Tens of thousands of Russian and Belarusian citizens live in Ukraine: most, horrified, wholeheartedly support their host country in the face of Moscow’s invasion, but some see the administrative obstacles piling up to the point of jeopardizing their future.
On February 9, Karyna Patsiomkina said to herself that her troubles were finally behind her: six weeks after fleeing Belarus, where her friends were languishing in prison and she herself risked arrest for anti-power publications, this young woman 31-year-old moved into a shelter rented by a compatriot in Boutcha, near kyiv. She had taken a liking to this wealthy and green suburb and to her new country, “100 times more democraticthan his homeland. The ace! Two weeks after its installation, the Russian army invaded Ukraine, arriving in particular from the territory of Belarus, an ally of Moscow.
Boutcha is occupied after heavy fighting. On March 8, Karyna decides to leave “because there was no more gas or electricity“. The road being already cut, it takes 48 hours to reach kyiv, then Lviv, in the West. When Boutcha was released in early April and the first signs of the massacres in the town emerged, she immediately returned to enlist as a volunteer, in a psychological aid cell, then with the Red Cross.
At the end of June, the young woman is honored during an official ceremony by the municipality of Boutcha. But when she presents herself at the beginning of July to the migration service to have her residence permit extended, her passport is confiscated from her for 48 hours, then returned with a stamp: she has 10 days to leave Ukraine, on pain of expulsion.
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