Jordi Ferrer | València (EFE).- On the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is hardly anecdotal to park in any Spanish city next to a car with a blue and yellow license plate or add a new father or mother to the WhatsApp group to integrate a a student from beyond the Carpathians, but each personal story, each Ukrainian refugee account, remains unique.
And if the image of Russia that is repeated on television these days is that of a luxuriously decorated auditorium in front of a single lectern to listen to a speech without answer, the war draws realities on the edge of the imaginable, like that of Alexandr Safonov, the Russian of Siberian origin who selflessly distributes help and food to Ukrainian families in Valencia.
The story of this emigrant does not have its starting point in the war, but in the pandemic, when the confinement and economic blockade wrecked his business two and a half years ago.
Start again
“In Russia I had a business, but when the pandemic started I lost almost everything. I considered starting over in Russia or anywhere else. What made me choose Spain was the health of my eldest daughter, who has asthma and needed a different climate. Since we lived in Valencia, her asthma has improved by 30% and she barely needs medication anymore, that is much more important to me than money”, she explains, pausing reflectively to examine her precarious Spanish.
“In the middle of the pandemic, without work, with everything closed, we went to the NGO Amigos de la Calle. Because of my way of being, I don’t understand receiving help without giving anything in return -he says-, so I asked what I could do and the possibility of distributing for that association arose. Later, when my situation has improved, I have continued collaborating with the NGO and distributing food to families of Ukrainian refugees”.
For him “we are all human, people”, and he makes no distinctions: “I don’t care. And I think that working with Ukrainian refugees I can be especially useful because I can understand them and know better what they need”.
Problems for being Russian
Asked if he has had problems with someone because of his Russian origin, if he has felt “Russophobia”, he explains without any resentment that in Spain he had a Ukrainian client, for whom he transported flowers, and that she stopped calling him on the second day of the Russian invasion.
Alexandr tries to be as precise as possible in his statements, but only after a long conversation, in which he explains his personal situation, does he openly state that he is against Vladimir Putin and the war.
Before, he prefers to insist that he does not quite understand the separation between Ukraine and Russia because he considers that they really are part of the same people.
“We Russians are not guilty of what Putin does, Russia is very big, it has a great history and culture, great figures from the world of science… and I would like to separate what the government does from what the people feel” , to later admit that some compatriots are being affected by the economic sanctions imposed by the EU.
“The war really did not start in 2014 (with the occupation of Crimea), but rather it is the continuation of the ‘cold war’; all this is geopolitics, which is the same as saying that it is money, ”she reflects.
Impossible to change anything in Russia
He knows that there are Russians abroad who live in fear of reprisals if they oppose Putin. “Abroad there are those who look at us and say nothing, those who look at us badly and those who accuse us or ask us why we don’t do anything, but we really can’t change anything in our country, it’s impossible, it’s even very complicated. go to a demonstration”, he laments.
The NGO in which Alexandr works serves around 250 families a month in the metropolitan area of Valencia; Of these, some 75 are Ukrainian and most of them have elderly people among their members.
“Lately we have seen how some of the Ukrainian families we helped seek new horizons, seeing that the conflict continues. We know of a couple with four daughters who lived in Valencia until recently and who has just emigrated to Canada,” the president of Amigos de la Calle, Carmen Allende, explained to EFE.
This entity has been operating since 2007, initially aimed at supporting the homeless, although since 2012 it has also served families with economic problems, a task in which it has the support of the Ayuda a una Familia Foundation and the Food Bank. EFE