«Ми — безхатченки, але не самотні»: як переселенці, бездомні і волонтери рятують одне одного  

On June 20th the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) published an annual report with positive feedback towards the European countries’ efforts in Ukrainian people protection. However, it encouraged them to provide proper protection and support to all seekers of refuge regardless of their ethnicity. Are Ukrainian refugees really more desirable in the EU than emigrants from other countries? Does the attitude towards Ukrainians change? Will they send Ukrainian men of conscription age home, and why, despite the scale of migration, they don’t consider the Ukrainian migrants a problem in the EU? Sestry asked a historian, lawyer and migration specialist about it

‍The EU never called it a crisis

From the perspective of EU residents, the situation that arose after the start of the full-scale war had an entirely different dimension compared to the migration crisis of 2015, as it did not concern African or Middle Eastern countries, but rather close neighbours, citizens of a country that had the status of an EU-associated country and openly declared its intentions to integrate into the European Union, explains Polish historian and political scientist Łukasz Adamski. Two main factors, from his words, were strong sympathy from Europeans, and Poles in particular, and the desire to help:
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- Something similar might have happened in the 1990s after the wars in the Balkans.

The first factor - is that this crisis came from Europe to Europe, the cultural similarity has become very important. The second factor - the lack of purely geographical barriers

Many Ukrainians went to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary - these countries have shared borders with Ukraine. When discussing past migration crises, there has always been a physical barrier - the Mediterranean Sea. And Turkey - a kind of buffer zone, a NATO country that separated Europe from lands where war was waging and where refugees were coming from.

When Ukrainians arrived in EU countries in large numbers at the beginning of the war, none of them called it a crisis. Similarly, such a definition has never been heard in the broader circles of the European Union, notes Başak Yavçan, head of research at the Migration Policy Group in Brussels.

- There can be many reasons for this. Political - EU’s active engagement in the conflict due to the Russian threat, social - acceptance of Ukrainian refugees’ cultural similarity, and also organisational - immediate growth of capacities and solidarity networks for better settlement of the refugees after arrival. And we see that crisis discourse only really appears when there is a management crisis.

Additionally, the reaction of countries that accepted Ukrainians showed what the EU is capable of when it is willing to do something. This has also affected the advancement of integration policies of the recipient countries, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. Even though these countries have been accepting refugees very reluctantly in the past, they turned out to be quite hospitable towards refugees from Ukraine. This deserves praise but obviously leaves a lot to be desired. If such policies only apply to certain groups of people, they conflict with the equality principles and create double standards towards other groups.

Fascination with Ukrainians that is slowly fading

Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Commission provided Ukrainians with temporary protection - a unique legal mechanism that gives Ukrainians the rights to residence and employment, social services and freedom of travel within the EU. The Europeans have opened this mechanism for the first time for Ukrainians, and it was a very successful idea, says an immigration lawyer, officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksii Skorbach:

- If we are talking about the refugee status or additional protection that exists in Europe, then those are individual protection options. Meaning the person arrives individually, and their documents, story and country are inspected. And the individual has to undergo a slow and difficult process of explaining personally to foreign officials that they are being persecuted or are in danger at home.

All this is not needed for temporary protection. The sole objective situation in the country the person has fled from already proves the danger. And what is important, temporary protection is provided en masse, meaning one does not have to prove individual endangerment. In this way, countless formalities are put aside, as in such global catastrophes or occupation, the person is often not able to collect the necessary amount of documents or even take their belongings with them. This is why this mechanism is a huge advantage and is genuinely a sign of democracy since it is designed for large numbers of people forced to flee from objective threats.

Although temporary protection has its technicalities - primarily it does not provide subsequent legalisation in the residence country.

At the same time, the EU is interested in the most effective integration of Ukrainians possible. Here too there is a difference between the perception of Ukrainian citizens and emigrants from other countries, says Başak Yavçan, head of the Migration Policy Group in Brussels, referring to research data collected by their centre:

- Ukrainians are considered to be more integrated, their integration policies are more supported - and generally they are more supported. And their relationships with the community that accepted them are assessed as better compared to refugees from non-EU countries.

Although it is not only about Ukrainians themselves in this case, Başak Yavçan notes and reveals an interesting conclusion of her research:

The more effective the local integration policies are, the more favourable attitude towards refugees the people in the communities have

Therefor, the effective reaction mechanisms for refugees’ problems form an overall better attitude towards them.

