Simeiz, CRIMEA – No matter where they turn – Russia, Crimea or other parts of Ukraine – the nearly 300,000 people dislocated by Russia’s war against Ukraine are discovering that they are pretty much on their own.
Anna Hulevych, a 31-year-old yoga instructor in her sixth month of pregnancy, is now living in a tent in a nudist camp at the foot of the Koshka (Cat) Mountain outside Simeiz, a town of 3,000 people along the southern coast of Crimea.
Two months ago she fled the war in Donetsk. She does not support the Kremlin-backed insurgents who camped out near her house. But she never considered turning to Ukraine’s government for help. “Usually the state is not helpful,” she said. “We got used to counting only on ourselves.”
So she gathered her humble belongings and now lives near a rocky beach in the Russian-occupied peninsula. Several times a week, Hulevych climbs a mountain to get to the road and walks into town to buy food and charge her mobile phone in a public toilet.
Even with the treacherous rocky trails, these conditions are safer than staying in Donetsk.
According to the United Nations and other agencies, at least 285,000 people have been dislocated by the fighting. Most have entered Russia or Russian-controlled Crimea, while some 117,000 people have fled Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts for other parts of mainland Ukraine.
Crimea is one of the popular destinations to seek refuge, especially for pro-Russian families.
But financial hardship awaits them. With an average monthly salary of $290 in 2013 in the eastern Donbas region, many families have no savings and rely on friends or relatives.
In June, when Hulevych came to Crimea, she rented a room for a week, but then the rent prices went up, forcing her into a tent. She advertises private yoga lessons, but has had one client so far.
For many Ukrainians, traveling from one region to another inside the country is a new experience altogether. In 2012, a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Sociology Institute found that some 36 percent of Ukrainians have never been outside their home oblast.
The family of Maryna Yakushev, 52, supports the Kremlin-backed insurgents of the Donetsk People’s Republic, but fled because of her fear that the Ukrainian army may soon enter the city and take revenge.
So on Aug. 6, Yakushev, her daughter and son-in-law arrived in Sevastopol, where they have friends. However, they couldn’t reach them because Ukrainian mobile operator MTS stopped working in Crimea. So the family is going instead to Tula, Russia. They are too frightened to return.
“We would go anywhere, just not back to Ukraine. Friends in Tula promised to let us live in their dacha and help us find jobs. I’m ready to take any job, even to clean floors if needed,” Yakushev said.
In Crimea, Yakushev went to the state migration service but says they “weren’t helpful at all.”
Some locals try to help. One is Gleb Yakushin, deputy head of The Russian Community NGO based in Sevastopol. Since April, his organization has raised donations of food and accommodations to help some 500 refugees. Conditions are hard. He recalls that 18 refugees had to share a two-room apartment for three weeks.
“The authorities offer refugees to go to Russia and settle there permanently,” Yakushin said. “But almost all of them want to eventually come back to their homes, so they refuse.”
Returning home to Donetsk is also the plan of 46-year-old Albina Artiomenkova. She fled Donetsk with her son, his pregnant wife and their five-year old daughter. Now they live with Artiomenkova’s parents in a two-room apartment in the suburbs of Sevastopol.
Her husband stayed behind in Donetsk to watch their apartment. Fear of looting has kept other relatives at home, including Yakushev’s husband and Hulevych’s mother.
“When this whole thing was beginning, there was a real pro-Russian euphoria in Donetsk,” Artiomenkova recalls. “Of the people I know, maybe some 10 percent were pro-Ukrainian. It changed when the war came to Donetsk and people saw that Russia was not going to do anything for them.”
She says that even though she is pro-Ukrainian now, watching the propaganda on Russian TV had her almost taking “the Russian side.” Artiomenkova hopes to return home to Donetsk as soon as possible.
Hulevych, the pregnant yoga instructor, is less certain. With companies leaving Donetsk, the standard of living is declining – making yoga lessons an unaffordable luxury for many people in the regional capital that once had 1 million residents.
“When this war is over, Donetsk won’t be the same,” she says.
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media Project, managed by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for International Development.
