Sawt Falasteen - Ukrainians return to Bulgaria holiday resort as refugees

Everything has been shut for the winter in the tiny resort of Kiten and there's hardly a soul in the streets under the sunny but chilly March sky.

One hotel however hums with activity -- toddlers running around, women chatting in the corridors, distributing towels and snacks or sitting glued to the news on their phones.

Hotel owner Kostadin Milev, 32, has been welcoming Ukrainian holidaymakers every summer for the past 10 years. When Russia invaded its neighbour, it was only natural for Milev to open up earlier than usual to offer them shelter.

Thanks to his Ukrainian tour operator, Aleksander Lishanski, buses started running to and from Ukraine at least once a day to fetch distressed children, mothers, grandmothers and aunts and bring them to the place they now call "our home from home".

Over 400 people have been taken in so far.

They arrived to find the benches around an outdoor stage painted in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. On the pavement outside, children have written "Slava Ukraini" ("Glory to Ukraine").

"This was the only place abroad that we knew would accept us, shelter us and help us," Yuliya Molchanova, 43, tells AFP. She hugs her 12-year-old daughter Nastya, who has been here five times before.

When their northeastern city of Kharkiv was shelled by Russian forces, they spent five days in an underground shelter before making it to Kiten a week ago.

"We couldn't take anything when we left. Now we have everything," Yuliya smiles, showing off a pink sweater donated by a stranger.

She reads out a poem she wrote thanking Bulgaria for sharing "its peaceful skies, warmth and love, bread and water".

Bulgaria has long been a popular destination for both tourists and seasonal workers from Ukraine. Some 470,000 of them visited in 2021.

- 'Nowhere to return to' -

While Yuliya insists they will "of course go back when there's peace", 28-year-old mother-of-two Oksana Kuskova is not so sure.

"Our home was bombed and sadly we won't have anywhere to return to," she says, watching her toddler play with a colourful toy pushchair.

Oksana accompanied Ukrainian children here as choreographer for four years in a row and feels reassured to stay with other Ukrainians.

"It's hard and sad but thank goodness that we're safe. Here, together, we support each other," she says.

She recalls how her little girl intially refused to leave their hotel room and still ducks when planes fly overhead.

Many of the children have been to the resort before and the hope is that they will find the familiarity comforting.

"The most important thing is that the children are alright, that they don't hear the sirens and witness war," sobs Dnipro resident Galina Yaloza, 65.

She arrived at the centre with two other female relatives and her four grandchildren, including two babies.

Some mothers, like 35-year-old Alexandra Grishina, also from Dnipro, have brought along not only their own children but also others they were asked to take to safety.

They try to recreate some sort of normal routine to reassure the youngsters.

While older children attend online classes on their laptops, some of the smaller ones huddle around a woman reading aloud and dozens of others play.

So far the hotel has funded the relief effort on its own with the help of donations.

But Milev says he hopes to get government help soon -- he is preparing to host as many as 1,000 Ukrainians and is bracing for a "brutal" electricity bill.

More than 94,500 Ukrainians have crossed the border into Bulgaria since the Russian invasion began on February 24 and 50,000 have remained in the country, border police data show.

Half of them have been accommodated by ordinary Bulgarians or through voluntary initiatives like Milev's.

The government was slow to open reception centres and is only this week starting to accept applications for temporary refugee status.

One of the desks in the manager's office is piled high with documents to allow everyone staying at the hotel to apply, so the adults can find work and the children can attend kindergarten and school.

Z.AbuSaud--SF-PST