MH17: The untold story of Torez

The name of the town mattered little when Malaysian Airways flight MH17 was shot down in 2014. Torez was a place I knew of only because of an orphanage. The children of this orphanage had witnessed the falling bodies.

“On the corpse-littered fields of Donbass, there is nothing but the carnage of war, and as long as that continues, so will the chance that civilians will be slaughtered, and the blame will be passed until the world forgets about the day the bodies fell from the sky. But, of course, the orphans of Torez never will. “

I’d known about Torez since 2006 when a trip report from an American NGO drew my attention to the plight of children institutionalised due to their disabilities.

Forwarding the report to my colleague on the ground in Ukraine would lead to his series of articles describing ‘Death Camps, For Children’ . Many were buried in rough trenches in the same gardens where MH17 passengers fell. He quoted the NGO report:

“When we arrived at the orphanage we were met by older children without coats, they were begging us to give things to them and not to the directors. It is very hard to write about the rest of this part of the trip. I cannot give a step by step account because we were all in a state of shock. We spoke to the director about our program and he told us that he knows the children need more but he said, “I cannot ask my workers to do more, they work very hard, clearing the road, shoveling snow, cleaning the floors and the children, they have not time, they must work very hard all day and then they must dig graves and bury children.” What do you say to that?

“Still, the staff took us around to show us how it is. Words don’t come to mind, most of our team was crying and could not stop. Dark hallways, screaming, children clustered together in freezing rooms, some in strait-jackets, haunted looking crying, asking if they were good, asking for food. Water dripping from the dark ceilings, mold everywhere. We held children who were 10 and 13 years old in our arms like infants. One team member said later that she never knew that humans are like fish and will only grow to the size of their environment. One team member threw up outside. Children never leave their beds in some rooms. These children are ages 4–16. In other rooms they leave to go to a room with just a bench and nothing else in it. They hold each other -rocking one another. I have never seen such deprivation and our photographer said it best when he said it was a concentration camp for children.”

My colleague Terry Hallman was a pioneer of business for purpose and he’d been putting it into practice in Russia and Ukraine since 1999. Later that year, he delivered a proposal for business to resolve a broad range of social problems, describing it as a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine:

“Business enterprise, capitalism, must be measured in terms of monetary profit. That rule is not arguable. A business enterprise must make monetary profit, or it will merely cease to exist. That is an absolute requirement. But it does not follow that this must necessarily be the final bottom line and the sole aim of the enterprise. How this profit is used is another question. It is commonly assumed that profit will enrich enterprise owners and investors, which in turn gives them incentive to participate financially in the enterprise to start with.

“That, however, is not the only possible outcome for use of profits. Profits can be directly applied to help resolve a broad range of social problems: poverty relief, improving childcare, seeding scientific research for nationwide economic advancement, improving communications infrastructure and accessibility, for examples — the target objectives of this particular project plan. The same financial discipline required of any conventional for-profit business can be applied to projects with the primary aim of improving socioeconomic conditions. Profitability provides money needed to be self-sustaining for the purpose of achieving social and economic objectives such as benefit of a nation’s poorest, neediest people. In which case, the enterprise is a social enterprise.”

It went on to propose a social benefit fund with contribution from forward thinking businesses.

Earlier in 2005, as a guest writer for Maidan he’d warned of the risk of violent unrest.

Following up on his appeal for US support, Terry Hallman wrote to USAID in February 2008. His letter ended:

“We are grossly underfunded in favor of missiles, bombs, and ordnance, which is about 100% backwards. Now, with even the US Pentagon stating that they’ve learned their lesson in Iraq and realize (so says top US general in Iraq ten days or so ago) that winning hearts and minds is the best option, I and others shall continue to think positive and look for aid budgets and funding spigots to be opened much more for people and NGOs in silos, foxholes and trenches, insisting on better than ordnance, and who understand things and how to fix them. We can do that. We can even do it cost-effectively and with far better efficiency than the ordnance route. Welcome to our brave new world. Except it’s not so new: learn to love and respect each other first, especially the weakest, most defenseless, most voiceless among us, then figure out the rest. There aren’t other more important things to do first. This message has been around for at least two thousand years. How difficult is it for us to understand?”

Included in the circulation list was the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where Joe Biden and Barack Obama were members.

Later in 2008 it was introduced to the EU in the European Citizens Consultation on the social and economic future of Europe.

Meanwhile one of Europe’s most shady politicians had been invited to Ukraine by oligarch Rinat Akmetov, who had also hired Paul Manafort:

At Davos, the following January the Philanthropic Roundtable met to discuss creating more effective social programs in Ukraine. Those present included Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, Bill Gates , Richard Branson and Muhammad Yunus.

“Business must achieve its goal — making profit. But at the same time it should increasingly focus on solving social problems. This idea Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Corporation, shared with the participants of the Second Davos Philanthropic Roundtable conducted by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation during Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum.”

Clinton had been the recipient of Hallman’s 1996 position paper on business for social purpose, Tony Blair had made social enterprise UK government policy and Muhammad Yunus was well known to the social enterprise community.

As The Telegraph revealed, Pinchuk was bankrolling Blair’s charity.

There were two opportunities to communicate. The first was with Branson’s charity, Virgin Unite who were soliticing project ideas. Referring to Davos, I offered to help lead the way.

