One of the cops complained today that most police stations were staffed with young village guys who didn't give a shit and didn't do a shit: they've made it to Kyiv and would move on to a better paying job as soon as they got a chance.

Until yesterday, one centrally-located Kyiv police station didn't have paper to print out the photo and description of the person they were supposed to be searching for all this time. Then they spent most of the day driving around Kyiv in a broken-down car, delivering this info to several other police stations and a few hospitals in person. They don't mind it when you offer to cover gas expenses.

No use complaining to their superiors: that would mean that instead of working, they'd spend the next day having their ass kicked by the boss.

It's amazing how you keep running into all those good, caring people here - but overall, nothing works.

In the two hospitals I've been to today, there were beds in the hallways, with post-stroke people lying in them. It's not the first time that I see this, so I'm not surprised. Not surprised, but still shocked, somehow. Though in a different way than yesterday, at that so-called hospice.

At one hospital, while looking for the post-stroke recovery department, I ran into a room full of bottles with human fetuses with all kinds of defects: a real Kunstkamera, horrifying. It must've been a medical classroom, obstetrics department.

One of Kyiv's main landmarks, St. Cyrill's Church, is located in the middle of the huge psychiatric hospital compound. A guy who looked like a patient there saw papa's poster in my hands, asked to look at it, then told me he knew papa - "His name's Igor, right?" - and when I pointed out that the name was written on the poster and he'd just read it, he said he'd been at this hospital for 20 years, knew everyone, and if he saw my papa, he'd definitely call me. Then he asked for some money, claiming he was an Afghan war veteran.

An elderly woman called mama at home in the evening, said she'd seen the poster, complained that old people were disappearing left and right in Kyiv, then asked if perhaps someone was after our apartment and kidnapped papa to blackmail us or something. Crazy bitch, she really upset mama with this bullshit.

A cab driver from Zhytomyrska Oblast, from a place 30 km away from the Belarusian border, said they could watch Belarusian TV there: everything is very orderly there, he said, and most people are driving foreign-made cars. He seemed to genuinely believe it.

I really have no idea what else could be done. I'm feeling so desperate.