Galina Nesterenko has little understanding for one thing.

When there is war at home, when bombs can fall on your own house, neighbors disappear, acquaintances are fighting at the front and every few minutes the mobile phone rings because someone wants to say that they are fine - then, in these moments, half a minute She finds spending hours posing for press photos a waste of time.

“The world has changed,” says Nesterenko.

“In Ukraine, the Donbass has been at war for eight years.

And I, living in Kyiv, didn't understand that this was my war too, that the same Russian troops could also attack Kyiv.” Germany, she believes, is making a similar mistake right now.

Kim Maurus

volunteer.

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Nesterenko has been in Wiesbaden for eleven days.

Anger and gratitude are currently very close for the 44-year-old professor from Ukraine.

Anger about what is happening in their country and that, from their point of view, the Germans are simply going on as before.

Gratitude for being safe.

"I'm lucky to be here," she says.

Nesterenko actually works as a professor for information and innovation management at the University of Kyiv.

Now she is a scholarship holder of a program at the Business School of the Rhein-Main University of Applied Sciences, which supports refugee Ukrainian scientists for six months.

According to Rainer Wedde, who is responsible for coordination in the department, 15 Ukrainians applied within a week at the beginning of March.

Nesterenko fled with her daughter and was awarded one of four grants.

"It feels strange to be in Germany"

She didn't originally want to leave Kyiv, but her daughter's fear of the bombs made her flee.

For a while she found shelter in Warsaw, in a confined space with friends.

From there she wrote to a Ukrainian colleague who lives in Germany.

You showed her the funding program.

"It was easier for me to find such calls and to apply than for many other Ukrainian scientists," she says.

"Most speak little English because they grew up in the Soviet Union, where English was less important than Russian."

Two other scholarship holders from the Rhein-Main University of Applied Sciences, Serhii Arefiev, Professor of Economics at the National Aviation University in Kyiv, and Tetiana Vilchyk, Professor of Legal Law at the University of Kharkiv, also want to talk about their situation.

They receive 1,200 euros a month, they are insured, they get a job and access to the library and databases.

The university cannot give them a replacement for what they had to leave behind, an explanation for what is happening to their country, or a satisfactory answer to their complaint that Germany is not helping enough.

And they don't see the regained security as fair either.

"It feels strange to be in Germany," says Serhii Arefiev.

The economics professor is 37 years old.

He wants to explain exactly why he was able to flee anyway: When the war began, he was with his family in his summer house four kilometers away from Kyiv-Hostomel Airport, which was heavily fought over in the first days of the attack.

One day after the outbreak of war he drove to the Polish border with his family.

He said goodbye to his family and reported to the army to help.

His specialization, military psychology, which he learned during his training, was not in demand.

"I can't drive tanks, I'm not a pilot," says Arefiev.

Then the government announced that men from families with three children or more - Arefiev has two daughters and a son - are also allowed to leave the country.

His family returned from Poland

together they fled across the Ukrainian-Hungarian border.

He has been living with his family in Offenbach since mid-March and he likes his new neighborhood.

Many people do not understand that he was able to flee legally.

That's why he doesn't want a photo of himself in the newspaper or on the internet.