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Together with his crew, Roman Shutylo, the head of the pyrotechnics division of the special emergency rescue squad at the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SESU), starts work at 7:30 a.m. He puts on 12 kg (26.4 lb) of equipment, including bulletproof vests, helmets, knee pads, first-aid kits, and other gear to make his job slightly safer. He receives plans for the day and undertakes one of the critical tasks to ensure the safety of Ukrainian citizens — they find and destroy mines and unexploded ordnance. According to SESU, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, they have found and destroyed more than 500,000 explosive devices. And yet, this work is far from over. This is a large-scale challenge as 30% of Ukraine's territory, or around 174,000 square kilometers, is polluted by mines today.

To support the work of specialists like Roman, the U.S., through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has provided the government of Ukraine with $26.8 billion in direct budget support since the spring of 2022. These funds help to offset critical social expenditures, including salaries for more than 58,500 employees of SESU.

Rescue, healthcare, education: the U.S. government is helping Ukrainians access vital public services during the war

Since the spring of 2022, the US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has been enabling the Ukrainian government to fund critical social expenditures in the face of Russia’s full-scale military aggression. During this time, the United States became the largest individual country donor of economic assistance to Ukraine, having already provided $26.8 billion in direct budget support.

Disbursed through the World Bank's mechanisms, American funds are directed into the Ukrainian state budget, reimbursing the government's expenditures on salaries for over 1.4 million workers whose uninterrupted work is most crucial for today's survival of Ukrainians and the future recovery of the country—first responders, healthcare workers, educators, and civil servants.

Thanks to US budgetary funding, the Ukrainian government also continues to support the most vulnerable members of the population by providing social assistance to internally displaced persons, low-income families, and others.

Even before the full-scale war, the SESU had been actively demining its territory because shells from the First and Second World Wars could still be found all over the country. Roman has been doing this since 2006 in his native Luhansk region. Roman and his crew even worked side by side with archaeologists and excavated catacombs, burials, old German dugouts, helmets, and firearms while searching for the old mines and munitions. The archaeological findings were collected for the museum in Rubizhne. Now that museum is in ruins – it was destroyed by Russia’s army.

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