Tania Zubanko’s embrace with her brother-in-law is long and silent. Without words or tears, on a track muddy by rain. “We are very tired. Now I only think about continuing the trip and that my little girl sleeps in a bed, ”says this mother of three children to excuse her haste. She left her house in the Rivne province of Ukraine on Friday, 200 kilometers from Dorohusk, the Polish border point where she was picked up by her sister’s husband. Her brother-in-law and her sister live and work in the Polish city of Krakow. They still have 300 more kilometers of road left. Tanya’s husband did not accompany her: men up to 60 years old have been prohibited from leaving Ukraine since Friday. His Government has mobilized them to defend the country from the Russian invasion.
More than 30,000 Ukrainians crossed into Poland at eight border points on Thursday, according to the Warsaw government. The number of people who gathered to cross on Friday was greater, Polish police officers at Zosin customs told this newspaper. The northern border between Ukraine and Poland is delimited by the Bug River, so it is difficult to access if it is not by roads enabled for it. The local authorities, despite announcing full collaboration with the Ukrainians who want to access the European Union, allowed the thousands of people fleeing the war to pass slowly.
Hundreds of cars were waiting parked in the last kilometers of Polish roads that end at the border with Ukraine. Number plates from half of Europe could be identified, although there was a Polish predominance. Sergei Krupiva drove Thursday from Denmark, where he works, to Zosin. He slept in the car, like his wife and their two three- and five-year-old sons, who spent the night on the other side of the Bug River, waiting for the police to give them the go-ahead to leave Ukraine and meet with the. Krupiva regretted that the Polish customs officers did not distribute food and water to those who had been on the side of the road for more than a day.
The border at Zosin is an uninhabited wasteland and 17 kilometers away from an urban core with grocery stores. Krupiva, in tears, took advantage of the presence of a journalist from EL PAÍS to express her anger against the EU leaders: “They have taken Vladimir Putin lightly, and they have made a serious mistake.” Krupiva, like other Ukrainians, expressed his conviction that the Russian president would not stop at Ukraine. Putin on Friday threatened Sweden and Finland with further military action if they applied for NATO membership.
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Jan Wojciech Chlopicki is Polish, from Gdansk, on the Baltic Sea coast near Germany. He was waiting in Zosin for a niece and her five children. His family, he explains proudly, is from Volhynia, a historical designation for the northwestern provinces of Ukraine that were disputed for centuries by Poles, Lithuanians, Galicia of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Tsarist Russia, and today Putin’s Russia. Chlopicki’s grandparents and mother emigrated to Poland after famines caused by Stalinism and then World War II. They wanted out of the Soviet Union. “I had not thought about it, but we seem condemned to war always being present in our family.” “We can only cry,” he adds from his car, sheltered from the humidity of the river and the cold.
Not only are Ukrainians awaiting the arrival of relatives at the border. Edam Reis is Bulgarian and lives in Bremen, Germany, 1,200 kilometers from the Dorohusk border post. He drove almost a whole day, taking turns with his brother, until he reached the gates of the Ukraine: his wife had to arrive late in the afternoon from the other side of the border. She worked in Lutsk, the point closest to the EU that was bombed by Russia: “Half an hour after she left the city, Russian missiles were falling again on the military enclaves in Lutsk. On Thursday he decided to leave with the first bombs”.
Nervous and disoriented, many families did not want to listen to the media that had stationed their cameras in front of police checkpoints and currency exchange establishments, prefabricated barracks that use coal stoves to combat the cold. Together with Tania Zubanko they entered Poland, in a van that they shared with other fellow citizens, a mother with two children and a Pekingese dog. Neither the mother nor the eldest daughter could contain their tears when they hugged the father; the pet barked and climbed on his leg. Zubanko did not know how long they would spend away from her home. Uncertainty about the future was the link between them, but so were their children, carrying school bags: for weeks, at best, their education would be interrupted.
Vitali Tritjak, a 28-year-old Ukrainian, had a trembling voice at the thought of the war. He was stationed in Donbas during the Russian intervention in 2014. “I know what it’s like to face the Russians, I’m ready to do it again, but I’m afraid, now it will be worse.” Tritjak and his friend Andrei Kowaljuk were surprised by the invasion of Belgium. The van they drive has a Belgian license plate: they make a living by buying and selling second-hand vehicles. On the return trip, they concluded that the best thing to do was to convince their wives to settle down with friends they have in Poland or the Czech Republic. “We have to think about what to do,” Kowaljuk said. He interspersed the soliloquies of him smoking one cigarette after another. He believes that if Putin gets his way, that is, if he deposes the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and elects a new government subject to his power, a revolution like the one that deposed pro-Russian president Viktor in 2014 will once again take place in Ukraine. Yanukovich. His words are those of a patriot of Western Ukraine, the closest to EU values. They are the ones who feel most betrayed by the member states of the European club. “Spain sends us a journalist to ask us questions. Is that useful to us?” Krupiva shouts desperately: “Why don’t they help us defend ourselves?”.
More than 50,000 Ukrainians flee the country in two days
ELENA G. SEVILLANO (Berlin)
More than 50,000 Ukrainians have fled their country since the Russian invasion began, that is, in less than 48 hours, according to the head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi. The displaced have mainly gone to Poland and Moldova. Warsaw has set up eight reception centers for refugees along the more than 500-kilometer border it shares with Ukraine. One and a half million Ukrainians already reside in this EU country, many of them arriving in 2014, after the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia.
The Polish government stated in early February that, if necessary, it could take in up to a million refugees. At the moment, the UN agency estimates that some 30,000 have arrived.
Around 16,000 people have crossed into Moldova, with a border of more than 1,200 kilometers with Ukraine. The former Soviet republic of 2.6 million people is also building shelters. The Government has activated this Friday the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to request logistical support from the countries of the Union.
In neighboring Romania, an EU member like Poland, people fleeing hostilities are also arriving. The Government assured this Friday that 10,624 Ukrainians have crossed the border since the beginning of the invasion, but that only 11 of them have requested asylum in the country. Most want to continue on to Poland and the Czech Republic. The country has six asylum centers, with some 1,100 places available and 50% occupancy.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Friday that the European Union will accept “all people fleeing the violence caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” “We need to do everything possible to accept without delay the people who are now fleeing from the bombs and from the tanks,” she told reporters upon arrival at a meeting with her EU counterparts in Brussels. The German government has offered to help the countries bordering Ukraine, especially Poland, to take in the displaced.
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