Hermitage of a Ukrainian poetess: Most of the arrivals leave the refugee camp in the Moldovan border village of Palanca as quickly as possible.
Image: Marin Chirica/Youtube
Measured against its population, the Republic of Moldova has taken in the largest contingent of Ukrainian refugees. The poet Vera Derevjanko is also waiting there for the end of the war. We visited her in the camp.
An the fringes of the former Soviet empire, in the poorest part of Eastern Europe, almost everything can be explained by corruption. The Moldovan artist Pavel Brăila, who is hoping for a European path for his country marked by emigration, sees the misappropriation of funds from the army’s budget as a main reason for Russia’s military failure in Ukraine. Defective technology, outdated tanks, a lack of ammunition and equipment show how much of the money earmarked for modernizing the armed forces has been diverted to finance private yachts and palaces, Brăila says in an interview in a cozy street café in Chişinău.
The Russian war of aggression, which has driven a total of around 450,000 Ukrainian refugees across the nearby border into the country, is also to blame for the western states, which for too long have put their business interests ahead of the needs of the neighboring countries attacked by President Putin. If the West had responded to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 with sanctions comparable to today’s, Crimea would not have been annexed, Braila assures.