Ukrainian children taking refuge in Poland fear for their safety after explosions

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The children from the orphanage in Zaturtsi, Ukraine, thought they’d finally put the war behind them when they fled to Poland last March with the help of a Polish charity.

But this week’s explosion in nearby Przewodow, which killed two men, has brought the terrors of the conflict flooding back. Some of the children have become so frightened they’ve asked to go somewhere else.

“They were afraid and started asking: Where will we go?” said Natalia Duda, a Ukrainian teacher who accompanied the group to Poland. Ms. Duda said one little boy clutched his teddy bear when he learned about the explosion and said they should leave. “It’s not safe on the other side of the border, and now it’s not safe here,” she added.

Poland has been on edge since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, but the fighting hadn’t spilled across the border until Tuesday, when a rocket slammed into a grain storage facility in Przewodow, which is about three kilometres from the Ukrainian frontier. Two employees of the granary – Bogdan Wos, 62, and 60-year-old Bogdan Ciupek – were unloading a truck at the time and died on the spot.

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The incident has prompted a rare disagreement between Ukraine and its Western allies. Polish officials have said the evidence points to an errant rocket fired by Ukraine’s air defence forces. That conclusion has been backed by the United States – but rejected by Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said they have proof the rocket came from Russia, but the Russians deny firing any warheads into Poland.

On Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba said investigators from his country have joined the Polish team probing the incident. “I am grateful to the Polish side for granting them access,” he said on Twitter. “We will continue our cooperation in an open and constructive manner, as closest friends do.”

The children from the orphanage don’t know who’s right or wrong, but they all understand that the war has come crashing back into their lives.

The group comprises 27 kids between the ages of five and 17. Roughly half are orphans; the others have disabilities and were put into care by their parents.

They moved to Poland on March 1, just days after the war broke out, with help from Polish charity Honor in Helping Children. Now they live in Ostoya Roztocze, a former hotel in Kaweczynek, nestled in rolling countryside and a national forest.

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It was supposed to be a safe haven, where the children could continue their schooling and receive rehabilitation. But the explosion has left everyone shaken, and the small staff – two teachers and a physiotherapist, who are also refugees – have spent much of the week trying to reassure the children and themselves.

“The war has touched us here,” said Ivanna Kalynych, the physiotherapist. She joined the group a few months ago after leaving her husband and 16-year-old son in Zaturtsi. She felt safe enough in recent weeks to make regular trips home to visit them, but now she’s not so sure. “It’s painful for us,” she said Friday as tears welled up in her eyes. “We thought here is a safe place, but you cannot be safe because of Putin.”

Outwardly the children show few signs of the stress and dislocation they’ve gone through. On Friday morning they gathered for a short period of exercise and danced to a video featuring a gyrating animated corncob. Then came lessons in math and physics. By noon the group had been set free, and they ran outside to ride donated bicycles or swing in the play area.

But for many of them the war is never far from their minds. Kateryna, 15, said she tracks news from Ukraine closely and, while she didn’t fully understand what happened in Przewodow this week, she knew enough to be scared. “We were all afraid,” she said as she sat on a swing with her 14-year-old sister, Veronika Vira, and two friends. “We don’t know if it was a Russian or Ukrainian missile.”

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The girls try to put the conflict aside and chat with friends back home about the latest Ukrainian pop star or the most talked-about television series. Kateryna loves singing, while her sister and friends prefer dancing, painting and riding bikes. But their chats are sometimes cut short by blackouts in Ukraine or air-raid sirens. And some of the orphans flinch when they hear warplanes overhead, patrolling the border region.

The children largely keep to themselves in Kaweczynek. Only a few attend the local school; the rest stay in the hotel, venturing only rarely into town. Even their neighbours haven’t set foot on the grounds to talk to the orphans, who are not fluent in Polish. And while they love the surroundings – the woods and the flock of geese that wander around the yard – their hearts are in Ukraine. “We want to turn back to Ukraine, but it’s war there,” said Veronika Vira.

Ms. Duda and the other teacher, Irena Kasenczuk, try to keep the children at ease by not discussing the news. But that’s a challenge when they also feel the strain of the fighting, which now seems all too close. Ms. Duda said she and Ms. Kasenczuk talked this week about what would happen to the group if Poland were dragged into the war. “It would be World War III,” she said. “We were thinking that if Poland joined the fighting, we would have to go back to Ukraine.”

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Ms. Kasenczuk could go to Canada. She has a visa and a brother who lives in Calgary. But she won’t leave the orphans or her husband and two sons, who are back in Zaturtsi, especially not while Russia intensifies its bombardment of Ukrainian infrastructure.

On Friday, as she thought about the deadly explosion in Przewodow, she offered an apology to Poland for bringing the war to the country. Ukrainians fleeing the conflict came here unexpectedly, she said, like snow in summer. “I know that we are a burden.”