Moving to Poland is a deliverance for many Ukrainians. However, you have to wait several hours before getting there, sometimes 15 hours or more. The volunteers who come to help adapt, but on both sides of the border, there is misunderstanding.
Before arriving at the Zosin border post, it is always the same landscape: vehicles parked for hundreds of meters, an incessant coming and going of volunteers, relatives or refugees who have just crossed.
On site, our team meets Alla. She has been waiting for her daughter and her two grandchildren for sixteen hours. “There are also friends. In all, they are four adults and twelve children“, she confides to us. After twenty hours of waiting, standing in the cold, she finds her loved ones.
People who don’t pay are left behind
Twenty hours to cross a border! For some, it is deliverance. But thousands more are still stranded in Ukraine.
Nicolas, whom we interviewed on the spot, does not understand why it is so slow. He is waiting for his wife and mother-in-law, still in line on the other side. “I heard that on the Ukrainian side they ask to be paid to enter the buses to get priority. People who don’t pay are left behind. There is no one helping them. There is no food, the toilets I guess they are in a corner“, describes Nicolas, from what his companion explained to him.
Volunteers authorized to provide supplies in the border area
So, so that these families can eat, drink and stay warm, volunteers work hard to send them everything that is possible to fit in a car or van. “We have received permission to be able to return to the border area to be able to bring to the refugees everything that arrives here as donations from all over Europe“, says a volunteer who speaks English.
Bring what they can, but also a little comfort. Make waiting in the cold less unbearable, before finally being able to find each other, hug each other and hope for a better day.