Dusseldorf It’s already late at night, but Rostyslav Bortnyk’s phone isn’t ringing. Bortnyk is the mayor of the small town of Berezhany in western Ukraine, where the war has not yet felt as badly as in Kyiv, Kharkiv or Mariupol. “The whole country is in a state of emergency,” says Bortnyk. “We do what we can.”
From Berezhany it is about 100 kilometers to Lviv, and from there another 80 kilometers to the Polish border. Since Russian troops invaded on February 24, more than 1.7 million people have attempted to reach the Polish border. According to the United Nations refugee agency, more than three million people are currently fleeing – not so many people have had to leave their homes in such a short time since the Second World War.
“In January we received a letter from the central government that we should set up emergency accommodation for 10,000 people,” says 39-year-old Bortnyk on the phone, who has been mayor of his hometown since November 2020 after years in Austria and Germany. With the surrounding villages, the community has 27,000 inhabitants – for every third inhabitant there would be a refugee. “In theory, we are prepared,” says Bortnyk. “But practical? We do not know that.”
Berezhany is located directly on the M30 federal road, which runs from the east of Ukraine across the country to the west – 1400 kilometers long. It was only completed last year, a prestige project by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He gave the expressway the nickname “30” to celebrate 30 years of Ukraine’s independence and to symbolize the country’s unity – even if the easternmost 200 kilometers of the route could not be completed because it crosses the occupied Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine leads.
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Today it is mostly women with their children who use this route to escape from the war in their own country. Long traffic jams form to Lviv. Hotels along the route are overcrowded. Bortnyk has set up an emergency hotline and shelters for those who are too exhausted from the long drive and escape.
“We must support our soldiers at the front”
Unlike Kyiv, Mariupol or Kharkiv, western Ukraine is not the focus of the bombing. It therefore serves as a reception camp for refugees, a training and supply area for Ukrainian soldiers and as a transhipment point for relief supplies.
Before the outbreak of war, Mariya Tuzyk worked as an IT manager in a Ukrainian company. Now she supports her husband Bogdan Kelichavy, who is the mayor of Kopychyntsi, a small municipality in western Ukraine, 100 kilometers from Berezhany. Tuzyk says: “We have to support our soldiers at the front. If we don’t do that, the probability increases that the war will come to us as well.”
But the war is getting closer here too: According to Ukrainian sources, 35 people were killed in a Russian attack on the military base in Javoriv northwest of Lviv on Sunday.
The war roused Tuzyk from his sleep. “We’re just two 30-year-olds who woke up in the middle of a war, and now we’re dealing with all of this,” she says. However, it quickly became clear to her and her husband that they could not simply leave. 13,500 residents live in their community, around ten percent fled at the beginning of the war. The rest stayed to help. As in Berezhany, they set up emergency shelters.
>> Read here all about the latest developments in the Ukraine war
A homeland security unit has also been set up. Soldiers have to be registered and trained, they have to learn how to shoot – all in the shortest possible time. A veteran of the Donbass war, who lives in their community and lost a leg in the war, trains the group.
“The biggest challenge for us”
“It’s the biggest challenge for us,” says Kelichavy. “Until recently we were still civilians studying. We were busy building our infrastructure, building schools, creating jobs. Today I sent 20 soldiers to the front.” From Berezhany, too, two school buses bring 50 to 100 fighters to the front every day.
But that’s not all: the residents are collecting aid supplies from the west and forwarding them to the front – the first injured soldiers have already arrived in Berezhany. Kopychyntsi also has a small hospital. However, it is not equipped to care for injured soldiers.
500 refugees have already arrived in Kopychyntsi, says Mayor Kelichavy. They do not count those who stay with relatives. The kindergarten can accommodate 200 people. There are no shower facilities here. Apart from the emergency shelter, rooms are available in private houses.
Mayor Bortnyk also had schools, gymnasiums and private accommodation renovated in Berezhany. Most houses do not have their own water connection in the house. To go to the toilet you have to go outside. But the supply situation is stable. “Most people here have their own gardens and chickens. They have prepared for the winter,” says Tuzyk.
The bomb alarm goes off several times a day. The inhabitants rush to their cellars and seek refuge. In the first few days she was full of adrenaline, reports Tuzyk on the phone. She was always trying to keep herself busy. But something has changed in the last few days. “I felt a great sadness,” she says. “But we have no choice. We are not giving up our country.”
More: “Putin wants to drive up the blood toll” – international law experts warn of further escalation