It is 4 a.m. on the night of February 23 to 24, 2022. Alina who lives in kyiv receives a phone call: “I woke up to the call of my mother who told me that the war had started”. Immediately, it is panic: “What’s going on? I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe I should buy some food, because my fridge was empty”.
I remember everything like it was yesterday
Alina makes the gestures of a lost person who thinks this won’t last. “I really thought the war was going
end soon enough”. But, this is not the case. After taking refuge on the other side of town with her mother, she decides to leave for Belgium. 5 days of journey, via Poland and Germany. “I’ve been here almost a year, but I remember everything like it was yesterday”.
Uprooted, far from home, at only 19 years old, the UCLouvain student has mixed feelings: “Sometimes I have this anger of injustice. Why did it happen like this? Why does it continue?”. For her, her country has been at war for 9 years and the annexation of Crimea, even if this February 24 risks being a very complicated day to live with.
365 days ago my life changed
This “anniversary” will in fact be a day like any other for the majority of Ukrainian refugees. This is the case of Svetlana, a mother of two children who arrived in Nivelles shortly after the start of the conflict: “Of course I will think about the fact that the war has already started for a year, but it is not the end, it is not the beginning. 365 days ago my life changed. And after the February 24, it will be February 25. Life must go on and life is beautiful”.
Since the start of the war, 63,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Belgium, according to the Planning Office, the vast majority of them women and children.
8 million Ukrainians have fled their country according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. People who have lost loved ones and who live in constant anguish. People who thought they could go back to their country very quickly but now know that it will still take a long time.