In 2018, Lily Hyde reported on how healthcare played a key role in the propaganda war between the Ukrainian government and separatists in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit Ukraine just as the Donbas conflict approached its sixth year. Hostilities began in 2014, when Russian-backed rebels declared the formation of independent republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Now, both government-controlled and separatist areas in the region are suffering the economic impact of lockdown measures. 

The closure in March of crossing points between Ukrainian and rebel-controlled areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions due to the pandemic has had a severe effect. These crossings are important economic lifelines for the more than two million people who traveled through them every month before the pandemic. Their closure has also prevented students in non-government areas from traveling to university examinations, but the hardest-hit have been elderly residents of separatist areas who needed to cross into government-controlled territory to collect their pensions.

The checkpoints have now been reopened, albeit with restrictions that still make it extremely difficult for most people to pass through them. Many have been forced to take an onerous detour through Russia instead.