Then Yunus launched the Social Business Ideas competion. I shared the proposal with Grameen Creative Labs and |Erste Bank

Next came the news that USAID and the British Council were joining forces to create a social enterprise development program in Ukraine. Their partners included the foundations of oligarchs Viktor Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, together with Erste Bank and PwC.

We shared the proposal with The British Council in Ukraine.

Terry wrote to PwC, pointing to the copyright of our work, to no avail.

Eventually I learned via my MP from Martin Davidson of the the British Council that their partners were expected to make a financial contribution.

With the help of MEP Sir Graham Watson , I managed to get the proposal in front of EU commissioner Michel Barnier, who suggested scope for later collaboration.

Terry Hallman died in 2011 and his body was discovered by Maidan leaders who wrote of his committment, sharing part of his letter to USAID.

Before he died, the story of Torez had reached the Sunday Times and Kyiv Post where Martin Nunn wrote:

“We are all guilty of inaction. The violation of human rights in Ukraine is one of the pressing issues of our day. The suppression of freedom of speech, the control of the right of assembly, the oppressive use of the tax police and the blatant banditry of the road all pale into insignificance when compared to the wanton starvation of disabled children by those whom the state has empowered to protect them. “

“This story will reverberate right around the world and so it should. Ukraine will be judged not by the actions of this cruel few but on how the case is now handled by the authorities. However, we must also look to ourselves for it is no longer acceptable to look the other way.

The Ukrainian maxim: “I saw nothing, my home is on the other side of the village” has no place in the modern world. If by our deliberate blindness, children are allowed to suffer such depravities then, by our inaction, we are all guilty.”

A video would soon follow:

In 2012 the BBC came on board with a 90 minute documentary which informed us that nobody was speaking out about Ukraine’s Forgotten Children:

In 2013, responding to the McKinsey appeal for Long Term Capitalism I shared our story with Mixmarket as Re-imagining Capitalism — The new ‘bottom line’

Three months later in Huffington Post, Paul Polman of Unilever wrote of ‘Where our moral compass meets the bottom line’ saying:

“When people talk about new forms of capitalism, this is what I have in mind: companies that show, in all transparency, that they are contributing to society, now and for many generations to come. Not taking from it.

It is nothing less than a new business model. One that focuses on the long term. One that sees business as part of society, not separate from it. One where companies seek to address the big social and environmental issues that threaten social stability. One where the needs of citizens and communities carry the same weight as the demands of shareholders.”

Like the point Richard Branson made at Davos, it was a remarkable coincidence. We were on the ground in Ukraine doing just that.

We didn’t have long to wait for social stability to come undone. When the Philanthropic roundtable met a few months later, they were lamenting the crisis and asking how capitalism could deliver both financial and social returns.

In February, Maidan leaders were calling on the EU for a support package to resolve the crisis. Among their request was a ‘Marshall Plan’ strategy. I forwarded to MEPs in the South West, reminding them of how often I’d called on them for support over the years.

MH17 was downed in July and by then Paul Polman , Muhammad Yunus and Arianna Huffington were members of Branson’s B-Team. They wrote, offering to help resolve the crisis .

Just as Terry Hallman had warned in 2005, a $17 billion IMF loan came with conditions which allowed Dupont and Monsanto to gain access to Ukraine’s land resources.

As long as the conflict prevails, the US economy is supported by the sale of weapons to Ukraine.

What happened next was bizarre to say the least. Huffington Post published a story about a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine. It wasn’t ours, it wasn’t even a plan. The origin was oligarch Dmitro Firtash who was incarcerated in Vienna awaiting extradition to face charges in the US.

Sergey Leshchenko, an anti-corruption parliamentarian wrote of ‘The Firtash Octopus’ :

“Dirty money from the East has become a resource for dozens of European structures and politicians. Sergii Leshchenko reports on some of those that are only too happy to open their doors to a Ukrainian oligarch willing to invest millions in cleaning up his image.”

According to The Telegraph, they included Lords Mandelson, Risby and Macdonald.

In 2018 two Lithuanian MEPs announced a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine, they were both members of the European People’s Party. Michel Barnier had been vice-president of the EPP when he’d read our proposal in 2012.

When I wrote Re-imagining Capitalism — The new ‘bottom line’, what I described was business which puts social purpose before profit and how it was put into practice.

At the beginning of 2019, the FT published an article by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, titled “Beyond the Bottom Line: Should Business put Purpose before Profit”

He concludes that 50 years of putting shareholders first has created distrust and that many are ready to tryin something different and that those who would imprive the world have a chance to get some of the most powerful instruments for change onside.

23 years ago, with the opportunity to serve on the steering group for the committee to re-elect the president, Terry Hallman saw the opportunity to “pitch to the top” as he put it.

‘At first glance, it might seem redundant to emphasize people as the central focus of economics. After all, isn’t the purpose of economics, as well as business, people? Aren’t people automatically the central focus of business and economic activities? Yes and no.

‘People certainly gain and benefit, but the rub is: which people? More than a billion children, women, and men on this planet suffer from hunger. It is a travesty that this is the case, a blight upon us all as a global social group. Perhaps an even greater travesty is that it does not have to be this way; the problems of human suffering on such a massive scale are not unsolvable. If a few businesses were conducted only slightly differently, much of the misery and suffering as we now know it could be eliminated. This is where the concept of a “people-centered” economics system comes in.’