Alison Suttie: Ukrainian Children Are Traumatised And Exhausted - We Can And Must Do More

The square in front of the station at Pzremsyl is full of recently arrived Ukrainian refugees. Trains no longer run to a timetable from Ukraine - they run when they are full and when it is slightly less dangerous to do so.

The first thing that really strikes you at Przemsyl station is that all around you are only women and children. There are virtually no men.

There are little children carrying teddy bears and others sitting on their small suitcases doing colouring in. Mothers and grandmothers are with them - some traumatised, all exhausted.

The first family I spoke to were from Kharkiv - two young women, Olena and Nadia, and Nadia’s little daughter, Masha. “Phil” the dog was guarding the basket with their two fluffy cats. They had left Kharkiv several days earlier and had been staying in Lviv but hoped to be able to move on their final, if temporary, location of Tallinn later that day. Nadia explained that they had some family there.

Inside the station itself some German psychologists had just arrived and were making their way to the big room that had been set aside for mothers and young children.

Natasza from the Catholic charity Caritas took us into the room and explained her work as a volunteer. There appeared to be a fairly endless supply of drinks, fruit, snacks as well as some homemade hot food being distributed. There were piles of disposable nappies in the corner.

Back in the corridor on the way to the main station entrance hall I decided to speak to the only younger male refugee I had seen. He was in leg braces and I asked in Russian if he would mind speaking Russian with me and where he was from.

He was from Ivano-Frankivsk, which had been bombed just two days earlier. It turned out that he was actually an American who married a Ukrainian woman twenty years earlier. He said everyone assumed because he was American that he could just “go home” but in fact he said he didn’t have the money for tickets for his family and so wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do.

On one of the train platforms families were sitting around on their luggage waiting for the train to Warsaw that they hoped would be leaving that afternoon.

Nina sat next to her two grandsons with her three-year-old pet terrapin, Marta, on her lap. Yuliya her daughter’s eyes welled up as soon as she talked about her husband who had stayed behind to fight in Kharkiv.

An elderly couple from Kyiv told me of how they had moved out to their dacha in the countryside around Kyiv only to find themselves having to flee from the Russian soldiers. The lady sheltered her three-month-old Yorkshire terrier in her coat as we spoke. Her husband said his niece lived in London and that they would love to go there but it they had heard it was too expensive and complicated to get to the UK.

Her husband then started to talk about how they had just had to abandon their dacha so quickly that they hadn’t had time to pack properly. Some of their family were now in Slovakia but their sons were left behind in Kyiv. They had a relative in Wrocław where they planned to stay for a couple of weeks. When I suggested they might come to the UK they thought it was just too far away and they were confident that they’d be able to get return to Kyiv in a few weeks’ time.

At the pedestrian border crossing between Ukraine and Poland at Medyka people queue up for buses to reception centres where they can then begin the long journey on to a final destination.

Once they have passed the EU/Polish border, the refugees are met by a long corridor of charities and NGOs offering everything from homemade soup and pizza to pampers and advice centres. It all has a slightly bizarre, if well intentioned, almost festival atmosphere.

Some of the refugees are apparently waiting up to thirteen hours to get through the border and at night it still falls well below zero.

We met a young woman Nadezhda and her young son Artsiom just after they had crossed the border. As she told me of how she had left Kharkiv the day before by train, Artsiom tucked in enthusiastically to homemade pizza from one of the Scottish charities. He clearly wanted to practice his English and told me that it was his dream to travel to London.

His mother looked exhausted and told me she just couldn’t believe this was all happening in Europe in the twenty-first century. She told me that Kharkiv was ruined, the city centre destroyed. Her local supermarket had even been bombed and she emotionally told me about the family left behind. It was very hard to find the right words in English or Russian and so we just hugged.

A former Tesco outside Przemsyl has become a reception centre for the refugees. There is a chemist shop and make shift dormitories have been set up to let the exhausted get much needed sleep. Various NGOs and charities from about twenty different countries are represented there, offering onward journeys and care - although the UK is notably absent.

The Dom Ukrainskii in Przemsyl has for many years served as a cultural centre for the Polish Ukrainian community but has now been transformed into a centre for refugees - offering a space to sleep, a safe space for the children to play, as well as advice and necessary medical care.

We had a quick tour and discussed whether we could find ways to match Ukrainians with UK families who are happy to host them and agreed to keep in contact.

On the way out we ran into a Manchester GP and a UK-Ukrainian pharmacist who have been volunteering for the last week in Przemsyl. We chatted about the disappointingly bureaucratic and fundamentally cold approach by the UK compared to that of Poland - who currently are looking after more than two million refugees.

Outside a cafe we ran into a young Irish man from County Wicklow who had been so moved by what he had seen on television that he decided to volunteer to drive Irish humanitarian aid from Ireland to the Polish border.

For me this was just one intense day of emotional chance meetings. For the Ukrainian people this has all become part of their new daily life.

As one lady described to me at the railway station ‘our city, our home is ruined. It is like a nightmare from which however hard I try I just can’t wake up…’.

We can and must do more.

Baroness Alison Suttie has just returned from a visit to the Polish-Ukrainian border with Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey. Since 2017 she has been working on various projects in Kyiv, including a project with Ukrainian Alliance for Public Health and in the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. She is a fluent Russian speaker.