We first met Anastasia at the border with Moldova. She escaped with her daughter and told us why she decided to leave the country
It’s easy to tell when the the curfew ends in Ukraine, because at the border crossings of Tudora and Palanca, on the south-eastern border between Ukraine and Moldova, long lines of cars start to queue up across the tree-lined road separating the two countries. Anastasia was among the first people to enter Moldova, on the 9th of March. It was morning, temperatures had dropped to -6 degrees and snow was falling, driven by an icy wind cutting the skin. We met her there, at the border crossing. “My name is Anastasia, and this is Arianna, my daughter. We are Ukrainian, from Odessa”, she says, while trying to cover Arianna with a yellow blanket. “We decided to leave our country after the worst night of my life. On the 7th of March, I heard for the first time the deafening sound of the bombing just 5 km from our home”.
The journey started the following morning. After 7 a.m., you can go out on the streets again, but with caution, paying attention to the alarms that warn you to return to the bunker immediately. “We took the first available bus to Moldova, hours of travel because the queue was endless, and the people kept increasing along the way”.
Odessa, a city in southern Ukraine, is only 60 km from Palanca, Moldova. A distance that can be covered in barely more than two hours under normal traffic conditions, but with the outbreak of war and thousands of people fleeing, it can take up to ten hours to cross the border and be safe. “We were hiding in a hidden shelter, but even there we could smell burning, growing from the spreading of the flames. The anxiety flared up, the people who were with us in the shelter started gather their belongings to prepare to flee as soon as possible”.
The condition of refugees at the border with Moldova
To date, more than 380,000 refugees from Ukraine* have crossed into Moldova. Many more have reached Romania or other European countries since the 24th of February, when the conflict began. The continuous flow of people fleeing the war increases as the threat on the south-eastern part of Ukraine intensifies: from Mariupol to Odessa. “They were not military targets, but homes where people like us lived, civilians. We spent days, weeks in the basement since the beginning of the conflict. We could hear the alarms sounding in the city all the time”.
Anastasia and Arianna are two of the thousands of women and children who have fled Ukraine, leaving home and belongings behind. “We are alone, she is my family and now it is my responsibility to take her to safety, to prevent her from seeing and hearing the images and sounds of war. We want to go to Bulgaria, it’s the only place where I know people who could welcome and help us, until this will finally be over, and we can go home. I’m still thinking about my daughter, not about me but about her childhood which must be peaceful. I cannot believe that all this is happening in the twenty-first century”.
Since early March, an INTERSOS team has been in Moldova, at the border with Ukraine, to assist people fleeing the conflict in the country. At the border crossings of Palanca and Tudora we offer medical assistance and protection services for the most vulnerable people. Since a few days we are also in Odessa, a city particularly affected by the fighting, where we are distributing emergency health kits.
*data from UNHCR