Ukrainian refugee animals

In the absence of safe extraction corridors for animals, organizations and volunteers coordinate daily rescue actions toevacuate them to European Union countries the best they can.

The 21st century has seen more than 80 million people forced to flee their homes due to war, conflict and violence. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has estimated that more than 4.6 million people have done so since the beginning of the Russian military offensive in Ukraine.

But what about the animals, what about the thousands who have been left behind? Because for them no humanitarian corridors are agreed upon as they are for the civilian population.

Luckily, the efforts of organizations and volunteers, both Ukrainian and foreign, are making it possible for many of them not to be abandoned to their fate and, consequently, condemned to death.

Although the legal status of animals has evolved in the last decades, there is still a long way ahead. As demostrated In Ukraine in times of war, their welfare is once again being tested.

It is impossible to determine how many animals have made it out of the country since the start of the war. What is certain is that there are numerous daily departures to EU countries in public transport, in vans, trucks and privately owned vehicles. Yet they are run by volunteers and are not enough in the face of the high number of those who have been or left behind. In 2014 an estimated 750,000 dogs and 5.5 million cats were in Ukraine, to which other species, including exotic animals, whose condition makes their rescue more difficult, should be added. One thing that seems certain is that the most affected by this situation are, above all, large dogs, farm animals and those kept in zoos and reserves.

Organizations such as the Polish Centaururs Foundation, the charitable foundation of the Ukrainian Equestrian Federation or the Lviv animal shelter, among others, are undertaking titanic efforts to save animals from war on a daily basis. They have a large and valuable army of volunteers, as well as funding through online crowdfunding and private donations.

We were able to witness this firsthand by joining a convoy of seven vehicles, made up of people of four different nationalities. This one in particular was destined to the delivery of food and veterinary material in Kyiv and the extraction of the well-known surviving dogs from the shelter of Borodyanka, a town northeast of Kiev that has the painful honor of being one the most severely punished by the Russian bombardments in this war.

Another animal organization that works tirelessly in the rescue, care and extraction of animals is the Ukrainian UAnimals, which is one of those that, since the beginning of the war, centralizes the gathering of resources, organizes efforts and coordinates volunteers. One of the latter being Nataliya Popova, who, seeing the reality faced by wild animals coming from zoos and reserves, has turned her equine center on the outskirts of Kiev into a wildlife refuge. Where more than 100 animals have been evacuated to Romania or Poland since the beginning of the armed conflict, he has already saved them. Among them, seven bears, four tigers or three lions from the bombed Eco-Park in Kharkiv, which she saved from euthanasia.

Train, the extraction route

The Ukrainian railway network is being of vital importance in the extraction out not only of people, but also of small animals. However, not the larger ones. Different sources consulted point out that volunteers collected more than 20 larger dogs in the surroundings of the station of Lviv in the first days of the war.

Numerous other animals wandered around the various villages liberated from invading forces; some were starving, eating anything they could find, others were wounded or frightened and confused by the sounds of the explosions. And many were hiding in their homes, where there was no one left, only the echoes of the horror of death and destruction left by the Russian army in its path.

This is the case of Zenia, a three-year-old common cat that her owners left free in her home, in the village of Andriivka, near Bucha, in Kiev. She survived burns, starvation and the Russian troops who took the place as a base for their advance towards the capital.

The Lviv-Medika axis

Lviv is the cultural capital of Ukraine. Nowadays, however, its importance lies mainly in the fact of being the closest city to the border with Poland, which makes it a relevant place for animal rescue and evacuation operations.

Being located in the western part of the country and after the liberation of the Kiev region, it has become a safe place for people displaced by the conflict. And also for animals, such as the bears from the White Rock sanctuary in Kyiv that were transferred to a shelter near the city. Or the dogs, cats and wild animals that stop for a few days at the animal shelter in Lviv, where they are cared for by volunteers who look after them, feed them, walk them and give them affection, while in their offices the necessary bureaucratic steps are taken for their transfer to Poland through the Medika frontier crossing. Different shelters and safe spaces have been set up here by animal welfare organizations, from which they organize the subsequent transfer to other European countries.

As the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close and the awareness of the human population of the importance of animal welfare is growing, the time has perhaps come to see animals as co-inhabitants of this planet and a relevant part of society, not just as goods, entertainment or food. Many people in Ukraine are demonstrating this on a daily basis.