“We decided to host”: how the Russians help the residents of Donbass to continue a peaceful life

Civilians from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics continue to arrive in Russia.

Acting head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Alexander Chupriyan said that by the evening of February 20, 53,000 residents of Donbass had crossed the Russian border.

"You are also a refugee"

“We decided to leave, because we are shooting there - the offensive is underway.

Dad stayed at home, they will give him a machine gun, and he will go to fight and shoot.

And Ruslan, my brother, is also there.

He is already 21 years old, he is a military man, ”says eight-year-old Stas briskly, chewing a sausage.

For the boy, this is already the second evacuation from his native Dokuchaevsk, but he does not remember the first one - he was only a year old then.

Together with his brother and mother, he is in a temporary residence camp at the border checkpoint "Matveev Kurgan".

There are 13 heated tents lined up here.

Each of them is designed for about 27 people: only narrow passages remain between bunk beds with sleeping bags.

Now there are few people here: most of the tents are empty, others are not even half full.

The Stas family arrived here on the afternoon of February 19th.

Also on russian.rt.com RT launched the "Help Map" project to support refugees from the LPR and DPR

“We will go to the camp (a sanatorium where refugees are settled. -

), and then they will take us away - my brother’s godmother lives near Moscow,” Stas boasts.

His mother, Alice, is not so confident about her immediate plans for the future.

She's been here for 24 hours, but she still hasn't been told where they're going to be sent.

“We are just waiting for the driver of our bus, who came from the Russian side, to tell us where we are going.

Nothing is known yet,” she says. 

However, she is confident that she will return with her children to Dokuchaevsk, "if only they stop bombing there."

After the outbreak of the war in 2014, she and her husband went to live in Novorossiysk, but then a year later the family returned back to the DPR.

Alice's middle son, 13-year-old Miroslav, says that in Dokuchaevsk he played football, weights and sometimes swimming.

The younger one remembers how two days ago he drew and cut out crafts from paper at school.

He says that he almost made a boat, but did not have time to decorate it - the bell rang from the lesson.

And the next day, classes at the school were canceled, and in the evening of the same day Stas left his hometown.

“You know, my friends also left, they now live in a tent.

Which they make for refugees, ”the boy continues.

“Are you not a refugee?

You are also a refugee,” the elder brother laughs.

“I know,” Stas is embarrassed after his remark.

Russians are coming from Donbass

Buses lined up next to the tents, which will take people to temporary accommodation points: hotels, sanatoriums, hostels.

According to the drivers, they themselves do not know where the refugees will be taken.

“We are given the task to come to the tent camp or to the railway station.

Then we stand here and wait to be told where to go next with people, ”explains one of them.

Finally, the driver receives a task - to take people to one of the sanatoriums.

Employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations enter the tents and ask people to go to the bus.

72-year-old Vladimir Vasilyevich crossed the border about an hour ago in his own car.

His wife and friends, also a retired married couple, came with him from Donetsk. 

“Let's get on the bus together, and we'll follow you in a car.

Also more reliable.

People are taken by bus somewhere to a specific place, but we ourselves don’t know where to go, ”the pensioner commands in his small group, leaning on a stick.

Like other refugees, they do not yet understand exactly where they will live.

Vladimir Vasilyevich hopes that he and his wife will find housing closer to the border: his attending physician has remained in Donetsk, with whom he must regularly consult about his heart.

“A few months ago I was operated on - they put a valve on my heart.

Now I have to take blood tests every week, and my doctor will look at the results and tell me which pills to take.

Therefore, I would like to live closer to the doctor, just in case.

In addition, I can’t go very far - shaking is not useful, ”says the pensioner.

As soon as he decides on housing, he will go to the nearest clinic to take tests there - the man has a Russian passport and a policy.

Nastya with her children also came to Russia in her car - her husband drove her to the border from her native Makeevka.

The family planned to cross the border together and rent an apartment in Rostov-on-Don, but the man from the DPR was not released.

According to Nastya, she would never have left home without her husband, but the children were very frightened of the shelling and began to cry.

“We have heard shooting since the summer, but not much.

So, a little far away: pew-pew.

And now it's scary.

They started shooting close and loudly: bang-bang right next to the gate, ”says eight-year-old Sasha.

• © RT

In 2014, Nastya, with her children and her husband, left the DPR during powerful battles and shelling, but then the family lived in Ukraine, in the Zhytomyr region - they had acquaintances there.

Three years after the evacuation, the family returned to Makeevka.

“A couple of months ago we received Russian passports, so now we decided to leave for Russia,” says Nastya.

She herself worked at the school where her children studied, as a teacher-organizer.

But now classes in the schools of the DPR have been canceled.

“I just called the authorities, said that I left and I don’t know for how long.

I don't think I'm getting paid now.

But her husband stayed in Makiivka, he has a job in the construction industry - Nastya really hopes that they will come home very soon.

“I don’t know for sure, but I hope that in a week we will be able to return.”

“Mom, are you roffling?

