A wolf, a goat, owls and of course cats and dogs: the “Home for Rescued Animals”, in Lviv, receives animals of all kinds. All were abandoned by their owners, who fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
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A light-eyed wolf walks around in his enclosure, Boris the goat takes a sunbath in these first days of spring, a group of owls observe, impassively in a row, the situation from their shady perch.
A dozen cats from kyiv are housed in an outbuilding. Dogs howl from a barn calling for the volunteers who picked them up to take them for a walk in a nearby park.
“Of the migrants who come from Kharkov, kyiv, Mikolaiv and go abroad through Lviv, many leave their animals,” said Orest Zalypskii, manager of the shelter that before the war only received exotic animals.
“This war reinforced our commitment”said the 24-year-old man. According to the UN, more than 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24.
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More than two million crossed the border into Poland, where AFP saw many animal lovers with dogs, cats, parrots and turtles to take them to safety.
But upon reaching Lviv, the last stage before the Polish border, 70 km away, some displaced feel unable to continue with their animals
‘stressed’ animals
According to Zalypskii, the shelter has received 1,500 animals since the start of the conflict, many of them from migrants but also from shelters in the “hot spots” in the east of the country.
Between 10 and 20 animals were recovered at the Lviv station, in the chaos of the first days of the war, when desperate passengers invaded the cars. “We don’t have an organized system,” said the shelter manager.
“We just have a lot of volunteers picking up” the animals. A dog that arrived from a war-torn region in the east has not come out of its confinement for two weeks.
A cat, abandoned by its seven-year-old owner, is completely lost.
“We have been bitten and scratched,” Zalypskii said. “The animals are very stressed.” However, the abandoned animals here do not stay long. Some 200 have been adopted by residents of Lviv, while many others were brought by volunteers to Germany, Latvia or Lithuania.
(In other news: Russia announces reduction of military activity in kyiv and Chernigov)
Currently there are no cats left to adopt, they are all about to leave for Poland. It’s not even noon and Zalypskii just signed the third dog adoption of the day.
The shelter has been invaded by couples, friends and families who come to take dogs on their weekend walk. “Ukrainians really love animals,” said Kateryna Chernikova, 36.
“It’s in their DNA.” Along with her husband Igor and her four-year-old daughter Solomiia, Kateryna fled kyiv a week before the start of the war.
The young family and their two guinea pigs, Apelsinka and Limonadka, live in the relative safety of Lviv, relatively safe from the violence, despite the fact that attacks injured five people on Saturday.
On Saturday morning they took two unruly hunting dogs on a leash and left the shelter, over which a Ukrainian flag flies.
“We are not under war conditions, but it is still very hard psychologically,” admitted Kateryna. “When you walk with a dog, you have the impression of leading a normal life.”
AFP
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