Christmas comes early and bittersweet for Eastern Europe’s Ukrainian refugees

By Michael Kahn and Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

PRAGUE/WARSAW (Reuters) – Many of the millions of Ukrainian refugees in central and eastern Europe plan to mark Christmas early this year in solidarity with their hosts, learning carols in new languages to generate holiday cheer despite fears for relatives back home.

Ukrainians generally celebrate Christmas on January 7 in common with Russians, but the country’s Orthodox church has gradually shifted from Moscow’s orbit in recent years.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year, the church has said congregations can now also celebrate on Dec. 25 — something many refugees said they would embrace.

Svetlana Safonova, 48, said when she fled Lviv in March she did not imagine she would have to spend Christmas away from her husband and adult daughter who serves in the Ukraine army.

“We would like to celebrate on December 25th to respect Bulgaria and show one more time we are cutting off ties with Russia,” said Safonova, who plans to make traditional potato dumplings with her 9-year-old son and her niece’s family.

“We will go to an Orthodox church and pray for peace in Ukraine and for the health of our soldiers and children.”

Vasil, 45, and Marina, 36, Khymyshynets who fled their village near Kyiv in March with their two children after a missile or artillery round exploded near their house, now live in a two-room flat in Prague.

The family — who could not afford a tree because they were saving to send gifts to relatives in Ukraine — baked Christmas cookies and taped pine branches and Christmas lights on the wall while the children practiced singing carols in Czech.

“We decided to just use some pine branches for the decoration so that it looks good and makes the children happy,” Khymyshynets, who was allowed to leave Ukraine after the military rejected him due to poor eyesight, said at the weekend.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine, now in its tenth month, has killed tens of thousands of people reduced cities to ruins and driven millions from their homes, with 4.5 million registered across Europe, data from the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR shows.

Many have been put up by states bordering Ukraine such as Romania, Slovakia and Poland – which has hosted the most — as well as nearby countries like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.

Attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and heating plants mean few plan trips home for the holidays.

“We have not noticed many people going back for Christmas,” said Jakub Andrle, a migration program officer for Prague-based charity People in Need, which works in and out of Ukraine. “The longer people stay here the more difficult it is to go back.”

‘THANKS TO POLES’

Poland — emerging Europe’s largest country and which shares a roughly 500-kiometre (310-mile) border with Ukraine — has registered more than 1.5 million refugees, the most of any European Union nation, with millions more crossing its borders.

Serhiy Berezhko, a 64-year-old actor from Kyiv’s Lesya Ukrainka National Theatre arrived in Poland in March with his mother, wife and two children, and said he would use Christmas as a time to thank his Polish hosts.

“This holiday is a moment when people look into each other’s eyes and thank each other, hoping that things will get better in the future,” said Berezhko, whose family shared a holiday dinner with the locals who helped them when they arrived. “Everything we have now is thanks to Poles.”

In Bulgaria, where nearly 50,000 refugees have registered for temporary protection, refugees, backed by UNICEF, are offering Ukrainian dishes and cookies and selling hand-made bags, decorations and toys at a Christmas market in Sofia.

In Romania, refugees lined up to receive packages at their Bucharest shelter where children decorated a Christmas tree.

Czechs who live near a Prague dormitory housing around 130 refugees, organised a party with cookies festive music and donated gifts laid out beneath a lighted Christmas tree.

“We are just trying to make it a little better for them,” said Hana Hillerova-Harper, who helped organise the event.

Children laughed as they played football in the snow and ran around snatching cookies from the table as their mothers — many holding babies or pushing strollers — chatted with each other.

Most of the children had only two things on their Christmas lists: For the war to end and for their fathers to be safe.

“My biggest wish is that Ukraine wins,” said eight-year old Kira Bezrebra.

(Additional reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia and Luiza Ilie in Bucharest, Writing by Michael Kahn, Editing by Philippa Fletcher)