At the beginning of the full-scale war, there was a massive wave of solidarity with Ukraine, it could even be labelled as Ukrainophilia, believes the Polish historian and politologist Łukasz Adamski. Everyone sympathised, everyone wanted to help. Now the understanding remains that people had to leave Ukraine due to Putin’s criminal war, and we need to help, but the longer the war continues, and the longer the Ukrainians stay abroad, the more mundane problems there are:
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- In Poland, for example, if you ask average Poles (and it is stated in various social surveys) they often say that they lack gratitude from Ukrainians and that they do not like the attitude of «You must do something for us, you must give us something». It is hard for me to judge how justified these claims are, but this general opinion comes from sociology.

The protection does not have retroactive effect

At the same time, Lukasz Adamski is convinced that despite all the similar sociological data and occasional public discontent, both the EU in general and Poland in particular have the resources and willingness to help Ukrainians if the security or energy situation worsens and the EU receives a new wave of migrants from Ukraine:
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- I try not to be overly optimistic, but it seems to me that there is a readiness to help here. Firstly, we all understand that it will not be a massive wave; even if it happens, it will be at the level of one, two, or three million Ukrainians, and both the EU and Poland can manage it. There is also a belief that the Ukrainian state will endure even under difficult conditions and that the Ukrainian population will be able to survive the winter. Moreover:

I would say that Ukrainians - are perfect migrants, and they do not create threats

In this context, in Łukasz Adamski’s opinion, it is rather Ukraine that is facing a threat, as a new wave of migration can undermine the inner Ukrainian endurance and add to the number of problems within - since someone has to work for the army to be able to fight.

Additionally, Ukraine has been urging EU countries for several months to consider ways to facilitate the return of Ukrainian men to their native land. Consultations regarding those who left illegally are ongoing, as stated by Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs, Ihor Klymenko, in an interview with Radio Liberty at the end of June.

Ukraine can make any appeals and proposals to the European Union, explaining that we lack people, however, there is international law that prohibits returning people to countries where events threatening their safety are taking place, emphasises Oleksii Skorbach, an immigration lawyer and officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

- Men of conscription age have a constitutional duty to defend their country, but this duty pertains to Ukraine. When it comes to another country, the question arises: why should that country decide for them how they should fulfil their constitutional duty to Ukraine?

There is a rule that you may choose not to provide protection from the outset, but if you have already granted it, it should not have retroactive effect. The cancellation of such protection could turn out to be a much bigger problem

Because all these people received temporary protection precisely because there is a danger in our country. The question is how to address this issue if the danger has not disappeared?
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Photos from Shutterstock

One warm evening, my love for music brought me to the Kyiv Spring Sounds Festival at the National Philharmonic in Kyiv. They would lure people in with Chopin and the name of the American pianist Kevin Kenner, who is considered one of the best performers of Chopin’s pieces today. At one time, a famous Polish conductor Stanisław Skrowaczewski, who worked with one and only Arthur Rubinstein, stated that Kevin Kenner’s interpretations of Chopin were the most expressive ones he had ever heard…

«Ukraine has its own identity and culture that have to be protected»

Kevin Kenner has been supporting Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. He came from America to Kyiv for a concert with his wife, a Polish violinist Katarzyna Cieślik, for a single performance. The musician couple did it on their own initiative and at their own expense. For Kyiv to hear Kenner’s interpretation of Chopin’s concerto №1 for piano and orchestra, the musicians had put all their business aside and covered the distance of half the globe.

- For me, everything going on in your country today is a kind of cultural genocide, and I simply can’t and don’t want to tolerate this, - Kevin Kenner told Sestry after the first movement of the concert.

- Before 2022, I probably couldn’t have named even three Ukrainian composers. I had never heard of Lyatoshynsky, or for example, Kosenko before - and these are outstanding artists.

Their work has become a wonderful discovery for me, and now I am happy to promote this music worldwide. It enriches us and proclaims very clearly that Ukraine has its own identity and culture that have to be protected.

After these words, the pianist excused himself and hurried onto the stage, where, during the concert’s second movement, the orchestra of the National Philharmonic of Ukraine was playing Borys Lyatoshynsky (a suite from the music for Shakespeare’s «Romeo and Juliet» tragedy).

But before that, Kevin Kenner suddenly approached the microphone and announced that he wanted to present a close person for him to the audience. A small delicate brunette went up the stage and illuminated the visitors with he smile.

