Niamh Griffin: ‘Nobody thinks it will stop soon’

As up to 100,000 people are expected to cross the Moldovan border if Odesa is targeted more heavily, the work to support arriving refugees continues

The Melnyck family from Uman, Ukraine, with friends from Mykoloiav and other cities, and Radnosti centre director and pastor Alexei Burcovschii.

“We just want to go home,” the woman explained but instead she was sitting at a dusty border crossing with her two daughters, a cat, and a French bulldog. Her husband is back in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Anastasyia, 40, arrived at the Palanca border crossing between Moldova and her home in Odesa with daughters Daria, 13, and Sophie, 9.

“We know the risks but we are tired of living in fear, of going from the apartment to the basement, to the bunker,” she said.

“There is no internet in the bunker — you have no idea what is going on.”

Her husband finally just said it was time to leave.

“He told me, ‘When I know that you are out and safe, then I can concentrate on my own safety. When you’re still in the country I can’t think about me’,” she explained with a catch in her voice.

She cannot say much more about her husband for security reasons other than he is part of the defence forces.

Anastasiya and daughters Daria and Sophie, with Unicef volunteer psychologist Tamara Ambruch.

Anastasyia, a speech therapist, said Odesa had already been a new start for them as they fled there from their home in Crimea after Russia annexed that southern part of Ukraine in 2014.

Now the city is filling with people who fled shelling in the east of Ukraine, even as others decide to move out to areas liberated by the Ukrainians in recent days.

“They prefer to live in a half-building as opposed to going to Russia or going to a new country,” she said. “Some people are planting again.”

She and her daughters are looking for somewhere safer, she said: “Nobody thinks this will stop soon.”

Around them, free coaches filled up in the hot sun for journeys to the Moldovan capital Chisinau or Romania. Anastasyia is waiting for her sister-in-law, who earlier set off on a 20-hour drive from her home in Montenegro to collect them.

Despite the visible scale of the war and the mass exodus of people, there are different views as to what is happening and why.

Anastasyia gets emotional when talking about her family in Crimea, some of whom are Russian. When she tried to alert them, not everyone believed what was unfolding.

“People are saying this cannot be true, it is propaganda,” she said, shrugging as she looked around at crowded tents offering hot food and medical aid.

At its peak, this crossing saw 12,000 people in 24-hours at the start of the war, according to the Moldovan border police.

Fleeing Odesa

In those first days, Svetlana and Dimitry Volokh and their six-year-old son took over 12 hours to pass the final 3km to the border fleeing from Odesa.

“We didn’t know where to live or where to go,” Dimitry said, rushing through a list of hotels, an apartment offered but taken back again, and a multi-bed room at the converted MoldExpo centre, a rural refugee centre.

Even as they moved around, they were leaving behind careers in digital marketing and B2B sales to become overnight experts in supplying medical aid.

Dimitriy Volokh, from Odessa, with Karl Shifflett of Bikers for Christ.

A friend in Odesa with connections to Children’s Hospital No 2 pinged him with a list of medical requests. He googled ‘hospitals’ in Chisinau and they drove to the nearest facility in hope of getting supplies to send to his friend in Odesa.

“One man saw our Ukrainian car licence and he asked how could he help,” he said.

“He went to the hospital to visit his child there but his heart was also open in that moment to helping Ukraine.”

Six weeks later their informal network of voluntary supports keeps growing and he talks confidently about nutrition packs for premature babies, thyroid medication, and blood-clotting gauze.

However, the young couple is struggling to explain to their son why they cannot just drive home.

Dimitry’s own parents now live in Germany and they spoke on Thursday to mark a birthday. His sister is in Switzerland, his brother in Odesa.

“I want to go home, of course,” he said.

“Men in Ukraine cannot go across the border now. It’s incorrect to say I am happy here but I am thankful to God for being in the correct place to help.”

Up to last Wednesday, 401,704 people had arrived in Moldova. Dr Suzanne O’Connell, honorary consul of Ireland in Moldova and a doctor with Outreach Moldova, remembers seeing people crossing the border in late February when temperatures dipped to -20C.

She said many women walked for miles through snow, carrying young children, supporting elderly people, and even pushing wheelchairs.

Seven deaths have been registered among refugees fleeing to Moldova so far, with 150 people needing hospital care including 15 who required intensive care support, she said.

However, she said up to last week 35 births were also registered.

Despite the massive numbers, Moldovan border police head Rosian Vasiloi described this week as quiet.

Speaking to Irish politicians from the joint committee on EU affairs on a visit to the region, he estimated as many as 100,000 people could flood across if Odesa is targeted more heavily.

