At this point it’s hard to remember a time prior to being in Przemysl. The past few days have been difficult - more and more people coming from the Donbas region and Kyiv Oblast. For the first time we’re seeing people who are looking for things for the long term - for people in the Donbas, they are acutely aware that they are probably going to be annexed in the coming days and weeks, and that they will not return home. They are shell-shocked, mostly, or they cry and cry. We have found a hotel in a nearby city offering free rooms to Ukrainians, which we are trying to fill whilst we look for more longterm solutions.
Last night, Alex found a babusja wandering up and down a platform, saying she wanted the train back to Lviv. When he tried to direct her, she refused to come. He came to find me, thinking that I would be able to coax her to the right platform as a woman. Michal and I went to try. It was clear that she had dementia; I managed to get her to the platform, but with so many stops and starts and turnings back that she missed the train. She then started to cry, and walk in the opposite direction to the station. When I went to tell her that there would be another train to Lviv in the morning, and we could find her somewhere warm to sleep and get her ticket sorted out for her, she started to hit me with her bag, and shout at me and Michal, calling us bastards and telling us to fuck off. Alex went and got a medic for her, who she ran away from, shouting at and saying similar things. The medic called the police - it took 8 of them to arrest her. I don’t know what to think about this experience. Witnessing the arrest babusjas with dementia trying to get home isn’t an experience I thought I’d ever have. I don’t know what other option there was - at least she is somewhere warm and not wandering the streets in sub zero temperatures, physically attacking people who are talking to her. We’ve come across several elderly people alone here, clearly suffering from dementia, but there is no specialist help for them, so we rely on our own experiences with our grandparents, which is obviously inadequate in terms of real support, but I suppose gives us a level of empathy. They are the people who stir up my hatred for Putin most of all: society’s most vulnerable, now traumatised, alone, afraid, confused, making their way to Poland, where they don’t speak the language and the support isn’t in place. Someone urgently needs to set up a retirement home near the border with Russian and Ukrainian speaking staff trained in dementia for refugees in this position.
The numbers of disabled people we are seeing generally is increasing, as people are left with no choice but to flee. A few days before Bucha was headline news worldwide, we met a deaf/mute man from there, who showed me a video of his house being bombed. He had nothing left in the world but his phone - and thank god he had that, to enable him not only to communicate with us, but to facetime his friends who remained in Bucha. He is now in Norway, where there are better provisions than most places, and we compiled him a list of charities and organisations for deaf displaced people.
A further change here is that from the 1st April, only refugees with a stamp proving when they crossed the border are able to access free transportation in Poland. The issue with this is that most people crossing do not have international passports, they have their domestic passports - which everyone in Ukraine has - which they cannot receive a stamp in. This means that for those without money (most of them, especially those who arrive late at night after the currency exchanges close) are now entirely reliant on either the kindness of the ticket sellers - a bad idea; only one here is still consistently giving out free tickets - or on us as volunteers, paying for their tickets. The feelings of confusion and distress amongst the refugees is obviously hugely heightened by this. On Sunday, the first day this law was actively implemented in Przemysl, I spent £1000 on tickets for people without international passports. Please, please keep donating to my justgiving, or contact me for details to send money directly for the sake of speed and avoiding the justgiving commission. This is not a sustainable solution, and if there are any journalists reading this who can write about the change, that would be excellent. We need to boost awareness and pressure the Polish government into a u-turn.
There is, of course, also happier news: the family I bought tickets to Ireland for last week are happily settled in Limerick, sending us photos every day, and getting ready for the kids to start school. A blind man and his wife who I was put in touch with made it across the border, and were picked up by a driver we arranged and taken to Warsaw, from whence I bought them tickets to Brussels, where they were met by another driver we arranged (who miraculously spoke some Ukrainian!) and taken to their family, who arrived a few weeks earlier. These are the stories keeping us going, especially as I increasingly see people I helped to leave Przemysl and get to their destination returning via Przemysl back to Ukraine. Three separate women in that category came up to me yesterday, saying that I had helped them a few weeks ago get to Germany and elsewhere in Poland, but life was too difficult there and they wanted to go home. It’s not my place to judge - they know what they’re reentering, and it’s their decision - so I direct them to their train and give them a hug and my phone number, and send them on their way, hoping that they will contact me if things worsen in their respective regions and they need to get back out again, but praying that this won’t be necessary.
So, as always, please keep donating. It’s needed now more than ever. Please also keep sending money to our Kharkiv fund. Money can’t solve everything, but it goes a long way in this situation, and every single pound/dollar/euro/zloty is needed.
As always, Слава Украïнi!
me, Alex, and a group from Odesa, now on their way to Berlin, who gifted me a bottle of Borjomi.
a ‘Russian warship, go fuck yourself’ sign near our apartment.
a rabbit who had travelled all the way to Donbas, now on its way to Germany.
Alisa and Danir, exploring Limerick this weekend!