Sky Radio is heard in a pipe drawer on an inconspicuous street in Amsterdam-North. A woman files a client’s bare feet, a little further on, another focuses on a student’s nails. The pedicure is Russian, the nail technician, Katya, is Ukrainian. The heating is high.
The women look a bit alike: dyed blond hair, perfect nails, red lipstick. They share this space and get along well, they say. They speak Russian, and also English.
Three other Ukrainian women and two other Russian women who work here talk about everything, Katya says. About their children, the Netherlands, the life of a freelancer in a foreign country. They rent a table here where they receive customers. 25 euros for a manicure, 45 euros for a Russian pedicure. Sometimes they are all filing, painting and cutting at the same time. But they don’t talk about the war in Ukraine. “It’s hard for Russian women,” explains Katya. “They don’t want to defend their president and they don’t want to be in the newspaper. They don’t feel one with their president.”
Also read: Ukrainian refugees come on top of an overloaded system
The Russian colleague who works today does not want to talk to journalists. She doesn’t trust the media. She is very good with her Ukrainian colleagues, she says. But she is silent about the invasion of their country.
blue candle
The Ukrainian Katya and Ludmilla will tell. On Tuesday, they both cried when a regular walked in with a blue candle and a bunch of yellow flowers – the colors of their flag. They are proud of their president, Volodymyr Zalensky. “We Ukrainians are patriotic,” says Katya. “That’s because we’ve been living next to such a great neighbor for so long.”
Katya (53) now has to cry every day. The nails she takes care of and her friends at work are a bit of a distraction, but she’s really worried all the time. She shows a photo that her son sent Wednesday morning. He is thirty, studied law, and has joined the army. “Look mom, the sun is shining over Ukraine,” he writes next to a photo on which his round face smiles. There are tears in her eyes.
/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data82771171-cac262.jpg)
Photo Niels Blekemolen
Putin started a war in the country where I took my first steps, made friends, went to school and celebrated Easter with my grandparents. Tears again.
Katya has been living in the Netherlands for a year, in a village in North Holland, with her Egyptian husband, whom she met via the internet. Kharkiv, the city where she was born, has been heavily bombed this week. It hurts, she puts her hand on her heart.
Fled to Moldova
Ludmilla has been living in Diemen for two years now. She comes to get things in the studio to go to a nail customer’s home. Quick, quick, because her husband is waiting outside in the car and if she doesn’t hurry, he’ll get mad. Her daughter, mother and sister went to Moldova by taxi yesterday, she says. Her daughter is sixteen. They walked the last stretch across the border. Her father stayed in the house in their village to look after it. There is heavy fighting.
Katya and Ludmilla underline that they are for all people, including Russians. “We don’t want war. We are friends with everyone. Especially with our Russian colleagues.”
Read about it here the latest developments in Ukraine