JAROSLAW, Poland, April 4 – Alevtina smiles at everything as she cuddles her mother Alexandra Zhuravel in her bedroom at Poland’s Benedictine convent, a world away from Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine.
Her joy at that moment masks the fear she shows every time the quiet around the 17th-century monastery where she, her sister and her mother have taken refuge is shattered by a loud noise of a car or an airplane above them is interrupted.
The eight-year-old has cerebral palsy and cannot speak.
Zhuravel spends her days walking through the gardens with her girls and eating with other refugees.
Locals have helped her find a pool to resume therapy for Alevtina and dance classes for older daughter Viktoria, 12. The guards who helped them escape across the border return to check on the family.
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“The children were really scared by the sirens and the explosions,” said Zhuravel, 38, while pushing Alevtina around the monastery’s extensive gardens in a special stroller.
“Alevtina is still very scared,” Zhuravel said. “She’s under constant stress and we try to distract her by going to the pool and going for walks. We try to walk and play outside as much as possible and she’s getting on with it little by little.”
The six nuns who run the convent provide meals in the cafeteria, and local people have helped with financial support, clothing and toys, including two teddy bears that sit on the windowsill of their small room.
But since arriving in Poland on March 12, each day has brought different challenges. As a helicopter hovered overhead, the normally smiling Alevtina curled into a ball as her eyes filled with fear at the noise Zhuravel says her daughter associates with war.
PACKED IN SUITCASE
Zhuravel wanted to stay in Ukraine but her son insisted they flee because the shelling and explosions were terrible for Alevtina when the villages next to her hometown were attacked.
Russia has denied targeting civilians as part of a so-called “military special operation” to demilitarize Ukraine.
The family first went to the other side of town, but by the next morning, March 10, they were convinced to go, Zhuravel said.
“He forced us to leave,” she told Reuters, referring to her 18-year-old son, who was a student before the February 24 Russian invasion. “He said, ‘Mother, how are you going to hide with Alevtina?’ ‘Alevtina’s scared sirens, Alevtina’s scared of everything’.”
The family boarded a train to Lviv with their dog, Luna, before heading to Poland, where Zhuravel recounted the kindness of the volunteers who helped them find housing and the guards who saw Alevtina’s stroller across carried the border.
Fighting has displaced more than 10 million people and forced more than 4 million to leave Ukraine in Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II, according to the UN refugee agency.
More than half of the refugees – like Zhuravel and her daughters – entered the European Union via Poland, which shares a 500km border with Ukraine.
Other refugees have moved to other cities or countries, but Zhuravel has chosen to stay in Yaroslav, 40 km from the border so that she can be close enough to return to her son and city as soon as possible.
“Every morning I wake up hoping someone will call me or text me that we can go home now,” she said. “Any day, that’s all I’m waiting for. Our suitcase is packed and we’re just waiting for a call.”
writing by Michael Kahn; Editing by Alison Williams