Belarusian refugees give shelter and aid to those fleeing war and persecution, whether in their homeland or Ukraine.
The founders of the Refugee House in Warsaw have taken to calling the one-year-old shelter “Teremok,” after a famous Russian fairy tale. And not by accident – the story revolves around a mixed bag of homeless forest dwellers who get together to live in a small house.
Not so long ago, those who got Teremok up and running were just as homeless as the characters in the tale and just as much in need of help. They are all Belarusian refugees who were forced to flee their homeland after the brutal crackdown on anyone seen as a threat to the authoritarian government of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who was declared the winner of the disputed presidential election in 2020.
Over the past year, these Belarusian political emigres who found sanctuary in Poland have combined forces to establish a refuge to assist fellow countrymen who fled repression, as well as Ukrainians who arrived en masse after Russia’s invasion one year ago.
The Refugee House opened in April 2022 and has assisted hundreds of refugees so far. Its director and sole employee, Anna Fedoronok, used to live in the town of Voropayevo in the Vitebsk region in northeastern Belarus, where she owned a small clothing and shoe shop.
The authorities started persecuting her and her family after she joined the presidential campaign of Sergei Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger who made the fateful decision to challenge Lukashenka. He was soon charged with violating public order, inciting hatred, and plotting mass disturbances, all of which eventually led to a sentence of 18 years in prison. After he was jailed, his wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, ran in his place, and Anna supported her in her town, led rallies, and acted as the single independent observer at a polling station on election day in August 2020.
“I made an incredible effort to stay for the final vote count and when I was asked to leave, I said, ‘I won’t come out, even if you take me by force – I will hold on with my hands, feet, and teeth,’ ” she says. “And when they collected the ballot papers, it was even obvious to the eye that Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya had 80% of the votes.”
Anna’s persistence had paid off, and, as a result, the commission had to recognize Tsikhanouskaya’s victory in this voting district, one of the few in Belarus not to declare a large majority in favor of Lukashenka.
At that point the activist and other residents of the town went to the local administration, demanding a fair recount at the town’s other polling stations, as they were convinced that votes had been stolen and the election results falsified.
Anna later participated in women’s solidarity chains and street protest marches. She was detained, fined, and then prosecuted and her house searched. At one point, during a state holiday, security forces surrounded her house and she hid in the village bathhouse with her daughter and granddaughter. On another occasion, social service workers and police came to pick up her 8-year-old daughter.
“We didn’t open the door and hid under the table, so that they wouldn’t notice us and would think we weren’t home. My little girl was shaking like a leaf because they wanted to take her to an orphanage,” Anna recalls, still with much emotion.
That incident finally compelled her to leave the country.
“I held on until the last moment, because I am 52 years old. My husband and I have a big house in Voropayevo; my eldest daughter and her family live nearby – our whole life is there,” she says. “But we were forced to leave everything and everyone behind and go into the unknown.”
The family traveled through Russia to Ukraine, where they stayed for a month in a shelter. Later Anna and her daughter moved to Poland, while her husband found a job and moved to Lithuania.
Overcoming Cross-Border Misunderstanding
While the massive influx of millions of Ukrainian refugees into Poland was the main impulse behind the founding of the shelter, it wasn’t easy convincing some of the Ukrainians that the Belarusians meant well.
On 24 February 2022, soon after news arrived that Russian soldiers had crossed the border into Ukraine, backed by Belarus, Anna and a friend made a sign that read in Polish, “Belarus is not Lukashenka” and headed off to the Russian Embassy in Warsaw.
“We stood there for three days – from 10 in the morning until 10 in the evening,” Anna recalls. “And what we heard from the Ukrainians! They said we were accomplices [in the war], that we were fascists, and many other things. The Ukrainians, at least at that moment, knew absolutely nothing about Belarus and the Belarusians, about the powerful uprising we had in 2020 and what was going on now. They did not know why we were in Poland, why we had left home, why our friends and relatives were in prison.”
On the third day she spoke at a large antiwar rally outside the Russian Embassy, organized by Belarusians. Ukrainians in the crowd shouted “Get out of here!” She says she told them she was a grandmother, that tragedy struck her family and thousands more simply because in 2020 they stood up for their votes, for the truth, for freedom and democracy in Belarus. She urged people both in Belarus and in Russia to turn their weapons against Lukashenka and against Putin.
