You're reading: Former Soviet pioneer camp Romashka welcomes war refugees

KHARKVIV, Ukraine – Bought by a local businessman, the Soviet-era summer camp of Romashka, located just outside Kharkiv, is one of the few refugee camps in Ukraine. It takes in people fleeing the war in eastern Ukraine and also has resumed its traditional function by hosting displaced children.

The lack of donations is however threatening these humanitarian activities.

When in 2013 Volodymyr Rozhkov and his wife Oksana Pogorelova bought the summer camp, what remained from the time when Soviet pioneer scouts attended, was a bust of Lenin covered with moss and abandoned facilities in the middle of a pine forest.

The couple hoped they could renovate the place and open a restaurant and recreational center for children.

But then, war started in the spring of 2014.

In May 2014, a friend of Pogorelova’s called her, asking to help a pregnant woman with three children who had fled Sloviansk and had no shelter. Donetsk Oblast city had been taken over a month earlier by Russian-separatists led by former Russian military intelligence officer Igor Girkin.

They were the first refugees welcomed at the Romashka camp.

Two weeks after, more than 200 displaced people had settled there, and the former Soviet camp had been turned into a refugee camp.

As the war raged, and it was likely it would not stop before winter, the couple struggled to find aid from humanitarian organizations. The summer housing was not designed to face the hardships of the incoming winter.

The Polish Center for International Aid (PCPM) and the U.S. Agency for International Development answered this call, providing heating installations and running water, as well as humanitarian aid for the refugees.

The situation remains precarious. No kitchen can be installed in the wooden buildings of the camp due to fire safety, said Pogorelova, who heads of the camp.

Its fullest capacity was when more than 300 hundred refugees were staying there.

Most refugees find housing in private residences, hostels or dormitories provided by state authorities, said Roman Sheiko, who is the field coordinator for the U.N. Children’s Fund in Kharkiv. The German government donated the only other camp that welcomes refugees in Kharkiv Oblast.

This summer, the camp again found its original use, receiving received children for the summer holidays. One hundred forty children aged 7-14 arrive for a camping period, most of them refugees who settled in the region, some of them locals.

Most have been affected by the war. After a few days, they reflect on what their families went through, said Tamara Beglarian, a volunteer working with them.

They haven’t abandoned the habits they acquired while living in a war zone. Antonina Minakova, a volunteer from Donetsk, recalls that during a thunder storm, the children packed all their things and just sat on them, waiting to move, as if there was shelling.

Psychologists are on staff to help the refugees to get over their trauma. Sometimes, volunteers also act as psychologists since the ones on staff cannot manage by themselves.

Trauma may be expressed in different way, depending on the child.

Margarita Khrystenko, another volunteer at the camp, remembers a boy who was terrified by the dark, and was making squeaky noises during the night. After a few sessions with a psychologist, he overcame his trauma.

Parents a notice a positive difference in their children after camp stay. They are more open, brighter, and have better moods.

But this may not last. Pogorelova said the camp crucially lack funds because donors classify the activities as leisure time, which they deem are not essential for refugees. The series of summer camps this year were financed by the couple’s own funds, she said, and they lack money for the 70 refugees who still live here.

She is afraid that in September, they will not be able to receive displaced people anymore.

However, she prefers to remember the good moments. She has photographs with all of the children who spent time at the summer camp, she said. Often times it was challenging for her to get different groups of children to pose with her.

As the children have to leave the camp, many run to hug the volunteers to say goodbye. Returning to their families, they now must resume life with their past and their life as refugees.

Kyiv Post summer intern Yves Souben can be reached at [email protected].