BERLIN (CNS): As half a million Ukrainians crossed the borders into neighboring countries to flee the war, the European Ukrainian diaspora and ordinary citizens turned out to welcome and help transport, feed and house them.
The main destination for many has been Poland, where they arrived in Medyka, the main road and rail border crossing from Ukraine.
After a 30-hour journey, Katerina Kosar told a reporter from the German newspaper, Handelsblatt: “I barely got out, but my family, friends and neighbours are stuck in bomb shelters.”
She fled with her daughter, Diana, and the family pet. She said she left Kharkiv at 4.00am on February 24.
“My husband told me to go to Lviv for a few days for safety, as I am heavily pregnant,” she said. “An hour and a half later, the bombs started falling.”
She later continued her journey to Posnan, where her uncle, who lives in Denmark, came to meet her.
‘I’ve just dropped some people, and am now returning for another trip,’ one volunteer, who did not want his name mentioned, said. Some volunteers are Russians based in Berlin, working alongside their Ukrainian and German friends
Lviv is the largest city in western Ukraine and, before 1939, was part of Poland. German newspapers reported that Polish volunteers have been driving there to pick up Ukrainians and transport them into Poland. In last weekend of February, people waited an average of 24 hours at the border to cross into Poland.
Even before the Russian invasion began, officials estimated that 1.5 million Ukrainians had left for Poland since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea.
Don Bosco International, tweeted photos showing Slovak Salesians transporting 50 children in a bus from a care centre in Lviv, in collaboration with the Ukrainian police and Salesians in Ukraine. “They will be placed in Slovakian families.” Another tweet said the bus would return to Ukraine “with humanitarian help, donated by Don Bosco partners and families of Slovakia.”
On February 26, the Polish State Railways announced that anyone with a Ukrainian passport could use the trains for free and that it was sending more trains to Przemysl and Medyka. The following day, Germany’s national railway announced that any Ukrainian refugee could travel for free. Many German volunteers travelled to the German-Polish border, or as far as the Ukrainian-Polish border to bring refugees to Germany.
“I’ve just dropped some people, and am now returning for another trip,” one volunteer, who did not want his name mentioned, said. Some volunteers are Russians based in Berlin, working alongside their Ukrainian and German friends.
European Union leaders agreed to give Ukrainian refugees one-year residency permits.
God is our strength because our human strength alone would not be able to carry us through. We are praying that all foreigners will make it to their homes safe. These days have been the longest days of our lives. War is real and war is ugly
Vukile Dlamini
Gernot Kraus of Caritas Internationalis said 34 of the agency’s 37 centres in Ukraine were still providing aid to people there and they expected a million Ukrainians to cross into Poland alone.
On February 28, Caritas Berlin said it was creating structures to coordinate all the offers of aid, because expect an influx of refugees in early March.
Refugees, students and foreign workers also were affected by the Russian invasion.
Last August, Ukraine was one of the countries that evacuated refugees from Afghanistan. On February 28, a former Afghan refugee in Berlin said: “Many of them don’t even have enough money for food, let alone a trip to the neighbouring countries.”
On social media, some African students spoke of experiencing racism at border crossings from Ukraine into Poland and Romania.
Vukile Dlamini, a South African studying in Ukraine, wrote on Twitter that a group of African students travelled to the Romanian border after driving for hours and walking more than 19 kilometres.
She wrote: “We got to the border and it was chaos! We still stood and fought for over five hours. That is where all the traumatic and barbaric scenes occurred. There were two gates, one for Ukrainians and one for foreigners [Southern Africans, Indians, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Arabs, etc. just to name a few] coming from cities all over Ukraine.” She accused the guards of racism and said there was a lot of shuffling and pushing, with some people lightly injured.
“We are still traumatised, physiologically, emotionally and physically. We have, finally, crossed over the Romanian border, but it was very traumatic!” she said.
“God is our strength because our human strength alone would not be able to carry us through. We are praying that all foreigners will make it to their homes safe. These days have been the longest days of our lives. War is real and war is ugly,” she tweeted.
