Lviv: the last refuge before fleeing the war in Ukraine

For many people fleeing Ukraine, the path to the border begins in Lvivin the west of the country and whose train station has become a international shelter: everyone who needs it gets help here, including Latin American students caught up in the war.

Abigail, an Ecuadorian journalism student at the University of Odessa who has lived in Ukraine since 2016, decided to stay temporarily in Lviv to help Spanish-speaking students and people from various countries leave the country. Along with her brother and a group of Ecuadorians, the 24-year-old now dedicates herself to organizing trips for Latin American students to the border.

they arrived on friday 248 people evacuated from Ukraine on a government-chartered humanitarian flight from Poland. A second plane with 209 nationals should land this saturday.

Of the Latin American countries, Ecuador had the largest community in the Ukraine, registering some 800 citizensmostly college students.

So far, Lviv has been spared from the aerial bombardments that have occurred in Kiev and other large cities in Ukraine, so people from all over the country have fled to this western city in search of a safe place.

“Helping people makes me happy,” Abigail told Efe, although she admits that the first few days were very hard due to the number of people who left and also the disorder that there was at the train station.

“There were even fights. Of our group of 70 people, only 40 have gotten on the train“, says the young woman, who assures that she does not want to leave Ukraine, but that she has no other choice.

Daniela, an Ecuadorian student who accompanies him, says that she decided to leave Zaporizhia after receiving advice from the owner of the house she rented in this city in eastern Ukraine. “She told me that she was no longer safe and that she had to run away,” she relates.

Ukrainian volunteers working at the Lviv station say that one of their most important roles is to prevent the collapse and chaos that occurred in the first days, when some men blocked the entrances to the trains, giving priority to their wives and fighting with the rest of the people.

People also left their things and their pets at the station, trying to get on the train.

“When people try to survive, things get very ugly“acknowledges one of the volunteers.

half a million refugees

According to the UN, more than 1.2 million people they have left Ukraine because of the war and have sought refuge in some of the neighboring countries and others in Europe, a number that increases every hour as Russia intensifies the military offensive against its neighbor. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 650,000 Ukrainians have fled to Poland.

For those who couldn’t take the train that goes directly to warsawthe Polish capital, there is the option of reaching the border by car or bus, to one of the closest points, such as the Ukrainian towns of Krakovets, Rava-Ruska, Ugryniv.

At the border, people spend hours queuing to get through customs. There are several humanitarian aid points there where people can get free food and have a cup of hot tea. A source from the Ukrainian customs in the border town of Rava-Ruska recalls that the first two days were very tense and “there were so many people that the customs’ electronic databases crashed.” He adds that they spent approximately 200 people every ten minutes.

run away hoping to return

When asked if they plan to return to Ukraine, most of the people in the queue to go through customs say yes and that they go out only by obligation.

Iryna, a 40-year-old woman from Ukrainka in the Kiev region, is traveling with her young daughter and hopes to return when the situation improves.

Also in Rava-Ruska, two men and a woman from Kharkov, in the east, they cry remembering that their city is completely destroyed, but they assure that they want to return. “Somebody has to rebuild the city when the war is over,” she says.