Over 600,000 people left the country in the first days of the war. Among them also foreigners who had found a new homeland in that country
The road to Kroscienko, the southernmost and also the smallest of the border crossings between Poland and Ukraine, is a succession of people waiting. Dmitry Shirokij arrived from Bulgaria, where he works as a gardener, and awaits his wife, children and mother-in-law. He’s been sleeping in the car for two days. “My family fled from Zaporizzja after the Russian soldiers appeared on the outskirts of the city, the situation is very tense – he explains -. I keep calling but the movements of the trains are secret for military security reasons, so no one knows when he will be able to leave or even when he will arrive ». Oda Lebioda, on the other hand, is a thirty-year-old from Warsaw. On Friday she read Anna’s appeal about her, one of her peers from Lviv, on Facebook and came to pick her up to host her at her home. When she arrives she hugs as if they have known each other forever even if so far they have only spoken on the phone. And then there are the animal rights activists such as Paulina Podgajna or the volunteers of the “Felix Posnania” association, who traveled hundreds of kilometers to come and bring croquettes, canned food, bowls and leashes to those who cross the border with their pet. .
The only ones that no one is waiting for are the last of the last of this exodus to the heart of Europe. Those that UNHCR calls very secularly “citizens of third countries” – “non-Ukrainian citizens” for the Polish government – which it estimates are already more than 50,000 since the start of the conflict. Almost 10% of the 660,000 people have left Ukraine for one of the neighboring countries in the past six days. Some of them reported being discriminated against already in the first hours of the escape, while trying to get on the trains, due to the color of their skin. Yesterday after 10 pm three of them were attacked in the center by some racists linked to ultra groups, who went around the city chasing them armed with baseball bats and bottles.
In Kroscienko they recognize each other immediately because after passing the road sign with the flag of the European Union they set out on foot. Many are university students or workers from Africa and Asia, while others are most likely young people who fled Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan who had been rejected further north in recent months. «Bad guys, another gift from Lukashenko. At the border with Belarus they threw stones at us, ”a policeman says, shaking his head as he sees them parading wrapped in their skimpy fleece blankets. The suspicion is that someone left Belarus crossing Ukraine after the first bombings. In any case, the customs officers assure that they are letting them all pass: “The procedure is the same for anyone who leaves Ukraine.”
Mohammed Alkimishi, 22, from Tripoli, is with four other Libyan boys. He says he is a student of International Relations and is angry because no one stops to help them: “The minibuses only load women and children.” Behind them, a group of workers are working to restore a disused railway line that will be used to better organize the outflow of refugees. For the moment, however, the only way to reach the Lodyna reception center, eight kilometers away, is to find a lift. «I continue to bring mainly Ukrainian women – says Lukasz Pereszlucha, a 38-year-old entrepreneur who is making his contribution by commuting with a minivan-. But yesterday I picked up a guy who didn’t want to talk to me, even though I’m sure he understood me perfectly, that he seemed more exhausted than the others ».
In the former elementary school, classrooms and corridors are full of cots, trolleys and piles of food. To enter you have to queue and register in front of a soldier’s desk. “Families stay here for a short time, one or two days at the most,” the volunteers explain as they get busy unloading packs of milk and cartons full of baby food. “My husband is on his way here from Lithuania,” confirms Maria Novenko, 26, who left her home in Kryvyi Rih, southern Ukraine, along with three other relatives and 8 children. The only ones who do not know where to go are always “citizens from third countries”. “I heard that maybe they will organize an airlift,” says Mark Kabon, a Congolese student at the Lviv Polytechnic. Upstairs, Ahmed Dridby, a Yemeni enrolled at Kharkiv Medical University, can’t even get up from his cot. “I was about to graduate, what am I going to do now?”
The situation is also similar to Medyka, the main border post directly connected with Lviv, where since yesterday the consulates of Pakistan and Bangladesh have rented buses to take their citizens to Warsaw. Other countries have sent a car with the flag taped to the windshield. Lhakpa Gurung and his three friends, all Nepalese, are however among those forced to do it alone: «On the train from Kiev to Lviv there was no room to bend your legs and from the many people there you could hardly breathe. Then we took a taxi but in the end we walked for 35 kilometers without ever stopping ». Rupinder Singh, an Indian from Punjab who worked in construction in Kiev, is also negotiating a lift by car. “I was there for a year and a half and I was fine with it, it’s a beautiful country.” He says it by joining his fingers and throwing a kiss in the direction of Ukraine. And he almost starts to cry.
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