Lviv is an open-air refugee camp – Annalisa Camilli

Since the war began, the small Art Nouveau theater Les Kurbas, in the center of Lviv, has been transformed into a reception center for refugees: mattresses on the floor, a dining table in the center of the stalls and a storage area for clothes, blankets and basic necessities in the dressing rooms. “In the situation in which we find ourselves it was not possible to do anything else”, says Andrej Voydyehev, one of the actors of the theater who now works as a volunteer and takes care of the transfer of people and their reception.

For the moment, the front line does not pass through Lviv, but the city is strategic in the conflict, because it is the gateway through which thousands of refugees fleeing across the country are passing. A million in a week, according to the United Nations, half of which passed through here. In a few days, the city of western Ukraine, the heart of the country’s cultural activities, is turning into an open-air refugee camp, while the war is destined to continue for now.

The second round of negotiations between Kiev and Moscow, on March 3, did not produce positive results apart from an agreement on the creation of humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to leave the areas that are under attack. It appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to use refugees as one of the weapons of pressure on Europe, exactly as Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko had done with Poland since last summer. He has not bombed escape routes so far and is allowing people to escape from cities that are under attack.

Gate of Europe
In Lviv since the beginning of the conflict, 548 thousand refugees have gone to Poland. Thus the city has suspended almost all usual activities and is dedicated to welcoming this huge amount of people, while preparing for war. “The people who come to us are fleeing from Kiev, from Kharkiv, from Mariupol. They are terrified and tired: in many cases they have traveled for days in temperatures that drop below freezing. They stop in the theater for a few days and then leave, ”says Voydyehev. Olga has just arrived at the Les Kurbas theater from Kharkiv, and is feeding her four-year-old daughter a yogurt.

“We lived for five days in the air raid shelters, underground. The bombings were not close to my house, but we were very afraid they would hit us, ”says the woman who ran away with her two daughters aged 16 and 4 and her husband. “From the second day of the bombing we went down to the basement, because we understood that they were going to bomb the whole city and there was not even a safe corner. We were in a panic: we went home, took a shower and left with very few things, I left the house with my hair still wet ”, says Olga. She is now headed to Poland where she hopes to find some peace, she has friends in Spain who could possibly help her family. At home she left her mother and grandmother who is ninety years old and she could not make the journey.

The Lviv stadium has also been transformed into a reception center: a canteen has been set up in the entrance where refugees can rest, eat, recharge their phones, before being transferred to the dormitories. “We opened this center on the first day of the war, but it seems like a single day with no end,” says Ivanna Herus, vice president of the Lviv district who manages the reception. “Dozens of volunteers bring us food and food packages. There is an incredible solidarity ”.

The Lviv Palace of Arts is the headquarters of humanitarian aid: during the night hundreds of volunteers collect, sort and redistribute aid arriving from the rest of Ukraine and Europe. Hundreds of boxes and electric generators are crammed into the building’s parking lot. A 36-ton truck has just arrived. “Yesterday fifty buses full of aid left from here: forty tons of packages in Odessa and about ten tons in Cherson and Kiev”, explains the director, Yurij Vyzniak.

“We started work only two or three hours after the bombing started,” Vyzniak assures. In the main hall of the nine thousand square meter building there is a constant coming and going and everyone seems to know what to do. The system is consolidated: medicines are stored in the basement, food on the ground floor. On the first floor, in the concert hall, clothes and toys for children are sorted and on the second floor those for babies.

In the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in the center of Lviv, the military chaplain Roman Mentukh is in charge of collecting donations: “These are very moving moments, especially when the elderly arrive and we understand that they are bringing us everything they have”. Mentukh explains that they accept everything, “except weapons”. Church donations are for the military only, he clarifies. Mentukh recounts the mass he celebrated on the morning of February 24 in front of the parishioners in tears: “At first we were in panic, now let’s try to organize ourselves”.

The turning point of Brussels on refugees
Meanwhile, the European Union has decided to use Directive 55 of 2001 which will make it possible to guarantee temporary protection to Ukrainian refugees: the decision was unanimously taken on 3 March by the 27 European countries. It is a historic turning point, as the Union had never used this emergency instrument introduced after the war in the Balkans.

Daria Ilikchieva, one of the refugees hosted at the stadium in Lviv, welcomed the decision with relief: she is traveling alone and is waiting for her sister to join her to go to Poland together, she hopes to be able to work in the country for the necessary time, she would like to help the family who could not escape the country. “I will be able to study and work, my dream is to resume my singing studies and in the meantime work to help my parents who remained in Kiev”, she says. She loves music, she participated in X Factor in Ukraine, he did not take any musical instruments with him on his flight. He hopes he can find a safe place to resume his studies.

In just a few days, people in front of the Lviv station increased exponentially: tents of the Ukrainian and Polish Red Crosses were set up to distribute aid, the first bivouacs, improvised fires to warm up, began to pop up. Two young pianists play the Ukrainian anthem on a piano that has been brought in front of the station to ease the waiting of thousands of people who are lining up to catch the train. But meanwhile the city is preparing for war.

Check points have been set up, sandbags distributed, barricades built around the most important buildings, the stained glass windows of the churches protected with wooden panels. On the outskirts of Lviv, a group of four boys are building obstacles for the Russian tanks: they have built about sixty of them with the iron tracks of the old Austro-Hungarian railway. In the driveway of Tarass Filiptchak’s house there are a dozen barriers weighing about one hundred kilos stacked, the army will spend the next few hours collecting them.

And even the commercial activities have been transformed to face the emergency. A travel agency has become a collection center for basic necessities. “We had no more work and so we worked hard to prepare for what will happen and at the same time to help those under the bombing,” explains Victoria Bilac, a tour guide who in a few days went from organizing tours to doing the volunteer. She is cutting pieces of cloth to make Molotov cocktails. In the other room, other employees of the travel agency pack up food to be sent to the areas most affected by the conflict.

“It’s a very tough situation, we haven’t slept since the war started due to the sound of the anti-aircraft sirens and fear,” confesses Bilac. Olesiuk Oleksandr was also a tour guide and now loads and unloads packs of food to be sent all over the country: “Staying active helps me not to think about what is happening in my country, helping those who are already under the bombs makes me feel useful . But the phone calls coming to me from Odessa right now are terrible, I’m very worried, ”concludes Oleksandr.