Viktor, Evhenia and Hennadiy talk about their experience of evacuating and finding support in a transit centre thanks to the World Food Programme (WFP) and the European Union.
Evacuees arrive at Pavlohrad transit centre usually without any documents. Many do not know where they will stay for the night. Most look shaken by the stress of having had to gather belongings in a rush before boarding an evacuation bus near the frontline.
’Nobody wants to leave, to abandon home, and I did not want it either,’ says Viktor, who for 25 years worked as a coal miner in Bilytske, just 10km north of Pokrovsk – the embattled city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Rebuilding lives after the frontline
Less than 100 km to the east of Pavlohrad, the thunder of tanks and artillery, the buzzing of drones had encroached on land that he and other evacuees had hoped would stay safe.
‘We’d been waiting and hoping, but the fighting got closer and closer. Then it reached our village,’ Victor adds.
Viktor, who lost his wife in 2023, is among the thousands who pass through 4 transit centres in the eastern regions of Ukraine every month.
With support from the European Union, the World Food Programme distributes ready-to-eat food packages to everyone making their way through the transit centres as they move to safer areas.
Each kit contains 10 cans of nutritious meals with porridge, protein and vegetables, as well as 2 loaves of bread – enough food for 5 days.
Besides this immediate support, people arriving at the transit centres receive around €220 in cash support over 3 months. With this, they can buy essential items such as food, hygiene products and medicine.
EU support helps to restore lives
Viktor wonders when he’ll be able to go home and begin rebuilding his former life.
‘I had a piece of land I was cultivating. I am very connected to the land,’ Victor reminisces . ‘Life was good – we had a house, a garden, an apartment, a car.’
‘I remember all the furniture, the home decorations that my wife and I chose together.’
Before he left Pokrovsk, Hennadiy had no electricity or running water, living under constant shelling.
‘We took water from the wells. If it got dark, I went to sleep – what else could I do?’ Hennadiy explains.
To afford food, he took casual jobs such as repairing stoves or bricklaying. But then the explosions got louder and louder, until the day they shook his walls and shattered his windows. His injured leg was severely infected, he eventually evacuated Pokrovsk on crutches, hoping to find treatment somewhere.
Hennadiy says he left with every intention of returning, ‘But they’ve told me the house is gone. There is nothing left.’
Evhenia is from Dobropillia, another village near Pokrovsk. She, too, is rebuilding her life from scratch. She and her colleagues followed as the business they worked for shifted to a safer location.
‘It was very painful for me to abandon everything,’ she says. ’I am a homebody, it’s extremely difficult for me to be away for too long, even when I am visiting relatives and friends. But rockets started to land very close, and it was just too dangerous to stay.’
While Evhenia’s pulled herself through, she is not sure about keeping her job. The cash assistance she receives serves as a small assurance: just enough money to buy food and other essentials as she embarks on a recovery and considers her options – though she has ‘no thoughts about the future yet.’
‘I just want to spend some time in peace, away from shelling and explosions,’ Evhenia says. “Then I can decide what to do next. Here at the transit centre, I let myself be taken around like a child. I am grateful that I am not alone in this situation.”
As he reflects on how his life has changed, Viktor says: ‘The only thing I want is for peace to come as soon as possible, and hopefully the rest will fit in place.’
‘I want to go back home, if it’s not ruined. And if I have to stay here – let it be, maybe there will be something else. Life will tell,’ exclaims Viktor.
