When the war in Ukraine started, two large reception points for refugees were created in Germany – one of them was in Berlin, the other in Munich. Latvian Laura Ritenberga-Kinder lives in Bavaria and works as a sworn Latvian-Russian-German translator in a German court. It was in the second week of the war, when the mothers of other children in the Russian-German-speaking kindergarten of Laura’s branches started talking about the fact that Ukrainian refugees were arriving by bus. The first to be helped by the German authorities were adults, involving soup kitchens, but what Laura noticed was that most of the buses were filled with Ukrainian children between the ages of two and six: “I myself have three daughters – three, seven and nine years old old. I know what it’s like when a child is taken out of the home. It started when several of us moms started cooking buckwheat porridge, which we know from our Soviet childhood. I knew that they would know buckwheat and know milk. We cooked buckwheat porridge with milk.”
What started as a mess of buckwheat later turned into thorough volunteer work, because less than a week later there was a call for sworn translators who know Russian to get involved in translation work in the big centers. Step by step, which started as an accident, Laura got into a big whirlwind over the course of a year.
She admitted that it was the biggest shock to see that the refugees were the same people as her – a woman of Laura’s age, with a child of the same age, and even the same phone in her hands, only this woman has nothing left, because the house has been blown up. At that moment, a vortex is said to have started, in which she also dragged other Latvians from Germany.
Laura revealed that German Latvians even had an inside joke at one point: “is there a sofa in your house on which no Ukrainian has slept?”,
because at the beginning of the war, people were accommodated in gymnasiums. But such accommodation was not possible for everyone, so Laura calls herself complicit in the fact that many Ukrainian families immediately ended up in German Latvian families. It is a story about identification, about the fact that comparing a Latvian with a Ukrainian who has found himself in an unenviable situation is well understood.
Ritma Prokopchenko, who is the head of the Latvian school “Saulgriezīte” in Dublin, also agreed to this. At the beginning of the war, she joined the activities of the Irish Red Cross as a volunteer: “When donations began to be collected, my family and the families of my adult children did not remain indifferent, because in the neighboring town an Irish family set up a point that collected everything necessary for Ukrainians, who brought aid loads to Ukraine through acquaintances .”
The next step was a coincidence – Ritma noticed an advertisement looking for translators who can help Ukrainians: “I helped with translation, I took a sick one-year-old Ukrainian child to the doctor with my car.” This continues to this day, and Ritma keeps in touch with, as she says, “her Ukrainians.”
It was a coincidence, but not only that, it is related to her own memory – Rita Anderson from the Latvian Society of Central Sweden also got the status of a volunteer helper for Ukrainian refugees by chance, when a work colleague said that the local hotel had received refugees and there were no translators who could help the migration service employees in communication with Ukrainians: “I had tragically lost my only child just a year ago, and my heart sank, I realized that this is a blessed work that I have to do. I went to help every day. I went and translated all the time, helped to complete all the necessary documents .”
Political scientist Sigita Struberga explained this phenomenon with identification, and identification, among other things, is a big challenge for Ukrainians who come to Europe: “Although it is said that Ukrainian refugees have quickly integrated into the labor market, there are still several challenges related to language, but there are cultural differences. In the long term, we have a lot of work to do. Children especially need to be integrated – although many Ukrainians feel that they will soon return home and their children therefore continue to study in Ukrainian schools via distance learning, the truth is that they will probably have a long time to go time to live in the home countries, therefore integration into the environment of the home country is necessary.”
The work of volunteers from Latvians in Europe continues. Even though it is a story about burning out while helping, the energy to help does not diminish and does not diminish. After a break of half a year, Laura has returned to Germany as a translator at the refugee employment office. Linda Jākobsone-Gavala, a member of the board of the association “I want to help refugees”, stated: “At the moment, when the war is already approaching the two-year mark, it is clear that even those strong people need help in order to be able to continue helping.”
CONTEXT:
Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked large-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, the Kremlin’s propaganda brazenly promised to capture Kyiv in three days, but the selfless and strong resistance of the Ukrainians prevented the Kremlin from realizing its plans.
After the setbacks, the Kremlin withdrew the army from the Kyiv region, but continued the offensive in other regions. In the fall of 2022, the Ukrainian army managed to liberate Kharkiv region and part of Kherson region in successful operations, raising hopes for the possibility of defeating the enemy.
However, the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in the summer of 2023 was not so successful, which the Ukrainian army explains both by the insufficient supply of weapons from the Western allies and by the deep defense line and extensive minefields created by the Russian army. Now there are reports that a war of positions has begun at the front with exhausting battles and preparations must be made for long-term support for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia regularly attacks civilian objects and is expected to target energy infrastructure like last winter.
2023-12-14 08:57:07
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