Ukrainian Refugees Find a Home in Israel

The Fellowship  |  February 21, 2023

As The Fellowship welcomes home Ukrainian refugees, we learn more from i24NEWS about how many have been forced to flee their homes since the start of the war and their stories:

According to UNHCR, more than 16 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes since the Russian invasion which began a year ago. More than 14 thousand have arrived in Israel as immigrants or refugees.

In March 2022, just several weeks after the full-scale invasion, Mariya took an evacuation train from Dnipro alone with her one-and-a-half-year-old child. Though the toddler was used to traveling only with Mariya, this time, taking the train without the father was scary and traumatic. “There was a terrible crush at the railway, and my child was hurt.”

“He got scared, and after that, for a month, he was afraid of people, especially men… He was standing on the train looking at his dad from the window and crying hysterically,” Mariya remembers, her voice shaking. 

She told i24NEWS that the passengers were asked to turn off their phones and the lighting so the train wouldn’t glow in the dark. However, complete darkness and the sounds of blasts were not the only terrifying experiences: “The scariest thing was when the train was making stops and people were knocking at the doors, and the doors were not opening as there was no room for more people to enter.”