A wolf, a goat, owls, and of course dogs and cats: the “House for Rescued Animals” in Lviv now welcomes animals of all kinds. All were abandoned by their masters who fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
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A light-eyed wolf prowls in his enclosure, Boris the goat takes a sunbath in these first days of spring, a group of owls watch, impassively lined up, the situation from their shaded perch.
A dozen Kyiv cats are housed in an annex building. Dogs bark from a barn, where volunteers pick them up to walk them in the nearby park.
“Migrants who come from Kharkiv, Kyiv or Mykolaiv go abroad via Lviv. Many of them leave their animals, ”says Orest Zalypskiï, the manager of this refuge which before the war only took exotic animals. “This war has reinforced our commitment,” said the 24-year-old.
According to the UN, more than 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
More than two million have crossed the border into Poland, where AFP has seen many refugees take dogs, cats, parrots and turtles to safety.
But arrived in Lviv, the last stop before the Polish border 70 kilometers away, some feel unable to take their animals further.
“Stressed” Animals
According to Orest Zalypskiï, his site has collected 1,500 animals since the start of the conflict, from migrants, but also from shelters located in “hot spots” in the east of the country.
Between 10 and 20 animals were recovered from Lviv train station in the chaos of the early days of the war, where desperate passengers crowded the carriages and platforms.
“We don’t have an organized system,” says the manager of the shelter. “We just have a lot of volunteers going to pick them up.”
A dog who arrived from a war-torn region in the east has not left his enclosure for two weeks. A cat, abandoned by his master who had him for seven years, is completely lost.
“We were bitten and scratched,” says Orest Zalypskiï. “The animals are very stressed.”
However, the animals abandoned here do not make old bones. About 200 of them were adopted by residents of Lviv, while most of the others were taken by volunteers to Germany, Latvia or Lithuania.
There are currently no cats to adopt, they are all about to go to Poland.
It’s only noon, but Zalypsky has already signed his third dog adoption of the day. The shelter is overrun with couples, friends and families who have come to take dogs for their weekend walk.
“Ukrainians really love animals,” says Kateryna Tchernikova, 36. “It’s in their DNA.”
Together with her husband Igor and their four-year-old daughter Solomiia, Katerina fled Kyiv a week before war broke out.
The young family and their two guinea pigs Apelsinka and Limonadka (Orange and Limonade in French) live in relative safety in Lviv, which has remained relatively spared from the violence, even though strikes injured five people on Saturday.
On this Saturday morning, they take two boisterous hunting dogs on a leash and cross the gates of the shelter, on which a Ukrainian flag flies.
“We are not in wartime conditions, but it is still very hard psychologically,” says Katerina. “When you walk with a dog, you just feel like you’re living a normal life.”