More than 375,000 people have crossed the border into Moldova to escape the violence in Ukraine. Most of them move on to the European Union, but more than 100,000 have stayed.
Moldova is one of the smallest and poorest countries in Europe, but it has received the highest number of Ukrainian refugees per capita.
Officials in Moldova are racing to house and provide for people who are deeply traumatized. Unlike other countries accepting refugees, Moldova is neither a member of NATO nor of the European Union. It has largely been left to fend for itself.
“We hoped there would be no war. We did not think there would be a large-scale war close to our borders,” said Moldova’s foreign minister, Nicu Popescu. “But nonetheless we have been preparing for this.”
An internal review carried out just before the invasion, assessed Moldova as being able to host between 10,000 to 15,000 refugees.
“It’s already bad now, but within days it can get significantly worse,” Popescu said.
The people who stay in Moldova are often the most vulnerable. They’re the ones without connections or cars.
In Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, government-run facilities for refugees are already close to capacity. The city’s expo centre, which until recently was used as a COVID hospital, has been transformed into a temporary shelter for families. An Olympic-training stadium is being used to house up to 850 Roma-Ukrainians. And at the border, the government has set up a small tent camp, where Victoriia Kuchmenko and her family sheltered after fleeing from Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine.
“As we drove through Odessa, my child kept asking: ‘Is it safe here, they are not shooting here?’” Kuchmenko said. “And I said, ‘No, it’s quiet here.’ And when we reached this place, I said, ‘They don’t shoot here for sure.’”
And where the Moldovan government has been stretched to the limit, ordinary people have stepped in.
“Ninety percent of refugees so far are accommodated in private accommodation: In flats, in houses, with families, with friends, with people who agreed to host them without knowing them,” Popescu said. “So in this sense, for now, society is showing a great degree of empathy.”
The La Costesti resort outside Chisinau is a prime example. The complex usually hosts 12,000 tourists a year, according to the hotel’s manager, Veronica Bivol, but since the start of the war they have taken in more than 2,500 refugees.
“Ukrainians defend not only their country, they defend all of Europe,” she said. “And we Moldovans, I think, like a small country, all we can do is to help.”
The operation at the resort is run on private donations. Most of the refugees are women and children, like Veronika Khoronzhuk, who fled Mykolaiv, Ukraine, with a newborn and a 5-year-old.
“I gave birth on Feb. 20,” Khoronzhuk said. “On Feb. 24, I woke up from my parents ringing the doorbell to tell me the war had begun.”
She added: “My children are traumatised. But we didn’t tell the children it was a war. We told our older child who is 5 that it’s a storm. And now, when a door is slammed or a book falls down, or something falls the kids get really scared. ‘Is it the storm again?’”
Another woman at the resort talked of the uncertainty.
“I can’t wrap my head around it,” said Anna Sevidova, who was injured when a piece of shrapnel struck her face during a Russian attack on her hometown Mykolaiv.
“The therapists who worked with me asked me if I was OK, and I said that I might not be OK,” she said. “It will take a long time to recover.”
Both women wait in Moldova while their husbands remain in Ukraine. There are tens of thousands of others like them.
“We thought it would last for three or four days, but as we all see it’s endless,” Bivol said. “We had resources for one week or two weeks, but now we feel that we need some help. Yes. Help.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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