From our special correspondent in Kiev,
“I have a lot of games on my cell phone,” Vitali says happily. The seven-year-old is sitting on a brightly colored beanbag in the playroom, where a few children are having fun. Small traces of colorful hands adorn one of the walls. This refugee center opened by the Save Ukraine association in Kiev accommodates 43 families. It is nicknamed the “Hope and Recovery Center”. In its brutality, war has destroyed countless homes and taken away childhood homes. Replaced, for the lucky ones, with shared playrooms. The Russian invasion displaced five million Ukrainians within the country, like Vitali and her grandmother. Natasha sits on the edge of her bunk bed and twists her gnarled hands.
The 60-year-old and her grandson have had to flee for the second time. At the beginning of the war, the family lived under Russian occupation, but “when Ukraine took over the Kherson region, the bombings became stronger, more frequent and more dangerous,” she recalls. So the grandmother and her grandson fled seventy kilometers away to the village of Chkalove. “We both rode bikes,” she explains, laughing. For a new life that only lasted a few months. Natasha and Vitali were again evacuated from Save Ukraine and arrived at the center on March 15. “Our main task is to evacuate civilians from combat zones,” explains Mykola Kuleba, director of Save Ukraine.
“My life is worth more than my house”
Because the civilian population also pays a high price. At least 8,000 of them have been killed since the war began, said United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who claims this is just “the visible part of the iceberg”. The refugee families in the center are all talking about indiscriminate shelling by the Russian army. Olena shares a room with her two sons, 8 and 13, and another family. They were neighbors in Druzhkivka, a town about forty kilometers west of Bakhmout, the epicenter of the fighting. The bombings were daily. Natasha cannot get used to “the calm” of Kiev. Olena, she refuses to think about the tumult that marked her days. “I don’t want to remember,” she breathes. She explains, running her hand affectionately through her teenage son’s hair, that her husband stayed there, in their home.
Olena came to the center with her two sons, Ruslan, 13, and Rostyslav, 8, on February 8 from a village in Donetsk Oblast. -D.Regny
Across the room, two red-haired children play happily under the protective eye of their mother, Alona. “It’s quiet here, that’s the most important thing,” breathes the young woman. Her husband Andriy joined them two weeks ago. “One of my colleagues was killed by shrapnel as we drove in a row,” says the farmer, who shows videos of the impact and the vehicle that killed his colleague. “My life is worth more than my house,” Andriy says firmly, looking tenderly at his children. The man wants to find a job in Kiev. “There’s no point in going back, it’s way too dangerous. Especially with children. »
“Everything will be dismantled”
“We were afraid to leave our house,” enthused Sasha and Viktoria. The couple and their five children lived in Chervonyi Mayak, Kherson Oblast. Their homeland is only separated from the areas occupied by the Russians by the Dnieper. The bombings were incessant. “There were about twenty strikes a day. One day I was 32,” remembers Viktoria, who is expecting her sixth child. Just a few kilometers from the front, the family was without electricity for five months. “We warmed up with a stove, but we couldn’t go into the forest and get wood because everything is quarried there,” explains the couple. A family in our village was run over by a mine, the parents and two children died. »
The horrible memories stand out in the quiet of the center. A bombardment outside the church just as they crossed the threshold of the door. Her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, carried by her toy cart, tumbles over my foot with a chirp. A bombardment during a Red Cross humanitarian distribution. Another crash of the cart, another laugh of the children. A neighbor who was hit in the head by shrapnel and miraculously survived. Sasha grabs the cart and tries to steer the blond head to a new destination. Five people decimated on the way to the pantry. The girl turns to me with an innocent laugh.
Clarifying a “Fuzzy Future”
The walls in central Kiev, Ukraine house many children. For them, these survivors often flee the bombs. In the next room, Natascha has custody of Vitali since her parents died five years ago. She ends the interview in tears, terrified for the future of this little boy she is trying desperately to watch over. Aleksandr left Druzhkivka, a town in Donetsk Oblast, south of Kramatorsk, in early March. “I went to my family, to my children,” explains the family man, adding that the front is “gradually getting closer.” The tall, imposing 30-year-old rests his tattooed arms on his knees as he attempts to sketch a future. “The future is blurry,” he sighs. To clarify this, Save Ukraine accompanies the beneficiaries throughout the process. At the Hope and Rehabilitation Center, families stay between two and five months.
“So that people can leave the country, they are supported in their search for work, housing and papers. For example, we help them to obtain state aid for displaced people,” explains the head of the center. “With this program we help survivors to find long-term housing,” says Mykola Kuleba. And the association intends to continue supporting civilians uprooted by the Russian invasion. “A new center will open in a week and another in April. We need more places,” explains the former representative of the presidency for children’s rights. Hoping that those who “have nowhere to go” will find a temporary home in Save Ukraine. And the promise of a calmer future.