I first met Yana in 2004. I had been travelling and taking photos a lot in Russia and during a visit to Moscow met a woman called Anja Teltschik who was visiting from Ukraine.

In Moscow I had managed to blag a few weeks crashing in a guest house owned by an NGO. At the time I was developing work I had been making with heroin addicts in Scotland and was making my way to Siberia to see if I could find out more about detention centres for drug addicts which I had read about in the UK. Anyway – that’ll be for another story.

Anja became a good friend and she invited me to come to Ukraine and stay on her sofa if I ever wanted to.  A few months later I was there in Kyiv exploiting Anja’s hospitality but after a few weeks I headed south to the black sea port of Odessa. As this was my first trip to Ukraine I didn’t really have fixed plans, I just made contact with people, said hello and they introduced me to other people and so it went on.

I really liked Odessa, in parts it’s like Paris with beautiful tree lined avenues with cafe’s in the sunshine. Down towards the port at the famous Potemkin Steps there’s a boulevard with young couples cuddling, enjoying a beer or shopping at some market stalls. Everyone seems oblivious to the kids that are skulking about in the shadows. At first sight I thought the kids had been mutilated to remove an arm – maybe to make it easier to beg-  but on closer examination I could see that the missing arm was in fact tucked up under their jumpers holding a bag of glue or solvent close to the mouth. I sat for a very long time watching as these kids hardened and street wise hussled each other, and looked for anything they could steal or use to earn a crust that day. Some of them looked as young as six and all of them were wasted on glue. I followed them a while and saw them grab a ride on the back of a trolley bus.

A day or so later my curiosity about these kids led me to meet a woman named Raisa, and her friend Dima. They both struck me as amazing people who devote their lives and their very tiny home to caring for kids living on the streets. They offered to take me to the kids at the Potemkin Steps, who they knew to be living at the nearby Pioneer Park.

Yana and the main group of kids were living almost on top of each other in a tiny dilapidated shed type building, directly underneath the boulevard where courting couples are enjoying a beer in the sunshine. It was utterly hideous. The children I saw at the steps had shocked me deeply, but they were the able bodied ones that could manage to venture out of this hell hole that existed in Pioneer Park. The younger kids aged from 6-10 buzz glue and watch on as their peers inject a lethal homemade concoction of Trifed or Ephedrine nasal decongestants and water. The cheap tablets are bought over the counter and ground down to a powder before being mixed with water to make a thick brown paste. From this paste is drawn a yellow liquid, via a cigarette filter, which contains the adrenalin from the tablet.

The yellow liquid is injected causing an immediate rush of adrenalin which lasts no longer than a minute before the child begins to feel very low and vulnerable. The depression and abrupt return to the reality of life leaves them craving another injection.

The injections lead to brain aneurysms and a speedy deterioration of the central nervous system. This results in the children very quickly losing the ability to speak and for their feet and hands to turn inwards making balance and mobility almost impossible.

During this first of many visits to Ukraine I spent weeks documenting this group of children. In all this time Yana never once spoke to anyone and it was a struggle even to get her to smile. She cried a lot in between the drug induced stupors and I watched on as she slowly faded away. She was covered in abscesses which made the injection process torturous. At times her friends held her down to give her the injection she craved.

My time, on this occasion, came to an end and I said goodbye to the group who had welcomed me to stay with them. I knew I would be back but sadly Yana didn’t live long enough for me to see her again. About eight weeks after these pictures were taken Yana’s mobility had become a big problem. One very cold morning she dragged herself out of the bunker she called home and was found later that day frozen to death in a doorway. It had been 25 degrees below freezing.

From what I know of Yana she came to Odessa from Moldova at the age of 11 after her mother had been imprisoned for theft. Her father had died of TB and left alone in the world she made for the city of Odessa to look for help. She died two years later aged 13.

UNICEF Photo of the Year 2005

Yana’s story is heartbreaking, but not unique. There are thousands of young children living on the streets and in the sewers underground in Ukraine, and most other parts of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The numbers of street kids have swollen so much in recent years that the word “Besprizorniki” has been brought back into circulation. Meaning “the neglected ones” Besprizorniki was a word used to describe the orphans of war following WW I and the Russian Revolution.

In addition to the obvious threats of injecting Trifed or Ephedrine the sharing of needles amongst street kids has resulted in an explosion of HIV in Ukraine. A local NGO called the Way Home has found infection rates to be as high as 75% amongst groups of street children they have been able to test.

I’ve spent a number of years traveling to and from Ukraine to develop this project which you can see here.