Around half of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children are refugees, either in other countries or as internally displaced persons in Ukraine.
These are children who are now starting their third year away from their homes, friends and often a parent.
In the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, the Swedish organization Operation Aid has started an activity project for the internally displaced children.
– We have been following these children since October now and have seen how they have changed, lit up. They have found their little group, says Adrian van den Broeck from Operation Aid to TV4 Nyheterna.
Karina is nine years old and can still remember her school class from before the war started. How they played and ran around the school. It was a good few months for Ukraine’s children: schools had reopened after the pandemic and that was before the war closed them again.
Her sister Kamila is seven years old and of course has never really gone to school. Only online with his teacher and his schoolmates on a small screen. But she hopes.
– I would like to go to a school so I can play with my classmates, she tells TV4 Nyheterna from the apartment where the sisters live with their mother in Mykolaiv.
The family is from Kherson, a city where almost all families have left. The children’s father is still there because of his job, but every weekend he comes to visit.
Dance, sports and computers
To give the refugee children in Mykolaiv a chance to meet other children and leave their apartments a little from time to time, the Swedish organization Operation Aid has started an activity project.
Around 130 children can come and do sports, such as aikido or dance, or play on computers. For some children, these are the only times a week that they meet other children, otherwise they are at home doing school in front of computer screens.
– Children often have difficulty putting their experiences into words. So, for them to come here and do activities, and meet other children who have similar experiences, is like a kind of therapy that works very well for children, says Adrian from Operation Aid to TV4 Nyheterna in a basement room in central Mykolaiv.
Mark, 6, misses his friends
In the background, a dozen or so children practice aikido. They laugh and smile.
One of them is six-year-old Mark, also from Kherson. He misses his friends, especially a really good friend he used to play with, but now lives in Japan. But when he feels a little sad and comes to training, he immediately becomes happy, he says.
– I like to do sports. But it’s also good to learn self-defense. If something were to happen in the future, it might be good to know, he says.