A hug and a few words of comfort: Olena and Irina, two Ukrainians driven out by the Russian invasion met on the road to exile in a hotel in Romania transformed into a reception center.
When war broke out, Olena Karas, 34, decided to flee Kyiv, where she ran a restaurant, to seek refuge in Western Europe.
After a ten-day journey through “razed villages” and “roads strewn with burned bodies and charred tanks”, she spent her first quiet night on a mattress in the ballroom of a hotel in Suceava ( North).
On February 24, 16-year-old Irina Tanasiev left Chernivtsi (western Ukraine) with one thought in mind: “to help her own people”, as the first refugees began to cross the border into Romania.
“My school had closed and I learned that a big hotel in Suceava was looking for Ukrainian or Russian speaking volunteers,” she told AFP.
For three weeks, the young girl has been taking turns like other young people on the run day and night to register the refugees, help them find transport to other destinations but above all “comfort them”, indicates Stefan Mandachi, the boss of the ‘establishment.
“When they come to us, people are haggard, feel lost, don’t know where to go,” he explains.
“The hardest thing is that in front of their children they have to appear strong, sure of themselves”, underlines the entrepreneur, according to whom more than 17,000 refugees have so far been accommodated in his hotel, which also organized the departure 13,000 of them to Germany, Italy and Poland. All for free.
Olena Karas will in turn board a bus bound for Germany, before continuing to Great Britain, where she intends to find a job in the catering industry.
“I hope to return soon to my country, where I left my parents, my husband and my friends,” she says.
In the meantime, she promises to send part of the money she will earn to the Ukrainian army, in whose ranks her husband is fighting.
Irina does not plan to return to Ukraine anytime soon, as the final exam she was due to take in the fall has been cancelled.
“A lost year”, laments the teenager with long brown hair. “I will probably enroll in law school in Romania or another country in the European Union.”
For now, she returns among refugees in search of a cup of tea, advice or a smile.