Kneeling on the ground, Ruslan plays timidly with a miniature truck. As quietly as possible, he rolls it around the corners of the hotel room, between the legs of a plastic chair, along his little forearm. From time to time, he raises his big green eyes to observe the guests chatting around him in French – a language he does not yet understand. At three years old, the little boy knows very well that this new daily life is no longer “normal”. “Lately, he’s been asking a lot of questions, wondering why we’re not going home. It’s very difficult,” says his mother, Olena. “Home” is Odessa. It has already been five months since this young dance teacher hastily left this city in southwestern Ukraine to settle with her husband, her mother and Ruslan in a residence-hotel in Magny-les-Hameaux, in the heart of Yvelines. And it was in a hospital in the department, far from the Russian bombardments and the war wounded, that she gave birth to Melissa, her two-month-old baby girl. “We quickly understood that the conflict in Ukraine was going to degenerate, everything was getting complicated in the hospitals… I couldn’t take any risks for the delivery,” she sums up.
Since then, his daily life has been made up of small victories and long expectations. Supported by the association Dawn, which fights against precariousness and the exclusion of vulnerable people, Olena quickly obtained a provisional residence permit (APS) for six months, renewable. This status, granted by the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII) as part of the temporary protection system set up for Ukrainian refugees, allows them in particular to receive an allowance for asylum seekers ( ADA), housing, access to care, or work. “Everything was done very smoothly, it’s quite exceptional. The Ukrainian refugees obtained appointments at the prefecture in a fortnight, compared to several months as usual”, underlines Madeleine Bata, director of activity for the association Aurore in Yvelines and Val-de-Marne. But while her husband is taking his first French lessons, Olena’s days are mostly punctuated by Melissa’s naps, nature walks to try to calm Ruslan’s anxieties and calls to Ukraine for news. of his relatives. “We don’t really manage to project ourselves beyond that. Ruslan will go back to French school in September… Then we’ll see”, gently breathes the mother of the family.
“We don’t know what tomorrow will bring”
In Magny-les-Hameaux, where 120 Ukrainian refugees have been crossing paths since March 10, the vagueness of the coming weeks is on everyone’s lips. “The worst part is not knowing where we will be in three months. Or how long we will have to stay in exile,” says Anton, tired. In the corridors of the hotel, this 40-year-old from kyiv has come across all kinds of profiles: some of his compatriots have since returned to Ukraine, while others are settling after living with locals in France for a few months. “There are welcoming families who go on vacation, who realize the burden of such accommodation. We therefore have more and more refugees who find themselves on the street”, regrets Madeleine Bata. Anton, he does not yet know how long he will stay in this corner of the Ile-de-France countryside whose name he is struggling to pronounce. “Renting an apartment, a car, organizing a life here without speaking the language, without knowing what tomorrow will bring, it’s hard,” he admits. For some time now, he has been wondering about moving to Poland. “We are thinking. It won’t be easier, but maybe better for us.”
Analyst for a Ukrainian IT company, the father nevertheless realizes his luck: unlike others, he has the possibility of continuing his missions by teleworking. And like nearly 98,000 Ukrainian refugees at the end of July, he also benefits from an ADA, which allowed him to send his children to school in France a few months before the summer. “This is not the case for all the people we welcome here”, notes Madeleine Bata. Macinissa, a 38-year-old Algerian, and Abdou, a 32-year-old Senegalese, had both lived in Ukraine for several years before the conflict broke out. One ran two stores in kyiv, while the other was finishing his engineering studies at university.
But while the two men do not have Ukrainian nationality, only temporary protection for one month was granted to them in France, without the possibility of working. Since then, their files have been put aside by the prefecture: it is recommended that they return to their country of origin, before possibly filing a classic asylum application. “But as Senegal and Algeria are not at war, it will have no chance of succeeding. And in the meantime, they have no valid status here: they are forgotten by the system”, regrets Bathily Haby, coordinator of the Magny-les-Hameaux emergency accommodation centre.