That’s when the Belarusian diaspora, including activists from A Country to Live In (named after Tsikhanouski’s popular YouTube channel), realized most clearly that something had to be done, to prove to the Ukrainians that Belarusians oppose Russia’s invasion in deeds, not only in words.
Some of the Belarusian refugees had contacts with Belarusians who had fled to Italy. They started to make the rounds among different organizations, hat in hand. They landed an unlikely ally: Progetto Sud Institute, an aid charity established in 1984 by UIL (Unione Italiana del Lavoro), one of the major Italian trade unions.
Progetto Sud agreed to use part of their income from union contributions to set up and maintain the shelter, which would end up being named in honor of their fellow countryman Francesco Fatiga, a union veteran and philanthropist. The condition was that the funds must be directed to helping refugees from Ukraine and Belarus who are fleeing war and political persecution, and that a priority should be placed on housing mothers with children under 15 years old.
“As a rule, these families have dads who are either at war in Ukraine or in prison in Belarus,” says Anna, “and this category of refugees is the most vulnerable and the hardest to help.”
Representatives from the donor come to visit each month, she says.
The second and third floors of the Refugee House contain separate bedrooms, common kitchens, and playrooms for the children. It is here that the shelter welcomed its first residents in April 2022, seven Belarusian families. Some stayed for a month, others for three, and one mother was allowed to stay for four. Her son is autistic and in addition to work and housing, she also needed to find a special school for him.
When the first tenants left their temporary accommodation, new people moved in. Since then, more than 20 families – about 150 people – have lived at the Refugee House, usually staying for up to three months. But the most used space, says Anna, is a room with four bunk beds on the ground floor. Anyone can stay there – families, women, and men – but for up to five days only. At first, Ukrainians made up the majority of the short-stay residents; most are political refugees from Belarus.
“This room never stays empty – one day is the longest,” Anna says.
The long-term rooms are typically occupied by Ukrainian women and children. Such as Dasha Stasiuk and her one-year-old son Andrei, from Kherson, a southern port city that Russia occupied early in the war. Andrei spent much of his short life with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather in the basement during the fighting around Kherson.
They drove four days to Warsaw. “It was Sunday evening and I didn’t see any tents or volunteers at the station – it was the end of the weekend, everything was folded up,” Dasha says of that day in July 2022. “I stood with Andrei almost in despair and didn’t know what to do. I started to call my acquaintances, acquaintances of their acquaintances, and that’s how we ended up in the shelter.”
Victoria, with her twin 7-year-old sons, 5-year-old daughter, and mother, escaped from occupied Kupinsk in August 2022. “Apart from the prices of food and medicines going up, it was also difficult to find them. My friend went to get medicine for his sick father and got blown up by a mine because all the roads were mined,” Victoria said, crying for a minute before continuing.
“One day we were standing in line for humanitarian aid and we saw a rocket bursting in the air – our troops had shot down a Russian one. People got scared, started running in all directions. It was a nightmare. We just couldn’t take it anymore.
“We feel very good here,” she says. “They helped the children go to school, and helped my mother find a job.”
‘And Belarusians Started Helping‘
Anna does much more than just care for the operation of the shelter – as the only employee, she also helps to clean, cook, and iron. “I am a jack of all trades, and also a psychologist,” she says with a laugh. “People need to talk about their pain. And I sit and listen. I hold the person’s hand, and afterwards we sit together and cry.”
Twice a month she buys food packages for the residents: pasta, cereals, oil, detergents, and other basic necessities, using funds from Progetto Sud, which are also used to purchase things like dishes, blankets, and pillows.
But the Refugee House also depends on both its residents, who take turns caring for the common areas, and especially its donors and volunteers. The building’s storage room is a showcase for their generosity.
“When we opened the shelter, I wrote about it in all of our Belarusian internet communities, chat rooms, and websites. And Belarusians started helping,” Anna says.
“I received a parcel from Belarusians in Portugal with toys and children’s books in Belarusian. And this parcel came from Belarus: a woman of about 80 read about our shelter, and then sewed and sent three kilos of cotton socks. It took two months to send the parcel here – they must have checked it thoroughly at the border, but in the end we received it,” Anna says, showing the fluffy, colorful socks.
