Hundreds of women and children who escaped war in Ukraine have found a welcoming place to stay on the coast of a country they knew little about before the war.
All that remains of Olha Yatsenko’s home in Irpin, a town north of Kyiv with a pre-war population of 60,000 inhabitants, are some photos of her brown-coloured furniture and white cups.
“We escaped at the last moment, just after the bombardment started,” Yatsenko told BIRN, adding that her husband has remained behind to fight the Russian invaders.
“He later sent me photos of our house, which was burned,” she tells BIRN in an interview at a hotel in Albania’s port city of Durres, on the Adriatic. “We have basically nothing now,” she adds.
Yatsenko, 31, was a professor of Economics Sciences at the Department of International Trade and Marketing of Vadym Hetman University in Kyiv. She reached Durres at the end of March along with her mother and infant child.
The city’s Diama Hotel is now sheltering 334 refugees from the war in Ukraine, supported by the Ukrainian embassy in Tirana and Multifunctional Community Centre in Durres, a local NGO.
Yatsenko said Ukrainian diplomats in Tirana helped them get to Albania. She knew little about the small Mediterranean country but has found it surprisingly good.
“I found a fantastic climate and very welcoming people,” she says. “I feel like it’s my second home – after my first home in Irpin was burned to the ground.”
Yatsenko is one of some 5 million refugees that have left Ukraine since the start of the war on February 24, according to the UN.
Most of them are women, children and the elderly; men of fighting age are forbidden from leaving the country.
Data published by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, say at least 4,600 civilians have been killed in the war so far, including 320 children.
At 7pm on a summer’s day in Durres, the restaurant at the Diama Hotel is filling up with women and children of all ages.
Due to the heatwave, the veranda is the preferred place to enjoy supper while catching a refreshing breeze. Children are the first to be served by the staff of the hotel, which in the past hosted Ukrainian tourists.
However, unlike in previous years, the women and children on the veranda are not tourists but refugees and the staff can see the difference.
“They have started to calm down a bit lately,” a waiter observes. “When they first came, it was difficult to get them to eat, especially the children,” she adds.
As they file in for dinner along with family members or acquaintances made since their arrival in Durres, the Ukrainians ponder the latest news from the war and the fate of relatives and friends who remain behind.
“We awoke one morning to the sound of bombs and that was the moment when we understood that what we’d discussed for months had indeed come – we were at war,” Yatsenko remembers. “Despite the months that have passed since then, the nightmare has not gone away,” she adds.
But the sun and the sea in Durres have apparently helped some to get away as much as possible from memories of the war.
Ksenia, a student, is helping children have some fun while she translates Ukrainian into English for other families, when it is needed. She believes that being on the coast had helped a lot.
“The sea and the sun are helpful,” she says. “Here we all help each other, while taking extra care to help the neediest children overcome the ordeal they have suffered,” she says.
The Ukrainian embassy in Tirana told BIRN that they are helping to get the children into improvised schooling despite all the difficulties, while also organizing cultural activities for the adults.
“The children continued to follow classes up till May 31,” Volodymyr Shkurov, the Ukrainian ambassador in Tirana, says.
“Every child had an opportunity to continue their educational process following online classes at his or her respective school back in Ukraine,” he adds.
However, despite the welcome they have received and the possibility of online education of the children, the families in Durres all pray for the day when the war is over, and they can return home.
“Our life is back there, in our Ukraine,” a woman told BIRN, under condition of anonymity.
“We are here, but our hearts are there. We hope this madness will end up soon and we can return home,” she adds.
As dinner comes to an end, the refugees scroll down their smartphones, following the latest news about the war and getting back in contact with relatives.
“On the screen, there is a photo of my house as it was before the war and how it is now,” says Olha Yatesneko.
“It is difficult to believe what we all are losing; however, this is the reality and we are trying to acknowledge it and to hope for the best,” she adds.
The university professor says that, despite losing everything, they are still happy to be alive.
“Thank God, we are all alive, despite being separated and we don’t know when all this will end,” she says.
The Multifunctional Community Centre in Durres says they have managed to mobilize donations to help the refugees.
Fatbardha Idrizaj, director of the centre, said they were happy to help. “Our mission is to help people in need, hit by war or economic crisis,” Idrizaj told BIRN.
Shkurov, the Ukrainian ambassador, told BIRN that most of the refugees that came in Albania are women and children. Of the 337 refugees sheltering in Durres, 125 are children.
They have taken extra care to provide them with psychological assistance, especially for children who arrived with only one parent.
“There are teachers and psychologists along with children. They have been engaged in a variety of activities. There are sports classes, psychological trainings and excursions,” Shkurov says.