“We had to leave everything”
Throughout France, thousands of other Ukrainian refugees are trying to get used to their new life. According to Didier Leschi, director of the OFII, “the vast majority of them were housed with locals, with relatives or by their own means”. This is the case of Natasha and Oleg, hosted for several months by Eliza Burnham, a Franco-American interpreter. Sitting at the table of a café in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, the couple seems to have lived in the capital forever. Round glasses for one, blue linen shirt for the other, they look tired of hard-working young executives. However, the seriousness of their eyes betrays them when they evoke the memories of these last months. The flight from kyiv with the grandmother, the two children and the dogs, a hasty crossing of Europe, the television sets haunted by bad news, the one-upmanship of Vladimir Putin… Then, finally, the implementation relationship with Eliza by mutual acquaintances, and the yellow and blue outfit that the interpreter wore on the platforms of the Gare de l’Est before welcoming them to his beautiful house in Yvelines.
Oleg and Natasha only regret one thing today: that everything is going “almost too well” in view of the images of chaos coming from the East. Their two children immediately went to school, and will soon be going on vacation in the Drôme with Eliza and their grandmother. Bogdan, the eldest of 14 years, even passed an audition to join the Cergy conservatory after being spotted by his music teacher in college. Oleg, he continues to look for a job: producer for a television channel in Ukraine, he saw his business disappear with the start of the war. Finding such a position in France is difficult – despite a few interviews and dozens of phone calls, he will soon have to register with Pôle emploi, while continuing to take eight hours of French lessons per week.
“Work is what stabilizes me,” admits Elena, who arrived in France on March 10, after crossing half of Europe alone. This 41-year-old photographer, who lived in kyiv and worked all over the world covering dozens of music festivals, hangs on to her camera so as not to sink. “I had a busy life, a dream job, a nice apartment. I was fulfilled. And we had to leave everything,” she says, tears in her eyes. By settling in a 30 square meter apartment in Poissy (Yvelines) lent by a French director from her network, Elena quickly decided to invest herself professionally. Soon, the portraits of the inhabitants she meets on a daily basis will be exhibited by the city. “It’s important, it makes me think of something else,” she explains.
Feeling of guilt
Supported by the association Charitable medical aid France-Ukraine, which specializes in sending medical equipment to the country, Elena is also committed to helping the war-wounded. On a voluntary basis, the forty-year-old takes the time to prepare first aid kits for the association, which will then be sent to the front. While her 26-year-old brother has joined the Donbass as a soldier, Elena is well aware that this equipment could make all the difference. Above all, this activity allows him to stay in touch with other Ukrainians, hosted in France while waiting for the war to end. Even if some of his new colleagues have already planned to leave.
“My decision is made, I’m not afraid,” announces Anna, currently living with her daughter Oleksandra in Marne-la-Vallée (Seine-et-Marne). For this 56-year-old landscaper to agree to leave kyiv, where she was born, Oleksandra had to come and pick her up as far as Ukraine, then persuade her to make the four-day trip that separated them from Paris. Since then, every morning is a new challenge. “We have to convince her every day not to shorten her trip. If she stays, it’s simply to see her granddaughter who will soon be returning from vacation,” says Oleksandra in perfect French.
The trauma of war is never far away. During the military parade on July 14, while the national patrol fighter planes streaked the Ile-de-France sky, Anna threw herself under the table, terrified. “Even once I arrived in the Paris region, safely, I heard the sirens of kyiv for a long time,” breathes the fifty-year-old, who shows a “suffocating feeling of guilt”. With drawn features, she recounts the day when she had the opportunity to visit the Musée des impressionnismes Giverny (Eure): delighted, she hastened to send a video of the water lilies from Monet to a friend who remained in Ukraine. “It was his dearest dream, to see them in person. But the very day I was quietly observing these paintings, his village was bombarded by seven Russian missiles. That’s the guilt.” For Anna, this feeling of “betrayal” is no longer acceptable. In a few days, she will take the bus which, in forty-eight hours, should bring her to Lviv, in western Ukraine. “Then I’ll take the train, and I’ll find kyiv. I just want to go home.”
This article is from our special issue “We Ukrainians”on newsstands August 24, in partnership with BFM TV.