Since the war in Ukraine began, Lviv has become a place of refuge. Many come from Russian-speaking areas, and are being welcomed and protected by their fellow Ukrainians. ICMC supports the Archdiocese of Ivano-Frankivsk to accommodate and support the newcomers seeking safety in Lviv

“I didn’t know where I was going at all, but here, thank God, Father Roman gave us shelter and helped me with work.”

A new video from ICMC charts the experiences of Inna Tarasova, one of many Russian-speaking Ukrainians from the east of the country who have fled west following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Lviv, the biggest city in western Ukraine, has become a place of refuge for many, in particular from the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that are together known as the Donbas. Like Inna and her young daughter, many women and children have been sheltering in Lviv.

“The fact is that people in the eastern part of Ukraine communicate in Russian,” Inna explains. “We haven’t practiced Ukrainian, although we studied it in school, so we were able to switch and remember it a little bit.”

Since the Russian invasion, ICMC has been supporting the Archdiocese of Ivano-Frankivsk, with Lviv as its main center, to be able to accommodate the influx of newcomers seeking safety. At the St. Nicholas House of Mercy in Lviv, where Inna and her daughter found shelter and assistance, ICMC support has ensured expanded daycare facilities for families and children, the distribution of food and essential items, and psychosocial support by a team of seven specialists.

“A person is not only psychology, but also a body and a soul,” explains Father Roman Prokopets, Head of the Orphans Care Centre and the House of Mercy in Lviv, both run by the Archdiocese of Ivano-Frankivsk. “We involve priest chaplains, working in parallel with psychotherapists, to help a person who is broken to unite and become whole again.”

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