MOSCOW, October 14. /TASS/. A total of 16 elderly people have died from hunger and cold in downtown Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, the head of the charity fund Spravedlivaya Pomoshch (Fair Aid) said on Tuesday.

“Elderly and lonely ill persons, who have been left without the help of relatives, have awful problems while living in bomb shelters or apartments where there is no heat,” Elizaveta Glinka, known as Dr. Liza, told Russia’s Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in Moscow.

The elderly people died as they “feared to leave their homes and were unable to cook food themselves,” she said.

“We are a nation that survived the war and its terrible consequences, and we shared bread with the hostages and that’s why I believe we cannot disregard weak adults, elderly and handicapped people,” Glinka said.

The Spravedlivaya Pomoshch fund has decided to establish a hospice care center in south-eastern Ukraine to provide lonely elderly people and ill people with aid, she said.