Just like the ones in Kiev, the women of Odessa don’t cry either.
It is demonstrated by Karina, a 35-year-old economist from that city. Together with her sister, Anna, 32, and their two children, Boris, 10, and Katya, 4, she has just arrived at the headquarters that the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) has in the Berceni neighborhood of Bucharest, the capital of another country neighboring Ukraine, which is strongly feeling the impact of the senseless war launched by Vladimir Putin, which has unleashed a refugee crisis that could affect more than 4 million people.
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Karina, who speaks English, is an economist, her hair tied back in a ponytail, a green fleece, and glasses. She says that it was an odyssey to escape from Odessa, an important city in southern Ukraine whose strategic port could be bombed by Russian forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned today.
Everyone knows that if Odessa fell into the hands of the Kremlin army, it would be easier for Putin to complete the capture of the entire southern part of Ukraine, which would lose access to the Black Sea, as has already happened with Azov. Precisely for this reason, in recent days, those who have not undertaken the escape to Romania from there, have worked to prepare the resistance, placing sandbags on the beachfront in the event of an amphibious attack.
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Although Odessa is only 555 kilometers from this capital, a distance that can be traveled in about eight hours by car and half an hour by plane, the journey of Karina, her sister and the two boys was infinite. It took two days. First they traveled in their car to a town near the border, where they spent the night in a hotel and, the next day, faced the nightmare of crossing into Romania.
“When we saw that there was a queue for kilometers, we calculated that if we stayed in the car it could take us 4 or 5 days to cross. So, we decided to leave the car on the side of the road and cross on foot, with the children”, says Karina, who points out that she is 11 weeks pregnant. “Yes, I need to go to a hospital in Bucharest so they can check that the baby is okay,” she adds, rubbing her tummy. She will be another war baby.
Karina affirms that “perhaps” some friends will go to look for the car that she left there, at the border. “But when your children’s lives are at stake, what do you care about a car?” She asks herself, her face contorted.
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We told the little ones that we were going on a vacation trip, but it is very difficult for them to believe it
Karina and her sister undertook the escape journey completely alone because, due to martial law, men between the ages of 19 and 60 are prohibited from leaving the country. They have to stay and fight the enemy, as will Anna’s husband, who doesn’t speak English but understands that we are talking about him and doesn’t hide his eyes of terror.
“My husband is a sailor, he works on a merchant ship, he is on the high seas now, I don’t know exactly where he is because in recent days the only messages we exchanged were to tell him that we were fine, he has a contract until May, so for the moment It’s not up to him… My brother-in-law is 41 and will have to fight,” he says.
What will they do now? “I don’t know, we hope to stay here in some apartment and wait to see what happens… We told the little ones that we were going on a vacation trip, but it’s very difficult for them to believe it… They can’t understand why in this holiday trip the nights are so short… They had to wake up at five in the morning and we could never stop to take a breath, we never stop”, he says.
“Also, they don’t like the food, which is very different from what they eat at home, they are very, very tired and every day they ask when we are coming home,” she adds, her eyes full of tears, but without breaking. The boys, in fact, are there, a few meters away, waiting to see what the next step is and surely he doesn’t want them to see her crying. She has to be strong.
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At the JRS headquarters, its director, Irene Teodor, explains to La Nación that we were lucky to be able to speak with Karina.
“Most of the refugees who are arriving in Romania – more than 85,000 every day – do not want to talk to journalists because they are so traumatized. They lived through bombings, having to take refuge and they have it too fresh. You can still see the fear in their faces, they don’t speak, they are very silent, cautious… They cry and come with many children”, it states. “It’s very different from what happens with the Iraqi or Syrian refugees that we also receive here, who cross several countries to get there and don’t have the drama so fresh and, psychologically, they were better,” he adds.
In this context, Teodor says that a few days ago he even attended the case of a man who, since he was actually forbidden to leave the country, decided to cross illegally by swimming through the Danube river delta that separates the border.
“I never expected something like this, nobody expected this,” acknowledges this Romanian social worker, who highlights that in this first wave of refugees it can be seen that these are people who could obviously flee, who had money, a car and fuel to do so. And that they arrive in Romania as if passing through, and then go to other European countries where they have relatives or friends. “But with the passing of days we will see other types of displaced people, much more vulnerable,” she points out.
Although JRS is working in the towns of Raudati, Glati, Constanta, Timisoara, Maramures, close to the Isaccea border points in the west (where Karina and her sister passed through), Sighet and Siret in the north, since this unimaginable exodus began, they have already attended more than 500 people in Bucharest.
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“We give them assistance such as shelter and food, but above all counseling legal: many do not know whether to apply for asylum in Romania or go elsewhere. And the suggestion that we give them depends on what type of document they have: if they have a biometric passport, for example, they can continue traveling to other countries of the European Union (EU), while, if they have a normal identity document, they can stay three months in Romania,” he explains.
“If they apply to stay in Romania, they cannot leave, so sometimes we advise them to wait, because with the new rules adopted by the EU, they can actually stay for a year, receive social benefits and work, but this new rule is just being applied. directive,” he adds.
To Tedor He even got to help some Ukrainians get passports for their pets. “We took them to the vet to get their travel documents and we’ve already managed to send a cat and four dogs to Europe,” he says, gesturing victory.
If they apply to stay in Romania, they cannot leave, so sometimes we advise them to wait, because with the new rules adopted by the EU they can actually stay for a year.
Many non-Ukrainians also arrived, non-EU foreigners, who only have the possibility of staying five days in Romania. And this is why, in the last three days, there have been more than 60 airlifts to repatriate thousands of students from India, Tunisia, Morocco, Georgia, Mexico and other countries, who were also forced to flee cities with big universities like Odessa and Kharson.
“Airlines such as Royal Air Maroc, Air India and others had never landed at the Bucharest airport,” says Father Andrei, a priest of the Greek-Catholic minority in this country, who stressed, on the other hand, that this wave of refugees unleashed in Romania a wave of solidarity never seen before.
“We are shocked because in this country you normally see very little volunteering. But these days in this sense we see that there has been an impressive change: we are seeing people who open their houses to accommodate refugees, who respond to collection requests for them, donate blankets, money, sleeping bags… There are a mobilization for our neighbors that has surprised us”, he points out.
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As is the case in Poland, the country that is receiving the most Ukrainian refugees, due to a geographical issue but also because there is a more similar language there, in Romania the railway and bus lines are also giving free tickets to Ukrainians.
What is this wave of solidarity due to? “It has to do, I think, with the fact that the Romanians see that it is an aggression, a war against our neighbors at home, unleashed from one day to the next by Russia, totally unfair… And it has to do with the fact that our grandparents remember when the Russians arrived here in 1944, at the end of the Second World War and stayed for ten years”, affirms this priest.
“It was a very difficult period, there was a famine because the Russians took everything to take it to the then USSR and the elderly remember it very well,” he explains.
Is there fear in Romania? “I don’t know if we can talk about fear, because Romania joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007, but the climate is also very worrying at the banking level, because the Ukrainians arrive who are allowed to withdraw only a limited amount of money. , the euro is getting more and more expensive, not to mention that the covid had already caused an increase in inflation, it has also risen and this complicates things more”, he answers.
The truth is that at the NATO base in the port of Constanta, 189 kilometers southeast of this capital, on the Black Sea, there are 1,000 French soldiers and at least four Italian warplanes. “And this gives us some peace of mind.”
Elizabeth Pique
The Nation (Argentina-GDA)
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