“There they are, they are coming!” In a small street on the heights of Alizay, it’s effervescence. It is almost half past twelve when two minibuses park in the middle of the road. on board, six women and two children aged four and a half and ten years old, happy to arrive in France after a long journey through Europe. Four drivers, Dominique and his son Louis, Billy and Cheelen, took turns for more than two and a half days to pick them up in Poland, in Krakow.
The eyes of Snizhana, originally from Kropyvnytskyï, a city of 225,000 inhabitants in central Ukraine, sparkle: “I’m very grateful that people here have done things like this.” she says in a very fluent French. She will be welcomed in Val-de-Reuil with Dima, her little boy of four and a half years.
The trip was long, very long, “I am going to rest” blows the 27-year-old young woman, very happy to arrive in France:
I see the sky without bombs and that’s a reason to be very happy – Snizhana
A warm welcoming committee
George, a Romanian who has been living in France for ten years, came from Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) on purpose to welcome Victoria, who came with her daughter Lisa and a colleague. “I met them in 2020 at a dance festival in Lviv (Ukraine)” he explains:
I am very happy to see them and also to be able to share my house with them. It is the duty of each of us to open hearts and homes- George Stoica
The two women and the little girl hit the road with George, heading to Île-de-France, before certainly a trip next weekend to Orne, near Aigle, where the young man has bought a farm. intending to settle there.
Valérie Béton and her husband Dominique, on the initiative of the convoy, will not host Ukrainians in their homes, “but it does not matter, that was not the main thing” she says, “the main thing was to bring people back to their families and that’s done”. Two families stay in Eure and another part in the Paris region.
Concern for those left in Ukraine
Drawn features, Katerina says it, “it’s great what people do here for us” but she can’t help but think of her relatives in Ukraine: “We are very worried for them” she says and details that during the day on Monday, the alarms sounded five times in her city, Kryvyï Rih, which is also that of Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of the Republic of Ukraine. Same feeling for Snizhana: “I think of my family, we don’t know what is happening in Ukraine because we were on the road. We have to call everyone and say that we are ok here”.
5,000 refugees have so far arrived in France and already two million Ukrainians have fled their country.