The First Lady of the United States, Jill Biden, visiting Europe to express her support for Ukraine and the countries that help her, met on Saturday in Bucharest with families of refugees who fled the Russian invasion. Accompanied by Carmen Iohannis, the wife of the Romanian president, Ms. Biden notably went to the “Uruguay” school, which welcomes around fifty Ukrainian students. She spoke with several children drawing Ukrainian and Romanian flags, according to images broadcast by public television TVR.
She then listened to the stories of teachers and mothers recounting their ordeal under the bombs in Ukraine, then their efforts to organize classes for refugee children in Bucharest. “My first thought was to get my child out of the bombed city,” said Anastasiia Konovalova, an English teacher from Odessa. But once in Bucharest, this 30-year-old woman had noticed that hundreds of children, “on the road to exile to nowhere”, were deprived of school. It was then that she decided to call for help from the Romanian Ministry of Education.
The next day, the “Mihai Viteazul” high school in Bucharest opened its doors to Ukrainian students, who today are more than 260 taking classes there, while 900 others are on a waiting list, she added. said. “You are extremely strong,” said Ms. Biden to her interlocutors. “We have your back, hope you know that,” she added. Romania, which borders Ukraine, has so far hosted more than 860,000 refugees, of whom around 80,000 are still there. According to the World Vision Foundation, half of them, or 40,000, are children, of whom only 5% are currently enrolled in the Romanian education system. In the morning, Ms. Biden had a brief discussion with President Klaus Iohannis, before participating in a meeting with members of UN agencies and NGOs, devoted to humanitarian aid for refugees.
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On Friday, the first day of her visit, the First Lady met with American soldiers deployed at the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base (eastern Romania). Mrs. Biden will leave Bucharest for Slovakia in the evening where, on Sunday, Mother’s Day in the United States, she will travel to the city of Kosice and the village of Vysne Nemecke, there also to meet refugees, workers aid workers and Slovaks helping. Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, Joe Biden’s government has provided some $3.8 billion in military aid to kyiv.