There, on the contrary, it will start stronger,” says her 13-year-old son Vova, sitting on a bed in a tent.

- Although I want to go home already, I don’t want to live here.

There is internet, but here it is not.

But on the other hand, we don’t go to school now and they don’t give homework.”

“Well, until the war is over, we will stay here for a while.

I think she will still be three years old, ”the youngest son nonchalantly argues.

Relatives did not advise accepting refugees

Olga and her daughter came to Taganrog from Novoazovsk from the south of the DPR.

Unlike many of her compatriots, the girl knew in advance where she was going - the local family agreed to take her.

"We have a three room apartment.

In one room - my husband and I, in the other - the son, and the third is empty.

So we decided to host someone when I saw a message from Olya in one group, ”says 27-year-old Victoria to RT.

According to the girl, she had no doubts about whether it was worth hosting an unfamiliar family in her apartment.

“I wasn't scared at all.

As soon as I saw the first ad, I felt that I needed help.

But in my environment they began to warn: “What if they take out the equipment?

What if you don’t get along in character, after all, strangers?

My husband understood and supported me.

I believe that people should be helped, because they have experienced such grief.

They are not to blame for anything, ”the girl says.

On February 20, she and her husband met Olga with her five-year-old daughter at the station and took her to their apartment.

Victoria hopes that her six-year-old son and daughter Olga will become friends.

“When we were just chatting with Olga, I was hooked by one message.

She wrote that her husband, a military man, decided not to wait until the shelling began in the city and immediately sent them to Russia.

And somehow I immediately thought that the military understands that now we need to hide our family away, ”continues Vika.

- She told me that people in their city are sitting in basements.

My God, what time are we living in, that people are hiding in basements, can you imagine?

I somehow took this story very close to my heart.

So far, Olga plans to spend about three days in Victoria's apartment.

She is waiting for a friend from Donbass to rent an apartment with her in the region.

But if the plans fail, then Vika and her husband are ready to accept Olga and a couple of months.

“We agreed that we would buy food in half.

Right now we just went to the store together, we will have dinner soon.

We will pay all bills for the apartment ourselves.

People have such grief, and I will still remind them of this nonsense?

- the girl argues.

“We will do as we did eight years ago”

Meanwhile, charitable organizations in Rostov and other Russian cities have also announced a fundraiser to help the residents of Donbass.

“On February 19, we had an emergency meeting, we decided how we can support people who come here from the DPR and LPR,” says Galina Kochura from the Rostov-based charity organization Mercy-on-Don.

— We have a social shelter for men without a fixed place of residence.

We decided to compact them a little and settle the grandfathers who left the Donbass - young men are not allowed to go to Russia.

There are few places, but there are no other options.”

Galina is in a hurry to talk about the work of the fund, because she urgently needs to go to the border to pick up a woman with five children.

The Foundation will place her in the Alexandria Shelter for Women in Difficult Life Situations.

“The youngest of her children is one month old.

We decided that with children, especially such small ones, it would not be very comfortable for her to live somewhere in a sanatorium.

Our project was designed for our region, but you yourself understand that there are no other people's children,” she says.

Ekaterina Sukhinina herself was among those who were forced to leave their homeland eight years ago.

At the beginning of the war, when the girl was 18 years old, she left for the Crimea with her brother and mother.

My father stayed in the DPR.

“Then, in 2014, none of us believed that everything was for real, we thought that everything was about to end.

We returned to Donetsk in the fall, and it became clear that nothing would end.

My family decided that I was being transferred to study in Moscow, ”recalls Ekaterina.

She says that Donetsk has forever remained her homeland - only in this city does the girl feel at home.

In 2016, she and her boyfriend, now her husband, started taking humanitarian aid by car to Donetsk orphanages.

Over time, they began to bring not only basic necessities, but also building materials so that people could rebuild houses.

Now Ekaterina is a co-founder of the Dobrofond fund.

“Now we decided to collect humanitarian aid and take it to Rostov.

People who left Donbass are asked to bring warm clothes, medicines, and long-term storage products.

We also collect money,” says the interlocutor.

“Until people face this situation, they don’t understand what it is about.

And I still remember how my family and I did not know whether we would wake up in the morning or not.

How to collect disturbing suitcases.

How they remembered which walls in the house were load-bearing and which were not, in order to know where the glass would not fall during shelling.

Ekaterina's parents, who were liable for military service as doctors, remained in Donetsk.

Her 20-year-old brother, who is finishing his fourth year at university, also stayed behind to defend the city.

The Rostov Charitable Foundation for Helping Children Good Deed has resumed a project they started in 2014 to help refugees.

The funds collected by the fund will be used to pay for housing for refugees in the Rostov region.

“We opened a special account to collect funds for the evacuated residents.

We will do as we did eight years ago: the regional labor ministry will send us bills for utility bills, rent of premises, and so on.

We will pay for them.

Such a system is very effective because it helps to avoid double funding: from budget funds and non-profit organizations,” says Tatyana Aladashvili, director of the fund.