By Olha Chepil | 2023-11-06

VIENNA/ROTTERDAM -- Having fled the war in Ukraine, roughly 6 million Ukrainians now find themselves abroad, mostly in Europe.

Many who lived abroad before the war are now creating cultural spaces and aid centers for their fellow refugees.

Situated in Vienna's 16th district, Matusya ("mommy" in Ukrainian) is one of the Austrian capital's largest humanitarian aid centers for Ukrainian mothers and children.

Refugees can receive diapers, hygiene products, clothing, shoes and toys at the center, which was founded by Ukrainian native Valeria Kaiser. She moved to Vienna in 2003.

"Everyone in Vienna already knows that there is a Matusya center where you need to bring clothes, shoes, toys, etc. People just write to me -- 'Hello, I heard about you. Where do I bring children's items?'" Kaiser told Kontur.

"At our center, mothers can get free items and children can play for a while," she said.

The donations come not only from Austrians but also from many Ukrainians who lived in Austria before the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Matusya center helps an average of 150 Ukrainian children each week, and can provide a baby stroller or a bed to take home.

The center employs about 20 workers from different countries.

"Women from Ukraine work here. We have women from Armenia, from Austria. There are women from Russia. Basically, we are a large international team. Here we all live for this project. It has become our family," said Kaiser.

'I didn't have any plan'

Kaiser is from Crimea, which is now occupied by Russia.

Her family has spoken Russian since she was a child, but the war awakened in her patriotic feelings for the Ukrainian language.

"I'm half Russian, half Ukrainian. The blood of both peoples flows in me. My grandmother spoke Ukrainian, even though our family spoke Russian. Now I also try to speak and write in Ukrainian," she said.

Kaiser graduated from an Austrian university with a degree in tourism management and became a licensed Austrian tour guide.

In the initial days of the Russian invasion, she completely switched to helping Ukrainians and opened an aid center from her own home.

"I didn't have any plan. And that's probably why I first started organizing all this at home. If I think about standing with a child somewhere outside in a completely foreign country with essentially no money, I sink into some terrible dread. I experienced the start of the war as my own personal tragedy," said Kaiser.

According to the Austrian Interior Ministry, in the period from February 24 to December 31, 2022, more than 90,000 Ukrainian refugees registered in the country.

As of early February 2023, about 66,000 of them had remained in Austria.

For her part, Kaiser is ready to close her center and may return to guiding tours when the war ends and her help is no longer needed.

"I wish the war would end. And, of course, I want it to end with Ukraine's victory because it is an independent and free country," she said.

Architecture lab for teens

The population of the Dutch city of Rotterdam is more than 620,000. About 2,300 of them are Ukrainians.

One of them, Oksana Savchuk, a Ukrainian woman who immigrated in 2017, worked here as an architect and a councilwoman of the city's Mathenesse neighborhood.

After the start of the invasion, she began helping Ukrainians who ended up in the Netherlands because of the war.

"I haven't worked as an architect for almost two years now. Helping Ukrainians has become my full-time job," Savchuk told Kontur.

"After several months of humanitarian and administrative work, I realized that the people [Ukrainian refugees] are missing something -- they have no sense of community. The focus isn't on them being refugees and everything being bad but on something positive that unites us and gives us hope," Savchuk said.

In Rotterdam, Savchuk organizes various cultural projects to allow Ukrainians and Dutch to exchange culture and traditions, including master classes, specifically about cooking, knitting, embroidery and painting.

She and other architects recently organized an Architecture Lab for 30 Ukrainian teenagers forced by the war to flee their homes.

"Many children, through architectural models, spoke about losing their home through the war, and about their relationships with loved ones," she said.

"One young man designed a home for his father, because they dreamed of a home together. Now his father is in Ukraine, but this young man and his mother are here," said Savchuk.

'A serious challenge'

Each European country is allocating millions to receive and integrate Ukrainian immigrants, said Pavlo Sadokha, Ukrainian World Congress vice-president for Southern Europe and chairman of the Council of the Ukrainian Union in Portugal.

Portugal's government allocated €30 million in aid and accepted 50,000 Ukrainians in mid-2022, according to Sadokha.

"The war has been going on for almost two years now. Ukrainians arrive and return, and here in Portugal, there are no ... situations where people are left without a place to live or means of support," Sadokha told Kontur.

In addition to helping each other, Ukrainians abroad now need to unite in the fight against Russian propaganda in Europe, said Sadokha.

Many Russian organizations are trying to influence Russian-speaking Europeans through the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian World Foundation and Rossotrudnichestvo.

Rossotrudnichestvo, also known as Russian House, is one of Moscow's main vehicles for educational, cultural and humanitarian initiatives.

"We are now combatting the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is using propaganda in an attempt to influence Ukrainians and children through Saturday or Sunday schools. This ideological work is very strong -- they perpetuate the Russian narratives."

"This is a serious challenge. It is fueling the propaganda that is very active in Europe," said Sadokha.

"When there is a crisis, everyone immediately unites. Ukrainians abroad are operating like the society of their [new] countries. We all hold this ideological position that we ought to have our own state, our own people, which must be protected," said Sadokha.