A desperate Russian-Quebec couple finds it impossible to meet in Moscow or Montreal due to the war in Ukraine and the health regulations in force.
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“We are not afraid of missiles, we are not afraid of a cold war, we are not afraid of atomic bombs. We are especially afraid of being stuck here and not being able to go elsewhere, ”says Maria Skorkina Benoit, contacted last week in Moscow.
7000 km from his wife, Alexandre Benoit feels helpless.
“I can no longer send money to my wife [à cause des sanctions]. If the embassies are closed, it will be difficult to escape,” he worries.
Disrupted plans
The couple’s original plan – they are both 34 – was to live in Moscow for a year, the maximum length of a Russian visa, once Alexandre Benoit had graduated as a French teacher.
“A month later, the war started,” laments Maria Skorkina Benoit.
There is no longer any question for her of letting her spouse come and join her. Her husband, who does not speak Russian, “could not survive” under these conditions, according to her.
“I’ve been telling him for years that we need to be together as soon as possible. The iron curtain might come down. But being born in Canada, he really didn’t realize it, ”says the linguist and French teacher in a private school in Moscow.
The couple met on the internet in 2017, after Maria Skorkina Benoit found in her spam a message from Alexandre Benoit sent during a trip to Russia three years earlier.
The option of reuniting in Quebec is no longer an option for the couple who married in Montreal in 2019.
Canada only allows entry into its territory to people who have been immunized with a vaccine approved by the World Health Organization. However, the Sputnik vaccine, received by Maria Skorkina Benoit, is not recognized by the WHO. And he is the only one available in Russia.
“If I don’t have this possibility in Russia, how do they want me to get vaccinated? she is dismayed.
Mme Skorkina Benoit was to go to Croatia soon to receive a vaccine recognized by Canada. But due to the war in Ukraine, the flight was canceled.
“If I’m talking to you, it’s because I want to show the situation from the point of view of a simple family who doesn’t want to know anything about the war. We just wanna be together. But we fight like in war to be together, ”she sighs.
