Alina is a woman on the run. The war first, but especially her violent ex-husband who tried to kill her on several occasions. At the start of the Russian invasion, this resident of kyiv managed to take refuge in Lviv, in western Ukraine.
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But one evening, there’s a knock on the door: it’s her husband. He found her. He then kidnaps their two-year-old child. In the chaos of the fighting, she addresses the police: “The police, you know, they work in a terrible way because of the war. The police tell us ‘We are in a state of war, we have other concerns than to pick up your child'”.
Alina will only get her child back after two months, thanks to the help of an association. Since then, her husband continues to look for her: “My husband expressed the worst in him. Besides, because of the war, he allowed himself things that he would not have allowed himself in times of peace, because he knew that social services and the police were not working normally. He threatened me to take the child back and he stopped paying child support.”
Before the war, Ukrainian society had nevertheless made progress in taking charge of female victims of domestic violence with, in particular, the creation of a specific department within the police. There has been a sort of backsliding, laments Marta Chumalo, president of the women’s rights association, Perspectives femmes: “When the war started, the responsiveness of the police decreased for several reasons. First, some of the police went to fight on the front lines and those who remained were overworked.”
“Police stations back home in Lviv are surrounded by sandbags as if they were going to be stormed. In fact, physical access is complicated, even to speak to a policeman, it’s hard.”
Marta Chumalo, President of the Women’s Perspectives Associationat franceinfo
And yet, there is a great need for easier access to the police because cases of domestic violence have increased since the start of the war, according to Aliona Krivouliak.
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She runs a center for battered women in kyiv.“War is a bit like the Covid pandemic, people are confined, they are under pressure, she advances. It is a situation of stress and trauma. People don’t know how to manage their emotions and channel them peacefully without hurting themselves or others. And unfortunately, it is the violence that resurfaces”.
In her call center, Aliona Krivouliak recorded a very high number of calls, much higher than before the war led by the Kremlin.