On February 24, 2022, Ukrainians woke up to bombings: Russian troops had invaded their country. Since then, eight million Ukrainian refugees have been registered in Europe – totalling 18 per cent of their country’s population – and just over 1,500 were granted temporary protection in Malta. It’s been a harrowing year, as Claudia Calleja found out.

‘I wish to never feel emotions like this’

The year has been a blur for Alona Kobzar and Oxsana Samoilenko.

A year ago, they left their homes and husbands behind in heavily bombed Kharkiv to bring their children to safety in Malta.

“This year it’s like we did not have it. It was like a bad dream… One year passed. It doesn’t get easier. It’s worse,” says Alona.

Her eyes fill with tears as she looks at her friend, Oxsana.

“I wish to never feel emotions like this,” Oxsana continues as she wipes her own tears.

These two women are now the breadwinners for what has become of their family. For the past year, they have been living in a three-bedroom Swieqi apartment together with Oxsana’s sister, Irina Kruhova and their children.

Alona has a daughter and son, Dasha, 11, and Artem, 7; Oxsana has two sons, Maxim, 15, and Aleksander, 9, and Irina has a three-year-old daughter, Victoria. 

Alona, a former manager, and Oxsana, a university teaching assistant, work full-time in the restaurant of a relative (Lyuba) who is married to a Maltese man while Irina looks after the children.

They are physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. And they are struggling to keep up with expenses: utility bills, food, healthcare. 

As of March, they will have to start paying rent because they were allowed to use the apartment free of charge for a year. It’s something they are grateful for. They also get a lot of help with free schooling and uniforms.

They recall how lost they felt when they first arrived in Malta and had to spend 14 days in quarantine due to the pandemic. They did not know any English and have been going to free lessons.

A few days after they arrived, Aleks broke his leg while playing football. “It was a very difficult period of my life. I did not know the language. He called me, and told me he was going to the hospital. I did not know where,” Oxsana recalls.

This year, the children started going to school. For some, it was a smooth transition but others struggled to make friends and the language barrier made things harder.

They had travelled to Malta with Irina’s mother-in-law, Natasha, who has since moved to America where her daughter lives, and with Natasha’s mother, Galina Agarkova, who has just turned 85.

“Her dementia helped her. She forgets. Then she sees the news and starts crying. She really needs her home,” says her daughter, Lyuba.

All of them, in fact, crave to be home.

“Every morning we begin by checking the news and we call our husbands, parents and relatives and hope that our people answer. If they don’t, it’s minus 10 years of our life,” says Oxsana.

Alona adds: “We are all very tired. Every day, every moment we discover about our family. We cannot help. We cannot see. I don’t know what will happen in the next minute. I want to go home.”

Fearful return to Kyiv

At the end of last summer, Ukrainian-born Juliya Azzopardi Mazur, her Maltese husband JJ and their two sons, Jaydee and Dominic, decided to leave Malta and head back to their home in Ukraine.

“No dictator has the right to tell us where we should live,” says Juliya.

“We do feel scared very often. However, we feel it’s our duty to stay in Ukraine for as long as possible. We feel we can be useful for our home, especially at this time when millions have fled.”

The family had been living in Malta before they moved to Ukraine in July 2021. They happened to be holidaying in Thailand when the war broke out. They stayed in Thailand for about a month then travelled to Malta as they could not re-enter Ukraine.

While here, Juliya volunteered at the Ukrainian Crisis Centre. Then, in June, the family decided to go back to their home in Kyiv where they have relatives as well as their dogs and their business.

They travelled to Poland and took a bus to Kyiv.

“Driving back was very scary at first and quite stressful. However, in time the tension subsided.

“Our life has never been the same since the war started. Some days we were very scared hearing explosions so close to our home right in the centre of Kyiv,” she says.

Juliya and her husband work online so they are often together, and they also opted for online schooling for the boys.

“We wouldn’t feel at ease having our boys at school during one of the attacks when kids have to go to a shelter until the air raid sirens are off,” she says.

“I definitely feel the war around me, seeing destroyed houses, soldiers everywhere and having to pass through many check points. We have a curfew from 11pm till 5am.

“We have spent countless days without electricity, water or heating. We had to adapt by buying gas cookers, power banks, torches and other stuff. It’s been tough, especially during cold winter days. Some days during the attacks the mobiles or internet won’t work and we feel cut out from the world but, luckily, it passes quickly.”

‘They thought they had the right to destroy our home’

Inna Bolbot, Lora Filippova and Marina Ivleva once had their own homes and jobs. Their children had a network of school friends. But since the war broke out a year ago, they have lost all that.

They left their husbands and other relatives behind in Ukraine to move to safety in Malta with their children where they live in a community with other women and children, always worrying and hoping that their family members back home will be alright. Finding work is difficult due to the language barrier.

“It’s hard to imagine that other people came to our home and thought they had the right to destroy our home,” says Inna.

Her friend Lora adds: “We had everything before the war and war destroyed our normal and peaceful life. If I think about it a long time it makes me crazy. We want peace and want to come back home.”

They form part of a community of families who came to Malta last year to flee the fighting and were welcomed by the Malta Council for Science and Technology and a private medicine faculty, EDU, along with Kenup, an international humanitarian foundation.

Days after the Russian invasion, the foundation, which operates from Malta, asked its employees to start working from home and transformed its offices into housing units, equipped with bedding, wardrobes, appliances and bathrooms with the help of Maltese businesses.

The families, mostly women and children, now live there in their own individual rooms, a small one for one family or a big one for two. They share a kitchen and bathroom.

They are incredibly thankful for this and for the access to free schooling given to their children who, they confess, are adapting better than they are.

Teenagers Denys Bakhmatsky, 16, and Nikita Kabashnii, 17, are both studying iGaming at the Malta College for Arts Science and Technology.

“Last year was an introduction year to Malta. We were using it to know Malta and the people,” says Denys, adding that they are even picking up some Maltese now. They’re feeling more integrated.

They keep in touch with friends around the world online and are planning a reunion soon in Poland.

Inna’s son, Dmytro, 14, is also happy in school. “My son is adapting much better than I am as he has learnt English in school,” she says adding that the language is a barrier to socialising and finding work.

She would love to return to her home in Kyiv but she says that staying in Malta is the best decision for her son.

Lora feels the same way: “My husband now fights for our country in the East. I will wait before returning. My husband is in the army so I don’t see the sense of being in Kyiv alone with the children.”

She is continuing her online work as a nutritionist and health coach.

“It’s helpful for me because I have money, not a lot, and my mind is busy,” she says.