Moldova will cope in the way it has coped since February, he told them, dismissing concerns this could push the structures over the limit.

In contrast to Ireland, where arrivals are regulated in a way by distance and flights, every change in hostilities has an impact on Moldova.

Spike in arrivals

Last weekend already saw a spike in arrivals, he said following a Russian attack on the oil refinery near the city.

In the meantime, the crossing is constantly updated to make the process faster and safer. The area where Anastasyia’s family waited also holds small playgrounds and Unicef ‘blue dot’ safe areas.

Psychologist Tamara Ambruch has volunteered there since the war started.

“It’s worst for the children aged 12-16,” she said. “They understand too much.”

Older teens doing apprenticeships told her they feared they may never get a job now their education was shattered.

Down the road, the Bureau for Migration and Asylum supports and assesses people seeking asylum, some of whom are men who do not wish to fight in the Ukrainian army following new laws there.

Tents house people who arrive too late at night for buses. Others travel onwards using free flights through

collaborations with EU countries and international aid groups.

Despite this, an estimated 100,000 arrivals have opted to stay and increasingly they are the focus.

Charity Centre for Refugees director Ahmad Djavid Paknehad said: “Some of them... want to stay in Moldova. Moldova is near Ukraine, they want to go back to Ukraine. They hope.”

Last year, Moldova saw fewer than 150 asylum seekers, he said and his hope is they can continue to expand services.

This centre now partly relies on groups as disparate as the Moldovan Football Association and Avaaz in the UK as well as public donations and UNHCR support.

Hope

Hope has kept Svetlana Melnyck, 41, and her family near Chisinau since the end of February.

“Rockets came and set the buildings on fire, apartments near our home” she said.

She described how munitions at a military base near the city of Uman exploded after being bombed, adding to the death toll.

“Our city is between Odesa and Kyiv, it is very dangerous there. We have the opportunity to be here and we will wait until we can go home.”

Svetlana Melnyck fled from Uman in Ukraine to Chisinau, Moldova, with her family.

They are staying with 114 others at a former summer camp called Radnosti (Joy), which has gardens and soccer pitches and provides wifi, hot meals, and private rooms.

Elena joins in to say one of her friends survived two weeks hiding in Bucha, getting out just before Russia encircled the town.

Lena Kisova talks about her friend who drove out of Kherson without GPS navigation: “She went through fields, forests, she didn’t know the direction to go in.”

Radnosti centre director and pastor Alexei Burcovschii said many of the people who came here at the start are still here.

“They do not want to go to another country. They believe they will go back home soon.”

The centre is approved as part of the government response but is funded mainly through donations from Christian groups, locally and internationally, he explained.

American Karl Shifflett, a member of Bikers for Christ, supports the centre and volunteers to connect Ukrainian religious groups in Mykolaiv with medical aid crossing the border.

However, just 5% of arrivals are estimated to be in centres, with 95% in family homes. Helping these families is becoming more complex, with Moldova having taken in the most refugees per head of population of any support country.

Tudor Mancas, secretary general, Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, Moldova.

Tudor Mancas, secretary general at the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, said: “We are learning by doing and we really hope the demand or numbers will not increase again but let’s see.”

He said “cash-based interventions” were being offered in two ways, firstly to refugees staying longer term in the country.

“The second aspect is support to families supporting the refugees. Many of them opened their houses in the first days to unknown people. Now more than a month has passed and in some cases they’re helping people with disabilities and so on,” he said.

“It costs and we are facing different prices for gas. We need to support those families to give them the possibility to keep hosting.”

Government officials, including from the EU integration committee and health ministry, met with the Irish politicians last week.

Fine Gael TD Joe McHugh said: “There is such an unpredictability out here. Nobody is in a position to say how many people may come.”

He sees the EU playing a key role, noting Moldova applied for membership at the start of March.

“They need help and continued help,” he said. “We are going to continue to support that application process.”

Having seen the Moldovan systems, he was critical of the slower pace in some of Ireland’s responses, including delays around accepting 500 vulnerable refugees.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said work was ongoing with a number of agencies co-ordinated by the European Commission for “effective and efficient transfers”. This included making sure the right supports were in place, she said.

Moldova is already facing these complexities, with plans under way for mass childhood vaccinations, for example. People with chronic diseases such as tuberculosis are referred into public health programmes and oncology wards are under severe pressure.

Unlike a hurricane or earthquake, where the disaster erupts and then rebuilding starts, the Russian invasion has left Ukrainians and Moldovans coping with the emergency caused by the ongoing hostilities and preparing for long-term survival at the same time.

Everyone hopes the war will end soon but there is a growing sense on the ground that the end of the shelling could only mark the start of the greater challenges.