Odessa (Ukraine), Oct 1 (IANS/EFE) Despite a recent ceasefire, the people displaced by the separatist conflict in Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine continue to flock to different areas of the country, including the port city of Odessa, which already hosts about 15,000.
Almost a month after the Ukrainian government and separatist leaders signed an agreement for an end to hostilities, the persistent flow of refugees is causing increasing tension in Odessa, the Black Sea harbour with a Russian-speaking majority.
The population there has been torn in recent months between solidarity and dissent with the pro-Russian separatists.
Odessa suffered a tragic incident last May when pro-Russian demonstrators were attacked by Ukrainian nationalists and sought shelter in the House of Unions, which was set afire by the radicals, leaving 46 dead and about 200 injured.
"Two hundred displaced continue to arrive daily from Donbass (the region comprising Lugansk and Donetsk)," says priest Petro Serdichenko, who heads a charitable organisation that has helped hundreds of displaced in Odessa since April.
According to figures provided by the authorities of Odessa to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 14,700 displaced people have arrived in the city, 2,000 of them from the peninsula of Crimea, which acceded to Russia in March.
"The flow does not stop and we think that these people will stay during the winter because infrastructure in Donetsk and Lugansk have been destroyed, and schools are closed, as well as hospitals and shops," Serdichenko said.
The clergyman from the Pentecost Church has been running for more than two decades the Good Samaritan foundation, which has added to its usual activities in prisons, orphanages, nursing homes and a school the hosting of immigrants from the east.
The foundation has opened two shelters on the outskirts of Odessa, one with a capacity for 200 people and the other for a hundred.
Both have received so far about 500 people due to the constant turnover of residents.
Although many have returned to the east, their place was immediately occupied by the new arrivals or those returning to Odessa after discovering conditions are still not viable where they used to live.
Serdichenko, however, does not hide the difficulties of dealing with the displaced, even for a priest like him.
"The people of Odessa have opened their hearts to immigrants and many families have received them, but they want more. They say we are indebted to them because we bombed them, which is not true," he says.
The refugees recall once and again the attacks by government forces against the pro-Russian militia in a conflict that has seriously affected the civilian population, to the point of causing the displacement of more than 300,000 people to other parts of Ukraine, while others have applied for asylum in Russia.
Serdichenco said his foundation does not receive aid from the state, international organisations or the Church and relies only on private funding and donations of clothing and other essential goods.
Businesswoman Zgurova Ilona, who for several years has been importing jewellery from Denmark, is more outspoken and complains that now the population of Odessa "has to pay to keep the displaced, rather than invest in its own development".
"The people of Donetsk and Lugansk favoured pro-Russians because they wanted to get money from Russia, which promised them retirement pensions three times higher than those in Ukraine. Now they must pay for the option they chose," she told Spanish news agency Efe.
Zgurova is the president of the Association of Businesswomen of Odessa, many of them very active in helping soldiers wounded on the war front.
As they await a return to normalcy, aid organisations are preparing to adapt temporary shelters for the winter, knowing that the final return of the displaced will take time.