Vostok SOS: Volunteers from the East and Crimea Save Lives in Kyiv

"People don't need to worry if they are in some kind of trouble, they will always find help here", said Yulia from Vostok SOS (East SOS), a volunteer organization that gives aid to internally displaced people (IDP) from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. (A sister organization, Crimea SOS, was founded after Russia annexed Crimea to help those leaving Crimea.) Though the government has made gestures to help the wave of IDPs from eastern Ukraine, which number in the thousands, the burden has fallen largely on volunteer organizations such as Vostok SOS to meet the needs of IDPs.