TRAGEDY AND HOPE TOGETHER

More than two million Ukrainian refugees have fled for safety to Europe via Moldova, Poland and Romania. Those who had the financial capacity managed to be transferred but around 110,000 Ukrainians, mainly women and children, are accommodated in Moldova.

They come from the poorest communities in Ukraine and have no way to go further. They are in dire need of humanitarian aid, protection and support.

Most of them live with host families and in reception centres. For the moment, they are able to survive but the resources are quickly running out and the reception center managers and the families who welcome the refugees lack almost all the resources to house them. They therefore need urgent support for food, hygiene, clothing, bedding and medicine.

Most refugee families have children under 10 and are even overcrowded with babies

Larisa is about 70 years old. She left her husband, sons and sons-in-law in Mikolaiy and fled to Komrad. They arrived at the Besarabeasca border in a minibus, then Moldovan volunteers came to pick them up and took them to the Gagausia orphanage, which turned into a reception center in Kongaz. She took along with her sisters-in-law her daughters-in-law and her grandson Maxim and her granddaughter Maria barely a year old without having any idea what is going on and playing with the empty water bottle, the only toy she has. Maxim, a nine-year-old boy, is afraid of his father but is convinced that they will defeat the Russians and that I will soon be able to return home.

But the grandmother has no hope because their house is bombed and destroyed. So they don’t have a home now. Asking what they gonna do now, she said,

–Our men will liberate Mikolaiy and Odessa and I’m sure there will be a day to turn back the clock and settle our lives again.

She says; But does she believe?

The situation is no different at the transformed reception center of the Federation of Trade Unions of the Sanatorium of Moldova

A hundred women and their children have settled in makeshift rooms temporarily sheltered. They are totally dependent on food hygiene and wintering aid from donors. Some of the women came with their disabled children who need more treatment and care Like Olga from Dnipro with her son with Down syndrome Arsenia

Evgenia begs for a job. We cannot go any longer without any income and depend on the help of others. She’s crying…

-Thousands of people are on their way to Moldova. Most of them are women and children. We want this war to end and we return to our village of Dnipro. We hope our husbands will win the war and save our homeland, she said. We just need peace. Thank you to all the people in the world who support our existence and stop the aggressor Putin

She wants to take care of the children in the reception center to have an income. Her daughter looks at her scared

Anastasia is only one year old. Crying to sleep but how is that possible in such a crowded room. Her mother Dvinia took her from Odessa and they walk most of the road to the Palanka gate Then a bus allocated by the Moldovan authorities and took them to the reception center

And in another corner innocent children are playing in a makeshift courtyard at the reception center. They are smiling laughing and enjoying the game

Children are innocent and peaceful. Women are the silent victims of this war. They must be supported, protected and of course empowered by all means. Otherwise they will be the lost generation for the new century where everything is seen through social media satellite cameras but no one is running to stop this bloodshed and violations against humanity.

Who knows when we will be the new victims of this silence and this ignorance of human values ​​and realities?