- Meet Yulia, - the American introduced the woman, - she is a Ukrainian, a meeting with whom was gifted to me by the war. And today, she and her children are a part of my family…

In February 2022, right after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kevin and his wife, Polish violinist Katarzyna Cieślik, decided to shelter a Ukrainian family at their apartment in Krakow’s centre. Kevin asked his colleague - a Ukrainian pianist, to help him find a family that needed shelter. As a result, the musician’s apartment in Krakow became inhabited by a poet, writer and journalist Yulia Berezhko-Kaminska, who miraculously managed to leave Bucha with her son and daughter alive.

- My wife and I wanted to make the lives of people who became hostages of terrifying events a little bit easier, - Kenner explained. - There are things that we do because we feel like it. Only later did we find out that Yulia was a poet and a writer - a genuine treasure of the Ukrainian culture.

He got to know Yulia personally in half a year after lending her the keys to his home. And then their roads became interlinked - both in life and art. Apart from the previously mentioned concert in Kyiv, he and Yulia Berezhko-Kaminska performed several music and literature concerts in Poland supporting Ukraine. One of them took place in Warsaw, in the Royal Castle. Yulia read her poetry on stage, and Kevin played his favourite music by Chopin and the Ukrainian composers, whom he had discovered thanks to her.

- Our rescue from Bucha and relocation to Krakow were like a moment of miracle for me, - Yulia Berezhko-Kaminska shares with the Sestry. - At the beginning of the invasion, there were such intense fights around us in Bucha that the rumbling of gunshots rarely stopped. There was no electricity, water or gas. At some point, we discovered that they were organising a «green corridor». I remember hesitating for a long time since we had been receiving information that people who left in convoys were getting shot.

On March 15th, my daughter left our hideout. We were all hiding in a cellar together, and then her friends started trying to get us out of that hell in their car. They had one free seat left, and my already adult daughter decided to go. But they got stuck for 5 whole days on the Yablunska street - the «road of death», where most of the cars with people trying to leave were shot up. I had no way to contact my daughter. At first, she stayed with her friends at a house with broken windows, and then they decided to break through. They were letting cars through one at a time. And the cars that came after my daughter’s were shot up…

Me and my son left separately. It was a lottery, I still hesitated and asked God to send me a dream with an answer on how to go on. And then I dreamed of standing at a railway station in Kyiv almost naked and barefoot in the winter’s cold with many people around. And because of this feeling of distress and of being so unsettled and helpless I woke up.

And I thought - no, we will stay, this is our home, and we have a supply of food and matches. But a neighbour came by later and told us that we had 5 minutes to decide whether we were going or not. And my son convinced me. This was the right decision as later my neighbours told me that the occupants had been going from house to house and asking about me.

After escaping Bucha, I was hit by a wave of despair. Where do we go? What do we do?

And then I pleaded: «God, just walk me on your roads the way it’s supposed to be, and bring me together with people I’m supposed to be with»

I wrote on Facebook about my problem. Offers came pouring in - me and my children were invited to France, Italy, Germany… Later, one of the musicians from Kyiv I knew asked me: «Do you want to go to Krakow?» I intuitively answered «Yes». Everything immediately started to fall into place, and unfamiliar people opened the doors of their wonderful apartment in the centre of Krakow to us. They were in America at the time, but they were not afraid of letting strangers into their Polish home.

Kevin and his wife became our guardian angels. When we finally met, they took us for a vacation. They rented a house out in the nature, and we spent over a week together talking. We spent time outside in the fresh air, played games, laughed and organised a concert there with Kevin. Thanks to our friendship, he began discovering Ukrainian music and then sharing his discoveries with his students (Kevin Kenner teaches at Frost School of Music at the University of Miami - Author). He also started performing in a Vyshyvanka (traditional Ukrainian shirt) I gifted him.

The visit of the American pianist and his wife to Ukraine is the fulfilment of Kevin’s promise to Yulia. He promised to visit Kyiv despite the war and play for the Ukrainian people, and also visit Bucha to see the place from which the refugees came to him in Krakow.

- I told Kevin and Kasia a lot about Bucha, and they dreamed of seeing my garden, our house, my library and the books I had been working on. And they fulfilled their promise, though this visit was hard to arrange as musicians of their level have their schedules planned down to the last minute.

They arrived a day before the concert. Before the visit, I asked Kevin what he would like to taste from Ukrainian cuisine.

Kevin ordered borshch and ate two whole plates. And after we had returned from our tour of Bucha, he asked for borshch again

Kevin also visited Vorzel’ and its «Uvarovsky House» Museum of History and Culture (where Borys Lyatoshynsky’s memorial exposition is located - Author) and even played Lyatoshynsky on the museum piano, paying respects to his favourite composer.

