Journalist Paul Caruana Galizia Recounts Stories Of Refugees He’s Been Meeting At The Poland-Ukraine Border

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As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine rages on, Paul Caruana Galizia, a reporter and editor at British news website Tortoise Media, has travelled to different areas in Poland to speak with refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine.

Caruana Galizia is one of the sons of murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. She was one of Malta’s most prominent investigative journalists and was killed in a car bomb close to her home in October 2017.

He joined Tortoise Media in 2018 and won the New Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards the following year.

Caruana Galizia’s two articles since the Russian military invasion began, entitled ‘View from the border’ and ‘Voices from the border’ (co-written with his colleague Gary Marshall), give vivid descriptions of the situation on the ground and firsthand accounts from refugees leaving Ukraine’s western border.

Putin ‘won’t stop at Ukraine’

Reporting from the Polish village Dorohusk on 26 February 2022, just two days after Russia’s invasion began, Caruana Galizia quoted one refugee as saying “(Russian President Vladimir Putin is) an international terrorist. And you in the West must know – he won’t stop at Ukraine”.

In Przemyśl, which is the second-oldest city in southern Poland, Caruana Galizia met a young mother who had travelled three days with her six-year-old daughter to get there. The Maltese journalist wrote that her “husband drove them as close to the border as he could, and then turned back to Kyiv to fight. Her plan is now to go to a friend’s place in the Czech Republic”.

Male Ukrainians aged 18-60 temporarily banned from leaving Ukraine

Following Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared martial law across the country, meaning that male citizens aged 18-60 are temporarily banned from leaving Ukraine. Zelenskyy encouraged people willing to fight to come forward as the aim of martial law is “to ensure the defense of the state, maintaining combat and mobilisation readiness of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations”.

Another refugee that Caruana Galizia spoke with was leaving her country with her elderly parents. She explained that it became very difficult for her parents, both in their 80s, “living in the basement, to hide from air strikes. We had to leave. They want to go back home, but I told them we can’t”.

Caruana Galizia’s second article on the subject, published on 2 March 2022, also includes voice recordings given by refugees who described their experience as they travelled across Ukraine and across the border into Poland. In terribly cold conditions, they spoke about the suffering they’ve been going through since they decided to leave Ukraine.

Caruana Galizia writes that the situation seems to be especially difficult for Africans. On the Polish side of the border, “the welcome they are providing is a world away from the one some refugees got a few metres east, in Ukraine. The difference is especially clear to Africans”.

“Many were studying languages, business and medicine in Kyiv. They’ve been camping at border posts where they say Ukrainian soldiers have herded them, beaten them and left them waiting for days as they wave through Ukrainians.”

The Ukrainian authorities have said that more than 2,000 civilians have been killed so far in Russia’s invasion and the United Nations says more than 800,000 people have now fled Ukraine (updated on Wednesday 2 March at 14:00 CET).

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