That March 24, 2022 they could hardly sleep. At six in the morning, her daughter broadcast the sound of the bombs falling in kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, live. At nine in the morning she stood in front of the headquarters of the Russian consulate in Barcelona. With a cardboard, she implored the end of the war. “We continue with a heavy heart,” she explains now Marina Shevchenko, one of the dozens of people who decided to take to the streets that day. A dozen testimonies collected over these 100 days explain how the war has completely changed them. Some are still anchored in that fateful February 24. Others smile with hope at a new beginning in Spain. 100 days that have been like an eternity, summary.
On the first day of the war, Shevchenko appeared on multiple morning television shows. She was by far the loudest. Since then she has lived away from the spotlight and the cameras. She has participated in multiple solidarity campaigns to send humanitarian material on the border, has been incorporated as translator for the Red Cross in Calella (Maresme) on a voluntary basis and is now trying to find housing for his compatriots. She keeps an eye on her daughter and her two teenage grandchildren who are living in Slovakia while her son-in-law is still in the capital.
Will it make us stronger?
Maksym Mykhaylychenko, instead, he is optimistic. He, along with his parents, his brother and his girlfriend, were the first Ukrainian refugees who asked for help from the Servei d’Atenció als Inmigrants, Emigrants i Refugiats (SAIER) in Barcelona. “That night we had to sleep in the car, but then they transferred us to a shelter in Comarruga,” he explains. They are still there. “We have everything we need: food, clothes, transport passes, documents… And we take Spanish classes. We can’t complain about anything,” he is grateful. His plan is to find a job and be independent from government aid. He doesn’t have a job but helps with the hostel’s chores, as well as improving the facilities. His brother and his girlfriend are remotely pursuing their studies in Ukraine. Who has it worse are the parents. “It is human adaptation. This will make us stronger, right?“.
help in vans
After the restlessness and the first anguish came the waves of overwhelming solidarity. Lluba Kavatsyuk chartered a van to the Polish border with food, medicine and essentials for the refugees. “We needed to help with something and we were able to make this trip but we must be aware that there had to be controls, there were those who took advantage and it was more profitable to transport them by truck than not do it ourselves,” she explains. She now dedicates herself to helping in the translation to the different municipalities of the Empordà, accompanies refugees and wants to go visit her countrymen in Ukraine in September. “There is a time when it’s time to stop and realize that help is needed here tooI experienced a ‘shock’ of reality and saw that in the end there are four politicians who decide and ordinary citizens always pay the highest price”, he points out. Andreii Krasnostup, which racked up five trips to the border and several sleepless nights behind the wheel. Now he has taken in his sister, whom he takes on excursions on weekends.
Fear in the trenches
On his trips to the Polish border, Krasnostup also brought citizens who enlisted to go to the front. One of them was Igor Rakuta, father of a girl and owner of a bar in Estamariu (Alt Urgell), participated for a month in the defense guerrillas of Ukraine. “I was at the roadblocks to watch the cars that wanted to arrive or leave kyiv,” says this 55-year-old man, who did not manage to enter the army. “It was a huge tension, a state of nervousness. You did not know how that would end and they were attacking us from all sides. Then things stabilized and we were able to set up lines of defense, evacuate families, prepare first aid kits and help as much as we could,” he says.You have fear, and you always have it. But you get used to it. Just like you get used to bombs”, follow. In May, he was given permission to return home. He thought of his daughter, his wife, and the bar, that he should move on.
Two sandwiches at recess
There is another citizen of Baix Llobregat who is still on the front line. His children go to the Ukrainian school in Barcelona, one of the key institutions for the integration of many refugee children. They meet every Saturday and there has been no day without a queue of mothers with their children asking for a place. The center went from caring for 200 children to giving shelter to 425. To the director of the center, Svetlana Shkolna, her soul breaks when she sees that her students are transferred to other communities. “We have incorporated some psychologists for children and mothers,” she says. The integration of minors speaks for itself. “The families that are sheltered in private homes have nothing, we collect everything we can … And a new tradition has been incorporated,” she says. The children bring two snacks for recess. “One for them and one for the refugee children,” he continues.. “At least we know that they eat at school,” he says, witnessing the economic hardships for families who do not have any support from the administration.