Kevin Kenner confessed that the situation with the war in Ukraine has forced him to become a «soldier of music», as Rostropovich said, and to fight Russian aggression and disinformation.

- I have stopped performing Russian music since the beginning of these terrible events, - Kevin Kenner says. - I also encouraged my students and the musicians I know to replace the pieces of Russian composers in their repertoire with Ukrainian works, which most pianists had never even heard of. Among others, I urged them to pay attention to Viktor Kosenko’s works, whose formidable level makes them worthy to perform worldwide. I think that this is a great opportunity to prove to everyone that Ukrainian music is not inferior, it speaks for itself louder than any words.

My interest in Ukraine was stirred up by Putin’s assertions of Ukraine not being a legitimate state and that Ukrainian language and culture are supposedly nothing more than shades of much clearer Russian language and culture. These statements have caused a scandal in the world discourse, made me very suspicious and sparked my interest towards learning Ukrainian history and culture.

I supported the decision of the International Music Federation to suspend the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Because it is wrong - applauding the Russian musicians, exalting the Russian music culture, and simultaneously expressing our concern about Russia trying to commit cultural genocide on its neighbour.

«In Poland, I’ve experienced a turning point: I had outlived the old but had not found the new within»

Yulia Berezhko-Kaminska returned home a year after her evacuation from Bucha but she confesses she still dreams about «her» home in Krakow.

- I had been getting used to the bed for so long over there until I bought the same pillow I had at home - before sleep I needed to imagine for at least a moment that I was in my room. And after returning to Bucha, I couldn’t come to my senses for a week: I was thinking of Krakow the whole time. It is now my hometown as well.

Shortly afterwards, the house in Krakow, where Yulia and her children had found shelter, became a centre of Ukrainian culture.

- Kevin and Kasia gave us the opportunity to not just live but to invite Ukrainians over and arrange music and poetry evenings, - the heroine reminisces. - That house has a rather spacious hall with two grand pianos. A month after our relocation to Krakow we began giving concerts and streaming them on Facebook.

I have also written an essay called «Communion»: how we, Ukrainians, having found ourselves in such a difficult life situation, returned to our normal lives thanks to these musical evenings. For a long time, we were afraid to live, drink wine, or even taste candy since we thought it would be a crime against people in Mariupol, who had nothing to eat. Poetry and music pulled us out of this.

Yulia says that there, in the Krakow apartment, she had been born for the second time:

- My «Gravitation of the Word» book was brought to me in Krakow - I sent it into print two days before the war. The book was first presented in Poland but I felt a certain turning point in my art, as if I had outlived the old but had not found the new within. Alongside this, my personal life has also changed- I got divorced during the war, and when I left Ukraine, I met my 40s. It is a turning point for a woman to realise that you are not the way you were before - but what are you now?

In Krakow, Yulia could not write for a while, but then essays began to be born as if ice was melting from her soul.

In her first essay «Krakow - Bucha» Tram» the woman described her experience and outlined the moments from her return home where the garden would blossom, a dog would jump and a cat would meow from the tree, the animals she had not seen for over a year (they remained with her ex-husband in Ukraine). She visualised how she would run into her room, walk through the whole house, and meet her old life:

- We came back exactly when the garden blossomed, - Yulia smiles. - And the tram that would rumble outside my windows in Krakow (it took a couple of months to get used to the fact that it was the rumbling from the tram, not the war) - I imagined I could get onto it and it would take me home. And when Kevin and Kasia appeared at my doorstep in Bucha, I told them so: «Well, the tram from Krakow to Bucha has arrived!»

Over the year in Poland, Yulia Kaminska-Berezhko has created several books. The idea behind «The Rhyme War», which included poetry from over 80 Ukrainian poets, was born in Krakow, where it was compiled, wrapped up and presented in May 2024 in Kyiv. The «Ukrainians in Poland: A Rescue Story» book was prepared for print in Krakow, Yulia cooperated with the Institute of Literature of Poland while creating the book. Berezhko has already managed to create a new book with the same institution called «Reflections on the Most Important» - translations of radio performances of modern Polish authors to Ukrainian, made in her edition. Yulia has many cultural plans regarding Poland. After all, someone has to build these cultural bridges between us.

- Today I feel colossally thankful to life. After all I’ve been through, I realise that life - is a big miracle, - Yulia concludes. - And I’m also thankful to Kevin and Kasia, who essentially have given me faith in people and that the good must win.

Photos from the private archive of heroes