Olga, 65, has been living for two days in a simple parking lot in Zaporizhia. A few kilometers from the nuclear power plant that has been capturing world attention for weeks, hundreds of Ukrainians are waiting, like her, to return home.
Originally from the east of the country, now occupied by the Russian army, they decide to leave western Ukraine, where they escaped bombing for a few weeks. In the parking lot where dozens of people wait for a convoy to the East, “everything is difficult for the elderly, and with the heat, these are really not good conditions,” Olga testifies.
“We have nowhere to go”
This retiree can no longer afford to live here. The only way out of it: to return home … even if there was no water or electricity there.
“This is my hometown, I’ve lived here all my life. This is my home! We don’t feel like we belong here, we have nowhere to go.”
“But I keep quiet, I prefer not to talk about it,” he says. Because this trip to the East is done very discreetly: the subject is taboo for the hundreds of Ukrainians who want to return home, especially the elderly.
“We can’t leave everything behind”
So much so that another 59-year-old woman, in the same situation as Olga, agreed to testify on condition of anonymity. Through tears, she tells the BFMTV microphone of her anguish after five months in a refugee center on the Polish border.
“They need to understand that we built it all ourselves, we can’t leave it all behind…and at the same time, we can’t take it all with us,” she says.
Yet even as she heads into the unknown, a shred of hope lingers: “I’m not worried, after everything we’ve been through… We were in the middle of bombing, explosions and destruction.”
Source: BFM TV
