“I have never seen such mobilization of civil society towards its own refugees”, said the director of operations of the NGO Solidarités international Emmanuel Rinck on Saturday June 11 on franceinfo. He testifies to his passage in Odessa, after having crossed a good part of Ukraine.
>> War in Ukraine: follow the evolution of the situation on our live
franceinfo: How much do you feel that it’s war when you’re in Odessa?
Emmanuel Rinck: It was a city that depended heavily on tourism and port activities. I was able to go along the seafront. You can’t see a single boat on the horizon, and for good reason, since the sea is mined. We are not allowed to go on the beaches because from time to time a mine comes off and is likely to drift to the beach. And from time to time there are missile fires which remind the whole population that the war front is not far away, near Mykolaiv. Between Kherson and Mykolaiv, where I was also able to go, you can feel the atmosphere of war much more with regular shellfire falling 5 or 10 kilometers away.
You went through Lviv, kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and therefore through Odessa. It’s quite a route in combat zones and in calmer areas. Are the needs the same everywhere?
No, the needs are not the same everywhere, of course. To put it simply, there are two categories of needs: there is the category of six or seven million internally displaced people, therefore people fleeing the east and south of the country. These people need shelter. They are in transit centers, whole families who are accommodated in gymnasiums, with hundreds of people on makeshift beds. These people have been there for three months, and you can multiply these types of centers or situations by 1,000 or 2,000 just in certain cities like Dnipro, Lviv or Odessa. And you have people who are stuck in combat zones. They are either elderly people who were unable to flee in time or people who did not have a vehicle and find themselves prisoners in these areas of intense conflict. And once you’re in those areas, you can’t move. So we set up distributions of food, hot meals, and rehabilitations with the local authorities of the transit centers which welcome these displaced people for several months and as long as necessary. As for the front zone, like for example in Mykolaiv, they bring trucks full of water there because the drinking water pipes have been targeted by shells and no longer supply people.
You have traveled all over Ukraine. What do you remember from all this journey about this country, about its population?
On the one hand, the extraordinary mobilization of civil society. It’s incredible. I’ve been in the humanitarian field for 20 years, I’ve been everywhere, and I think I’ve never seen such mobilization of civil society towards its own refugees. Of course, how long are people going to last? That’s the big question. Because they are financially and time exhausted. I will also remember a second thing: local authorities who are still very much in control and very present in support. Often the humanitarian response goes through them. For us, as an international organization, the whole issue is to manage to complete their action and above all not to break this momentum.
“We have concerns after this visit: winter will soon arrive. The very cold temperatures start at the end of September, October. We are talking about six or seven million internally displaced people, so how will these displaced people manage to spend this winter? ?”
Emmanuel Rinck, from the NGO Solidarités internationalat franceinfo
We are therefore working with all these actors that I have just named, to prepare this response. And then, there is also a large group of populations who find themselves in areas controlled by the Russians. The needs are also enormous in these areas. So one of the big challenges is how to help those who are also in need.