“Everything was washed away by the wave…” People living in the vicinity of Kakhovka HPP were forced to leave their homes

Every day, every week, people come to Latvia who travel by carriers, cross the Russian-Latvian border on foot… They come from areas where active hostilities are taking place. Many people are now from the districts surrounding the Kahovka HPP, who have been flooded and whose land has become unusable, writes kontekst.lv.

Refugees from Ukraine go to Europe via Russia and Latvia, which is the shortest route. Daugavpils has become a kind of transit point for Ukrainian refugees on this route, where they are welcomed by Latvian volunteers.

“Where are we going, to which Europe? We don’t know their language, nothing…” Mostly they are old people: “Let us die peacefully in our native homes…” But the native homes in the hydroelectric power station area were washed away by the wave. The land is covered with sludge, the wells are poisoned. Because graves, burials, some Soviet-era waste have gone under water… And it is not clear when this area will become habitable. Volunteers in Latvia hear such stories every day.

Due to its geographical location, Daugavpils has become a kind of hub, an important point on the way of refugees to Central European countries and Nordic countries. Here they usually spend one or two days – in a hotel or in a volunteer apartment specially rented for this purpose.

“We are like a temporary point,” explains Daugavpils volunteer Aleksandrs Barbakadze. “But still, people leave us with completely different faces. Once we had one person who left very sad. He had already boarded the bus when he suddenly remembered that he had left bacon in the refrigerator in the volunteers’ apartment. He was so unhappy. By the way, the bacon was great.”

You can read the whole article here: “Living there is simply impossible”. Residents of the occupied Ukrainian territories go to Europe through Russia and Latvia