Ukrainians offered help at border checkpoint to Romania

It was almost dusk Sunday. At the Siret checkpoint on Romania's northern border with Ukraine, Romanian volunteers were waiting for worrying Ukrainians.

Since Saturday, the largest border checkpoint between the two countries had seen an increasing number of Ukrainians entering Romania, volunteer Stefan Rotaru told Xinhua correspondents.

Most of them were women and children. Many were dragging suitcases. Some had only a backpack.

Local volunteers greeted their Ukrainian neighbors with enthusiasm and offered food, transport and accommodation to them.

Romanian Ukrainian Olga Papuc had just crossed the border with her 11-year-old son, while her elder son was still doing business in Russia.

Papuc's family lived in Chernivtsi, a Ukrainian city less than 50 km north of Siret. The fire of the Russia-Ukraine conflict had not yet reached the city, but they had left out of fear. She had found a place to stay in Romania and planned to wait to return home, or take her younger son to acquaintances in Italy if the conflict drags on too long.

Russia and Ukraine "are like brothers fighting, but now no one backs down," said Papuc.

The border area was crowded but orderly. Some Ukrainians were resting in tents; others took vans parked by the roadside to go to temporary refugee camps or nearby airports and railway stations. More than half of the Ukrainians who entered would then travel westwards to the Schengen area through the Romanian-Hungarian border.

Romanian government spokesman Dan Carbunaru said Sunday that since Thursday, 47,000 Ukrainians had entered Romania, of which 22,785 had left the country soon by car or other means for the Schengen countries.

"There is a special need for volunteers who can speak Ukrainian and Russian," said Angela Robu, a Ukrainian Romanian who can speak Ukrainian. Another volunteer who had been here for the past two days said she was studying Ukrainian.

Robu, who works at Stefan cel Mare University in Suceava city, said that she had started the "new job" the day before.

The local department for emergency situations on Saturday had set up 30 tents at a football stadium in Siret, where medical staff would conduct coronavirus tests and offer related medical services to Ukrainian citizens, as the pandemic has not yet ended, Gheorghe Flutur, chairman of the Suceava County Council, who was inspecting the work on site, told Xinhua.

Carbunaru said the total number of Ukrainian citizens currently in Romania stood at 25,000, 102 of whom had applied for refugee status.

Romania has the potential to accept 400,000 refugees, said Raed Arafat, head of the Romanian Department for Emergency Situations, noting that the number of refugee applicants was currently low.