The streets of the capital are covered with sheets of ice and puddles of slush. Commuters and shoppers exhale clouds of steamy breath as they make their way to warm, dry homes. But for some of Kyiv's youngest residents, the kids who beg in the city center or at transport terminals, there is no home to return to.
No one knows how many street kids there are in Kyiv "because, unfortunately there has still not been any real research done on this," says Dymtro Konyk, a spokesman for UNICEF in Kyiv.
A child registered at a home or shelter under one name often runs away and comes back using a different name, Konyk told the Observer. "One kid was picked up and taken to the same home 13 times."
UNICEF is working with the Family and Youth Ministry to set up a monitoring system. So far, they have installed a computer at the city's only shelter.
Officials estimate that about 103,000 kids were institutionalized in Ukraine last year, and last summer, police announced that they were going to step up the collection of homeless children and teens.
The Roundup
It's usually the police who pick kids up off the street and take them to a youth detention center where they can remain for as long as a month. If the child is a foreigner or involved in illegal activity, he is turned over to the authorities in his home country or criminal proceedings are started. Otherwise, he is taken to a state-run shelter.
If the child has family problems, a social worker steps in. If the family problems involve abuse, the child can remain at the shelter while the case is being investigated. If the child has no parents, he is put in an orphanage or turned over to a foster family - if he doesn't run away first. By law, a shelter may hold a child for up to three months.
At the orphanage, or "internat" (as it is called in Russian), children live and study, but as one might imagine in cash-strapped Ukraine, conditions are far from ideal. Not only do kids run away from the homes, abusive parents have been known to remove them and force them to beg in the streets, according to Veronika Vorozhbit, a UNICEF employee who has visited orphanages and interviewed the residents.
Foster homes, on the other hand, can range from a few children to dozens living under a single roof. In either case, foster parents receive some state aid.
Little Kids, Big Problems
"Broken homes," usually caused by drug abuse or alcoholism, are the biggest reason that Ukrainian children take to the streets, Vorozhbit says.
"My parents were always getting drunk," mumbles Sasha, a 14-year-old from Zhytomyr, who now lives near the central train station in Kyiv. He looks small for his age. His eyes are hollow and his hair is stiff with dirt.
Dressed in a ragged coat held closed by a thin rope, he mills about in the freezing cold, oblivious to the rail passengers and taxi drivers bustling in and out of the station.
The main danger these kids face on the streets is the police," Vorozhbit said, adding that police psychologists and social workers also accuse law-enforcement officials of abuse. "They (the police) wrap their nightsticks in cloth so that no marks are left on the child after they have beaten him," she says.
At this point, any rational person who is not caught up in a modern-day remake of Oliver Twist a la Ukraine might ask why a policeman, underpaid and demoralized though he may be, would want to beat a poor urchin, who has enough problems.
"The police beat everyone," says Alexander Gladelov, a freelance photographer who has extensive experience covering street children and homeless people in Ukraine and Russia. But even this explanation is too simple.
Sasha, for example, said the police don't bother him, although there are plenty of them around the train station.
Street children not only often start their lives in a tough, unforgiving atmosphere, they quickly develop survival skills once they leave home.
Like others who live outside society - drunks, prostitutes, beggars and thieves - urban urchins follow an unwritten survival code that includes hostility toward the police. In Russian, the phrase "Po ponyatiyam" expresses a system of ethics, underlined by a distrust of formal authority and a willingness to settle scores face to face.
Any street kid who doesn't know how to live by the street rules will be used and abused by the other animals in the concrete jungle before he ever encounters a cop.
"There are some great people among the police, especially those who work with kids," recalls Gladelov. Some of these enlightened cops develop relationships with organizations that help street children.
Living Day to Day
Where do homeless children eat? Some go to soup kitchens, which serve homeless adults as well. Financing comes from private entrepreneurs and, more often, from religious organizations.
Many government social workers oppose soup kitchens, Gladelov explains. They feel that access to free food keeps kids on the streets.
Because they are legally prohibited from operating shelters or orphanages, Western-based missionaries prefer to reach out to the community with hot meals or other forms of aid. Also, a variety of NGOs that call themselves funds, but operate just like orphanages.
"The difference between state and private shelter workers is that the latter go to work and the former go to serve," Gladelov says.
Better treatment notwithstanding, some kids flee from the private institutions as well. The longer they stay on the streets, the less likely they are to become "home trained."
Another way the children feed themselves, of course, is by using the money they collect by begging. Contrary to popular belief, kids who beg on the street are usually working for themselves.
"I get money from passersby," says Sasha. The busier the place, the better the earnings.
Even children who are forced to beg by abusive parents soon figure out that they can eat better on their own. More often than not, they join with other street kids for protection as well as companionship.
Predators and Victims
One group may stake out a territory and drive off competitors, including adult racketeers, says Gladelov. Led by the older kids, they can assault a full-grown man if they catch him off guard.
This isn't to say that Kyiv's street kids are cunning predators, but they do what is necessary to survive. What happens to them when they grow up may be more frightening - but even this isn't a given. Gladelov recalled one boy who went back to an orphanage after living years on the street just so that he could learn how to read, even though he had to do in the company of much younger children.
Sasha and his companions at the train station weren't about to be specific about where they spent their nights.
We sleep "on the pipes," he said, referring steam pipes lying in the open near the train station. Others live under railway bridges or anywhere else where they can find shelter.
Train stations and the subway system offer both warmth and a steady supply of donations, but sooner or later, the squatters are evicted back on to the street.
Silvia, a teenager from Moldova, crouched in one of the underpasses at the Khreshchatyk metro station holding her infant daughter, Jerusalem. Unlike Sasha, the expression on her face changes according to the conversation - probably because she has a place to return to at the end of the day.
Vorozhbit recalled one girl who had given birth on the street when she was only 13 years old, and a boy, who had been living on the pavement since he was just five.
Homeless children sniff glue because it is cheap and provides a hallucinogenic escape. Sasha said that he sniffs glue, "sometimes."
That may explain his blank stare and monosyllabic answers.
In St. Petersburg, explains Gladelov, street kids who work as prostitutes are less likely to use glue. They earn enough to buy heroine.
Is child prostitution a widespread problem here?
"I never met a kid that would ever admit to it," Gladelov said. But, he added, even more so than drug use, the psychic ravages of life as a prostitute is often written on their faces.
For anyone who is interested in looking, that is.
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