Teen refugees in Berlin vow to return and rebuild Ukraine

Polina Okhrytkova, 19, and Marta Pysanko, 18, first traded their arts studies at Kyiv University for building Molotov cocktails to help fend off the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then, as the bombs started raining down, their parents urged them to flee.

The two friends took with them Okhrytkova’s 17-year-old cousin and Pysanko’s 14-year-old brother, traveling in packed trains westwards to the border with Poland and by bus onwards to Berlin, where they found temporary refuge last week.

But they worry about those, including their parents, who stayed behind to fight or look after older relatives.

“Yesterday we were like kids and today we have two ‘children’ and must go to another country,” said Pysanko, tears trickling down her cheeks.

“We just hope this war is over as soon as possible and we can return to Kyiv and help to rebuild it.”

The four teenagers made it to the German capital courtesy of basketball club Alba Berlin that sent a bus full of donations to Ukraine and brought back refugees, part of an outpouring of solidarity for the former Soviet republic.

Now they are staying with biologist and mother-of-one Katja Schuetz. Germans have offered up 300,000 private homes to house refugees from Ukraine, Germany’s interior ministry said on Thursday.

“We are here in safety but our families are in Ukraine and we can’t help anything,” said Okhrytkova. “We just help our children, Makar and Masha.”

Nearly 147,000 people fleeing the war in Ukraine have registered in Germany so far, an interior ministry spokesperson said on Monday, adding that the actual number could be much higher.

Schuetz said she was touched by the teenagers’ resilience.

“They are saying ‘we will return and rebuild everything even more beautifully, even though everything is destroyed.'” she said. “They have so much power still and so much hope for the future.”

Ukrainians were not a soft people, said Pysanko.

“We are really strong and we are going to rebuild our country. And it will be rebuilt by people like me and Polina.”