“Now we embroider for the army”, Donbass companies relocate their activity to the west of the country

When the danger approached, Larissa, the head of a sewing business in Dobropila, in the Donetsk region, at first did not want to leave. Today, she is one of the many inhabitants of the east of the country who have taken refuge in Lviv, a large city in the west, because of the Russian bombardments. “There was a general evacuation. Because the fighting was approaching the city. The city was almost empty… We could manufacture but we had no one to manufacture for. It was hard morally. And even now.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on residents of Donbass, the Ukrainian-held eastern part of the country, to evacuate due to shelling and in anticipation of winter. It will probably be impossible to get warm there. Two hundred thousand people currently live in this region, including more than 50,000 children. The Ukrainian authorities ask those who nevertheless wish to stay to sign a document, attesting that they know the risks they are taking.

In a narrow room of a building in Lviv where other displaced businesses are located, Larissa tames a machine. Accustomed to embroidering and sewing light and colored fabrics to embellish houses and apartments, her work has changed a lot today.

“Wait, wait, I’ll show you. We have to change the thread, we have to embroider a patch for the territorial defense of Lviv. There, I change the thread to put another color”, she explains.

“We had bought a machine to create beautiful things for decoration, for interiors and now we embroider for the army!”

Larissa, refugee entrepreneur

at franceinfo

The man who convinced her to change course was Ruslan Beltiukov. “We have just relocated ten companies. Six of them are textile companies from Kramatorsk, Pokrovsk, Dobropila and Severodonetsk.they know they moved to Lviv for a long time because they have nowhere to go back”explains the ftrainer in a business school in Lviv, became, with the war, “crisis manager”.

school, specializing in training, has embarked on field work, to support and finance some of the 193 companies from the Donbass, now established in the West. “We buy fabric for them and then they make clothes. To restart these companies, we have to buy all the necessary equipment because they don’t have the money. For the moment, they work for the army.”

They make badges, pants, jackets and T-shirts. The needs are there today, much more than in interior decoration. This business school in Lviv is still trying to bring in some forty companies, or 500 people in total, for whom it is also often necessary to find accommodation.