The meeting is mainly intended to share the suffering. “What you see in the Netherlands is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Yalinskaya. “It is difficult to explain how we feel now. I was always convinced that I was not going to leave Kiev. I baked bread for the soldiers and my children made drawings to support them. But if you feel the ground shake of the bombings and hear the sound up close, then your whole world is turned upside down.”
Yalinskaya has had to travel a long way from Kiev with her two children. She describes a hellish night in Lviv. “We arrived in the evening, during the curfew. It was forbidden to go out on the street. We had to spend the night at the train station, but there were so many people there that no one could fit in the building anymore. Outside it was minus ten degrees Celsius “I had to stay outside with my children. Eventually space was made for women and children, everyone slept on the floor or on the stairs, it was so cold. You can’t imagine that.”
Her husband is still in Kiev and she is having a hard time with that. Yet she also says today that she is happy with the help she is receiving. “I feel blessed by God because I get so much help from people. But I ask you not to forget Ukraine. Having a bed is not enough, we need to be able to talk about it.”