At the gates of Europe, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been crossing the lands of Moldova for a year, a poor country sixteen times smaller than France, but which has opened its doors wide despite successive crises.
“I chose Moldova because it is not very far from my village and I hope to return there as soon as possible, as soon as the hostilities have ended”, explains Tatiana Bellayar, 62 years old, who fled his village near Odessa in April 2022.
“Here, we get everything we need and how to say, the sky is peaceful, we are not afraid for our children that there will be shooting”, she confides.
Installed in the sofa of a common room of the accommodation center for refugees of Nisporeni (about 75 km west of the capital Chisinau), the sixty-year-old tells her story, still tested as evidenced by the tears which flow on her play.
Of course he misses his house, his garden, his country. And she never ceases to express her gratitude to Moldova, which has allowed her to continue to live decently, with her daughter and her 2-year-old granddaughter.
With 54 other Ukrainians, all three are accommodated in a boarding school converted into a reception area, alongside the 160 students of the neighboring vocational high school.
“When the war started and the refugees started arriving, obviously we immediately went on the march and we offered our resources to these refugees,” underlines the head of the structure Eduard Tatarov, citing the plethora of voluntary actions and leisure activities offered to children.
The American Liz Devine, general coordinator for the Médecins du Monde association, salutes the “incredible generosity” of the Moldovans.
“Some 100,000 additional people in a country of 2.6 million people, with a public health system under strain, is a heavy burden,” she notes.
“Imagine that three million people arrive in France and that they have to be given access to care overnight,” says the representative of one of the 40 NGOs present in the country in addition to the five United Nations agencies.
Located between Ukraine and Romania, this former Soviet republic is a complex country, independent since 1991 with Romanian as its official language.
It has on its territory two entities that have more or less seceded: Gagauzia (south), which hosts an Orthodox Turkish minority and enjoys an autonomous status and especially Transdniestria (north-east), a separatist region populated by Russian speakers and home to key industries (energy, steel, cement).
About 1,500 Russian soldiers are positioned there, fueling fear of an invasion in this country which recently accused Russia of fomenting a coup to overthrow the pro-European power in place.
With few resources – mainly agricultural, including wine – Moldova is experiencing record inflation, which peaked at more than 34% in August before receding slightly.
It has suffered a mass exodus which has increased over the past ten years and 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
UNHCR has distributed nearly 100 million euros in humanitarian aid in Moldova, which was used in particular to set up a cash system for refugees: 120 dollars (112 euros) per person per month.
The NGO Solidarités International (SI) grants a small contribution to the many Moldovans welcoming refugees to their homes: 36 euros per month per family.
“Helping the Ukrainian refugee population is very good, but we all agree in the coordination bodies that we must also help the Moldovan population” who “are becoming impoverished”, argues Serge Gruel, field coordinator for SI.
“There was the Covid, a big drought last year” which affected agricultural production, “the energy crisis which had started at the end of 2021. It is a country which has been trying to get out of it for a few years and which there receives several successive shocks”, he notes.
For Raïssa Ulinichi, life has not been the same for almost a year. This 60-year-old Moldovan single, living in a pretty house on the ground floor of a small town in Chisinau, is hosting Ukrainian friends.
“Of course there are more expenses. Because before I lived alone and now there are four of us. Electricity, gas, water… already we are spending more but the prices are crazy in this moment”, she says before sitting down to play cards with her hosts. “Life goes on!” she smiled.
03/01/2023 06:20:39 – Nisporeni (Moldova) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