when life freezes
Mariya attends this school every Saturday. “It’s what she likes most about the week, she wants every day to be Saturday,” explains her mother, Aline Panlichenkova. Mariya is eight years old but she left Dnipro (Ukraine) in the middle of March. She arrived in Barcelona ecstatic. At the Red Cross reception point, she barely smiled. She has now returned to dancing hip-hop (something she already did in her country before the war) and she has joined the Catalan school. Her mother is one of the inhabitants of a hotel in El Vendrell. She came with a friend Alesya Vinnik. The two mothers raise their children together. Maiya and Óskar, two years old. “Nor there is spring, there is no summer, we don’t feel… everything seems to have frozen and arrested on February 24, and it seems that this day lasts forever” explains Vinnik. The mothers are looking for jobs and are receiving their first Spanish classes. “We will leave as soon as martial law ends and we can be safe”, they continue.
Russian soldiers in nightmares
School is also a motor in the life of Nastia Yamolenko. When EL PERIÓDICO interviewed Laura Pérez and Javier España knew nothing of his whereabouts. “I remember that we were on antidepressants, without sleeping… These hundred days have been like a hundred years. It’s so far away for me,” says Pérez. This marriage welcomed the minor, 16 years old, every summer. The girl lives in a village near Txernobyl and she spent the summers in Spain to avoid radiation. When the war broke out, one of Nastia’s sisters who lived in kyiv moved with them to Vallès. The girl, who lived in an area occupied by the Russians, did not receive any messages. “We were locked up, there were days when we had no electricity or water, we lived in a bunker but my parents had food in the pantry because they have a garden. I remember that the Russian soldiers came with the pistols. Hands on the triggers and my father told them we were just kids“, explains the girl, already safe in Sabadell. She managed to get out of there at the beginning of April. “My father went out on the road and saw how tanks came out,” she says. She is still traumatized by the noise. They remind her of bombs, to the shots. “I have nightmares,” she assumes. But it’s a thing of the past. She has started third year of ESO and is grateful for the support of her classmates. Laura also thanks the facilities at the school, but regrets that neither the town hall not even the Generalitat has offered them any help.”We haven’t even been able to do the register yet,” he says.
permanent anxiety
“Anxiety is already habitual in me. Sometimes you want to forget, not to think, but life goes on around you and you must live in the place where you are,” he says. Viktoria Vaskevych, a mother who was trapped in Barcelona at the end of February. She says that thanks to the interview in EL PERIÓDICO she has found a foster family. She has her husband and her eldest daughter in the Ukraine, and her heart is broken. She in the end she chose to stay safe in Barcelona. Her daughter can go to school, communicate and feel that someone is listening to her. “Of course we want to go home, see the other part of our family that we miss in an incredible way, luckily we can communicate with them on a daily basis: they are used to bombs, sirens, trenches. on the street. Now I know how unbearable it is not being able to plan your life, not doing what you love“, explains this 48-year-old child psychologist.
No hosting aid
Vaskevych regrets the lack of financial support received by host families in Spain, unlike what happens in other European countries. A reality that the volunteers of the Novovira travel agency have been able to verify, on Diputació street in Barcelona. In three months they have multiplied by 10 the families served. “We are devastated, we can’t sleep,” says one of the volunteers, Yuri Mykhaylychenko. In the mornings they look for funds to fill the pantry. Help arrives at night to process documentation, act as interpreters or help with accommodation. Meanwhile, the travel business is plummeting. There are no Russian tourists.
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Only refugees arrive. And they continue to do so to this day. Also from Russia. People who do not agree with the Putin regime and who do not want to have to go to the front. DV is one of them. A 26-year-old computer scientist who secretly escaped as soon as he could. He now lives with his Ukrainian grandmother in an apartment in Maresme. “I tried to ask for asylum in Spain but since I’m not Ukrainian I have to go the normal way and it can take years,” he says. He has lost his job and has no way of legally working here. “At the moment I’m studying Spanish,” he smiles. He has become accustomed to the sea, to the heat and to nights with a full moon. “I go out to the beach and see how the moon rises, it’s something beautiful that I couldn’t do in my country,” he says. He, too, is no longer afraid of the police: “they don’t come for you anymore like in Moscow.” And he awaits a new start in the land of sun and sand. “I have hope,” he prays.
A last minute message from Vinnik. This mother, who raises her two-year-old son alone, who has had to leave her job as an event planner and who has changed her makeup for dark circles, wants to make something very clear. “It is very important to me that you include it in the report.” The fact that? “We will endure. We will win. We are indestructible. We are strong.”