange programs or whatever, in these areas. And again, working with Dawn, we've never had to work on this kind of a situation. We've been in Ukraine for 25 years, so we have a learning curve. And I think what you mentioned, Dawn, too, Ukraine has a learning gap on how to deal with some of these issues. It's not just supplies, it's knowledge. They need knowledge-based programs. So we're working with our administration and Congress to focus programs, existing programs in these areas. But again, working with Dawn, I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. We're defining our work in humanitarian assistance much broader. We're adding reconstruction, redevelopment, and peacekeeping, non-military type, because it really requires this whole package in these zones. Finally, there was an appeal letter from the All Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, which represents all faiths, 85% of the population of Ukraine, an appeal to President Obama, he delivered a week ago last Monday, asking for engagement of the National Guard or partnership for peace program to airlift much needed humanitarian supplies. So if anybody can encourage that, we now know Vice President Biden is going. Well, we're going to be suggesting that he maybe include a plane full of humanitarian assistance, which has been collected by people throughout the country. Somebody asked about the private sector. So I apologize for all this commentary, but I would look forward to knowing more about your project. And final thing about women. Women have always been on the forefront of change in Ukraine. I went there first in 1990, and it was mothers of Chernobyl, mothers of Afghan veterans that played a key role in a lot of the things that happened. And so women continue to be the major agents of, oh, sorry, Nadia McConnell, U.S. Ukraine Foundation. But you all covered the waterfront, but I just wanted to update you on some activities that are undergoing. Thank you so much. And no apologies. That was a wonderful intervention. Ambassador Steiner, I'll let you have the last question, and then we'll go to the responses. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Steve Steiner with USIP. Okay. I just want to ask a question particularly related to those wonderful last comments. Natalia, how can contributions be made to your organization? I presume it's through the Global Fund for Women, which is based in the U.S. and also Don, can contributions be made to refugees international with an earmark for Ukrainian IDPs, for example? Can we earmark it for Ukraine? And then finally I want to make just one observation, I think Bill will like this. There are lots, there are millions of Ukrainians who speak Russian, and they have traditionally, and it continues to be their preferred language. That doesn't say they also don't know Ukrainian, but that has nothing to do with being ethnic Russian or wanting to be part of Russia. It's a totally different thing. And they don't want to be defended by Mr. Putin. That's right. No, thanks. I could just do one part of the question about the Russians being withdrawn, some special forces being withdrawn from Donbas and reports that they are now showing up in Syria. And the question was, are the Russians now sending in administrative organizations to try to consolidate control? I haven't seen evidence of it. In fact, it's more the opposite. That is, what we see some reports on are infighting among the separatists who are now saying that the Russians are leaving them high and dry. The Russians are not supporting them any longer. And so they're starting to go after each other, which I think is probably a good sign. I just want to pick up on this assistance and support issue. There was a question earlier about what can the private sector do or can it play a role. I think we've not been very effective collectively on how to husband all of this desire on the part of the private sector, charitable organizations, the voluntary sector, the kind of things that Nadia mentioned, to really in a concerted way have impact at a very difficult time. I wasn't kidding when I said at the beginning that Bill Taylor and I seemed to have been focused on a comparable issue all of those years ago when we were doing airlifts of empty planes and sending in pharmaceuticals and all kinds of things that had made a tremendous difference. I understand we are at a different time, but there is still a very pressing need. And if we can figure out how to do this, I've heard from several members of Congress that there's frustration. We have not been able to do this well. And I think it is one way, doesn't compare to so many other things that need to be done, but it is one way. Natalia won't probably say this, but her Ukrainian Women's Foundation struggles to raise even small bits of money to make the kind of difference they do. And there are NGOs all over Ukraine doing this kind of work, whether in advocacy or in support, that also needs support. So if we could do a much better coordinating job of getting these much needed resources in that aren't coming in in other ways, I think we could help advance the ball. Just to go back to the question of migration, 1.1 million Ukrainians have left the country that we know about. The majority are in Russia, 800,000 in Russia, and then about almost 200,000 in Belarus. And then about 12,000 have showed up in asylum applications in Western Europe. So really relatively small numbers seeking asylum. The question about whether or not people can get out of the ungovernment controlled area, you must have an electronic pass. To have that, you have to have access to a computer. And to have that, you also have to have current Ukrainian issued documents. If you don't have that, you cannot get an electronic pass and you cannot legally cross one of the checkpoints into Ukraine. Yes, there are some organizations, small Ukrainian organizations that go back and forth. There are no public buses going back and forth across the line of conflict. People used to take out whole busloads of people who did have documents. Right now there are no regular bus lines, so that means as many people as you can get in a van, I've been told by groups that do this. And obviously it's not easy, and the roads get pretty bad in the winter. So in terms of support for organizations, obviously the UN agencies and the major organizations, say the children, etc., are working in Ukraine. Refugees International is funded totally by voluntary contributions. We accept no money from the UN or from the government. We are an advocacy organization. If you want to see more advocacy and more research done on these kinds of situations, then do support us. And I would also commend your support for the Women's Fund in Ukraine. Natalia, we'll allow our guest from Ukraine to wrap up. Thank you. Thank you. And I will speak as a Ukrainian who speaks Russian, whose mother tongue is Russian, and who doesn't want to be protected by Mr. Putin. Yeah, so, well, in terms of NGOs who are helping people to get from these territories, there are some initiatives, but they are mostly not because of the support from the government, but because of the lack of support from the government. So these initiatives are very often even secret ones. For example, the person that I met yesterday, I was referring to him at the beginning of my presentation today. He works with people who are HIV positive, and there is a huge problem how to get medicine to these territories, how to get support to people who are left at these territories. I'm talking to him how they are doing now, and he said that we are doing this secretly, basically. We are using different, you know, they get medicine at the Ukrainian territory, but then using different ways to get it to their friends, their colleagues, their, you know, people who live there. But there is no mechanism to do this officially, unfortunately. So in terms of support and contributions, I really, you know, thank you for asking this question. Indeed, we do need support, and also we, like the whole country, NGOs are in a difficult situation. For example, my own organization at the beginning of this year, we lost our annual budget for 2015 because of the crisis, banking crisis, we lost everything that we had on our account. And we are not alone. There are many organizations like us in Ukraine who lost everything, including IDPs organizations. So, but we are lucky that we have partners. We have Global Fund for Women who actually helped us to start 15 years ago. We started as a partnership with the Global Fund for Women, and we are really thankful for cooperation with them. So I think they could be a very good mechanism to basically support Ukraine. And I also wanted to refer to Nadia Makonal comment about the situation in Ukraine being fixable. I do agree that it is fixable. Ukraine is fixable. But if we don't do anything now, I'm afraid that Putin will only stop at the border with NATO. Thank you.