Ukraine: displaced people in Zaporizhia flee the high cost of living and the persecutions of the Russian occupation
Audio 01:22
Refugees fleeing eastern Ukraine receive humanitarian aid at a distribution point in Zaporizhia, here on September 5, 2022. © Andriy Andriyenko / AP
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
The Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south and east continues, with an apparently successful breakthrough by Kyiv forces in the Kharkiv region bordering Russia.
In south-eastern Ukraine, Zaporizhia continues to see a large influx of people from Russian-occupied areas, including those unaffected or minimally affected by ongoing military operations.
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With our special correspondents in Zaporijjia,
Anastasia Becchio and Boris Vichith
In the parking lot of a supermarket
in
Zaporijjia, Yana Kalovska hugs a friend she hadn't seen for six months.
Leaving a car full of suitcases and bags, this former employee of a Berdyansk television channel feels relieved.
Prices tripled, lack of gas, empty stores: life there had become too difficult, she explains.
“
Life is getting harder and harder.
They have transformed our flourishing town into a village.
When night falls, half the buildings are dark, because half the city is gone.
It's awful there.
Here and I always want to cry with joy, I feel like I've fallen on another planet, I assure you.
»
120 km further west, the city of Melitopol has also been emptied of more than half of its inhabitants, and the list of those wanting to leave never drops below a thousand people, according to the mayor, Ivan Fedorov, a refugee
in Zaporizhia
.
“
Some were waiting hoping it would end quickly, others have elderly parents who can no longer leave.
There were also teachers who weren't leaving because they hoped they could continue working online in our schools, but the Russians started threatening to take them into captivity.
»
According to Ivan Fedorov, who had himself been held hostage by the Russians in March, 500 inhabitants of Berdyansk have been held hostage in six months, 80 are still there.
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Ukraine
Refugees
Russia