THOSE WHO HELP

IN PROGRESS

Stories and interviews from Ukranian-Polish border during the war. 

"2014, Lugansk, Ukraine. I am 14 years old, in the school period of graduation from the 8th grade. The war destroyed my whole life, I writing this with tears in my eyes. No one called this Russian world to our native land, everything happened so quickly that there was nothing to understand, a mess, the overthrow of power and the shelling of our lands by bandits. After this mess, at the age of 16, I received an LPR passport (passport of a fake Luhansk Republic that Russia created) to go to college. I asked my parents to get a Ukrainian - normal passport, but they were too afraid and this fear was also transmitted to me - to cross the front line, to go somewhere into the unknown because we have no relatives in Ukraine, everyone is in Luhansk, that's why I lived with a "lunatic" passport, as there was nowhere to go.

We peeled nuts for 3-4 months to survive - to buy bread and butter, the city was devastated and empty, literally not a soul! I was stuck in depression and fleeting relationships, self-harm, alcohol, and suicidal thoughts, that's what occupied my thoughts for 8 years. My parents had severe problems with work, my father worked at the factory all his life, but he has an injury.
My mother is a seamstress by education, so she had to switch to informal work and earnings.
In this LPR, salaries are extremely poor, especially when prices for goods, services and medicine are set like in Russia. The goods are cheap and of poor quality, but the sale is exorbitant. Hospitals leave much to be desired, all qualified doctors have left. Educational institutions are corrupt and did not teach anything. LPR passports were required everywhere, and after a while, they started to demand passports of the Russian Federation. Even people with Ukrainian citizenship were required to issue an LPR passport since it is required everywhere. Ukrainian passports are banned and are not accepted anywhere. On June 29, 2022, I leave through the Russian Federation and then Belarus to Poland using a birth certificate when I found out about a simplified scheme for leaving the EU for Ukrainian refugees (at the borders of the Russian Federation and Belarus I used LPR passport, for Poland - my birth certificate). After more than 3 months of struggle with the consulate - and as a result, they cannot confirm my identity and cannot make a certificate of return to Ukraine due to the lack of data. 

On the 14th of October 2022 I buy a ticket for the Warsaw - Lviv bus, at the border of Medyka - Shegyny. Medyka let me through - everything is ok. But on Sheginya I was dropped off the bus, they said I am not going anywhere. The border guard in a raised voice asked where my passport was, how old I was and why I didn’t have proper documents. I tried to explain everything, and the fact that I’m going to Kyiv to do the exact documents she is asking about, and that there are people waiting for me there. All of that falls on deaf ears. They took me to the senior officer - all the same. I showed graduation albums, report cards, awards. All In vain. They turned me around in tears and hysteria. 

Broken I went to Przemysl, after which, with heavy suitcases and a bag, barely tangling my legs, some old lady helped me get to the consulate of Ukraine, waited for me, then gave me her address just in case I had nowhere to stay. I shouted in all of the chats asking for help, people responded that there was a tent with volunteers at Medyka and that they would meet me there. I drove back. Really met a very nice guy. They warmed me up and helped me. Now I have a place to sleep and for this, I help them with shifts in the tent on the border. I sleep very badly, even pills do not help to cope with anxiety and stress, but still, I am determined to fight and go all the way to my goal. Despite all this hellish pain, through labels and ridicule, I will get an Ukrainian passport. In Kyiv, the witnesses I found are waiting for me." 

Ekaterina Fis