“When bombs fell, I was scared to death”

Yulia S. and Maria M. worked for Leoni in Ukraine and fled. Two fates that exemplify the supplier’s efforts to keep the business going.

Gut 500 kilometers or nine hours by car lie between their home and their new place of residence, between war and peace. The Ukrainians Yulia S. and Maria M. have been safe in Arad, Romania, for a few weeks. Before Putin’s attack on Ukraine, the two women worked in the western Ukrainian plant of the auto supplier Leoni in Kolomyia. “When the bombs fell, I was scared to death,” Yulia says on the phone. In early March, she picked up her two children from school, said goodbye to her husband, who joined the military, and got on the bus that took them to Romania. Maria followed a week later. She too decided to flee out of concern for her children.

Yulia and Maria are just two of a total of 63 Ukrainian women who are now working for Leoni in Arad. Their real names are known to the editors. They want to remain anonymous because they are afraid of endangering their families – and also the lives of their colleagues who stayed at home in Kolomyia. There, cable harnesses are braided under difficult conditions. As soon as an air-raid alarm goes off, the employees grab their winter jackets and flee to the nearby bunker.