Safe haven for Ukrainians’ pets
SENT ON TO NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES Those fleeing war leave their animals at their last stopover.
At the Home for Rescued Animals in the city of Lviv, exotic creatures are now sheltered alongside everyday pets – those left behind in the rush of refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A milky-eyed wolf prowls in its enclosure. Boris, the goat, bathes his bedraggled face in the spring sunshine. A parliament of owls peers out from the perches of their shaded roost. In a side building, around a dozen cats from Kyiv are lodged. Dogs yowl from an industrial barn, courting volunteers arriving to walk them round nearby parkland.
Migrants who come from Kharkiv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv and go abroad via Lviv leave animals en masse,” said shelter manager Orest Zalypskyy.
His hilltop sanctuary in the 13th century city of Lviv was once a “haven” reserved for exotic animals, he said. “This war has made us more engaged.”
The United Nations estimates more than 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the war began a month ago.
More than two million crossed the border to Poland, droves ferrying dogs, cats, parrots and turtles to safety.
Lviv, just 70km from the border, has been the final stopover on Ukrainian soil for many fleeing the war zone.
Some soon-to-be refugees felt unable to take their pets further.
Zalypskyy estimates his shelter has taken in 1 500 animals since the war began, from migrants and shelters in “hotspots” to the east.
Between 10 and 20 were collected from Lviv’s train station, the locus of chaos in the first days of the war, where carriages and platforms heaved with desperate passengers.
“There’s been no system,” said Zalypskyy. “We just have many volunteers who head out and fetch them.”
One dog from a war-torn region in the east did not leave its pen for two weeks. A cat abandoned by its owner is distraught.
“We are all bitten and scratched,” said Zalypskyy of his volunteer teams. “The animals are very stressed.”
However, the animals left here do not languish. Around 200 have been adopted by locals, while most of the rest are taken by volunteers to Germany, Latvia and Lithuania.
Meanwhile the shelter is inundated with animal lovers arriving to borrow dogs for a weekend stroll. –