After eight years of violence, including three weeks of a full-scale Russian military offensive, Tetiana Revun and her son Evgen finally left their home in the war-torn province of Lugansk.
“Too heavy shelling of our territory began,” Evgen Revun, 16, told the Washington Examiner, with the help of a translation app.
So the mother and her younger son left for Poland, which has sheltered millions of Ukrainians before them. But first, they needed to find “a safe corridor” out of their city. “We were taken out with the police,” Tetiana Revun explained. “It was our cover.”They reached a local freight rail station and then made their way to Slavyansk, in Donetsk, another long-divided province.
Other volunteers identify Marawik and Anikin as the leaders of the group, but they wear the authority lightly. “Not the boss because we are all equal in my organization,” Anikin said.Quite a large family grew around them. “We created some kind of structure, and now we have, for example, 15 sectors,” Anikin said. “We even have our own lawyers.”
When the refugees reach the station, they find interpreters wearing large flag pins to denote the languages they speak — often the Union Jack, for English, or the Russian tricolor flag. These volunteers near the firemen at information tents or meet the incoming Ukrainians who stand in the open spaces or sometimes sit on whatever luggage they managed to bring on their journey.
More than 2.1 million Ukrainians fled for Poland between Feb. 22 and March 24, according to the Polish Border Guard. The population of Warsaw has increased by about 300,000 since the Russian offensive began. The scale of the task before Grupa Centrum can be inferred from World Central Kitchen figures.
“Smaller cities in Poland mean greater possibilities of accommodation, lower costs of living, and better chances to find a job,” the blue-and-yellow poster states. “Big cities in Poland are already overcrowded. Don’t be afraid to go to smaller towns: they are peaceful, have good infrastructure, and are well-adapted.”
Natalie emphasized that she and other Ukrainians volunteered of their own free will. In between questions, a woman approached the counter seeking some assistance. They spoke, and Natalie removed a piece of thin paper from one of the medication boxes and folded it into a miniature bag that would hold a few pills.
The volunteers sound amazed, even amused, by their own innovations. “It‘s really an anarchist way,” she chuckled. “But we help people.”
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