The director also walks through a kitchen full of pots brimming with fruit compote. “One Belarusian woman brought two bags of toys, as well as plums and apricots for us to make compote and jam,” she says.
Donations are so plentiful that the shelter also distributes goods to refugees who live elsewhere. “A pregnant woman was expecting a baby boy and she got a lot of baby clothes, very good quality … The Belarusian diaspora from Hamburg also sent so many parcels of children’s clothes that we even gave some of them to the Center for Belarusian Solidarity in Warsaw, Anna says.
Belarusian volunteers also provide legal advice and assistance in arranging permits to live and work in Poland so adults can get jobs and their children go to school.
“Many people don’t know anything about Poland or Warsaw, have learned two words of Polish, if at all – and that’s it,” Anna says.
This is where volunteer help is vital. Recent arrivals need to be accompanied for the most necessary things, such as applying for a personal tax number, child benefits, and requesting refugee status.
A child psychologist has also lent a hand, as well as a Polish-language teacher and even a beautician – “a girl from Belarus who makes our young ladies look beautiful,” Anna says with a smile.
Sometimes Anna and her contacts can help refugees find jobs, often through assistance provided by the Polish workers’ union that is affiliated with UIL in Italy. Members of the union often call up, asking if an opening might suit someone housed at the shelter. Such opportunities and similar ones have allowed some of the refugees to earn enough to move out, with Anna and her friends sometimes helping find a flat.
The system works well, the director says, but it is ad hoc – there are no “permanent” volunteers. Some help out once, and some more long-term. Some are Anna’s friends or fellow activists, others just hear a call for assistance and want to pitch in.
“All of them are refugees and have experienced firsthand how it feels to be helpless in a foreign country,” she explains.
The volunteers prefer to operate under the radar of Belarusian authorities, especially once the regime began prosecuting its political opponents living outside the country and seizing their property.
No Guarantee for the Future
Running a shelter built on donations and volunteer help has its limitations, especially financial. Before the Christmas holidays, money was short to throw a party for the children housed at the center. “We literally walk around with our hands outstretched and we would be grateful for any help – even candy to buy for the children,” Anna said at the time.
But such worries go far beyond holding celebrations. With food and other everyday needs, those housed in the shelter manage – some women have found jobs through Anna and others, some on their own. They divide up responsibilities: one stays and takes care of all the children, while the others go to work. The urgent need is for the shelter to be able to pay the rent and utilities.
Anna is clear with Teremok’s residents that nothing is guaranteed for this year, including support from the Italians. “We are currently negotiating the possibility of further operation of our house,” says Anna. The current lease expires in April. By then, she hopes to have settled terms for the continued operation of Teremok with the house owner and the project’s donors.
The tide of refugees from Ukraine may have ebbed, but many are still fleeing persecution in Belarus, as she once did. She specifically mentions students and other political prisoners now being released from jail after serving their sentences.
“Every day more and more people are detained, found guilty, and imprisoned. In the town of Postavy they arrested 12 people – all my friends,” says Anna bitterly. “That’s why Belarusians keep fleeing, they’re coming to us in streams.”
One recent resident had been banned from leaving Belarus but took his chances anyway. “This young man has literally crossed the Neman River and he had no belongings, no warm clothes, no money, no accommodation, nothing,” she says. Where can he go?”
He and others like him only need a safe place to get their bearings before moving on, Anna says, sometimes with help from the Belarusian community in Poland, such as one who owns a construction company and given work to many of those who have fled.
“Another Refugee House for Belarusian political refugees is very much needed,” she insists. “I understand that there is war in Ukraine. But we are also at war.”
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Belarusian journalist Galina Abakunchyk has reported for several broadcast outlets since the early 1990s. In 2017 her accreditation was stripped and she was forced to resign from Radio Free Europe’s Belarus service after being jailed while reporting a protest march. Since then she has worked for the Poland-based Belsat TV. She was detained and fined numerous times while covering the disputed 2020 presidential election, and was forced to leave Belarus in 2021 following a police search of her home.
This article was produced with the support of the International Visegrad Fund.
