Volunteers are working to transform a former school building in a village near Zhlobin, Homel region, into what they describe as a camp for refugees fleeing violence in southeastern Ukraine.
Aleh Krapitski, a resident of the town of Zhlobin, said that he had leased the building in the village of Kasakouka to accommodate families traveling from Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where government forces have been fighting armed pro-Russian militants for weeks.
Mr Krapitski said that people from across Belarus had donated various household items to the camp. ‘We have already brought gas stoves to the former school and will bring a refrigerator and washing machines there on Saturday,’ he said. According to the activist, local farms have agreed to hire Ukrainian refugees.
The first refugee family – a mother with two children traveling from Sloviansk, Donetsk region – was expected to arrive at the camp on June 13. The building can lodge up to 100 people, said Mr Krapitski.
At thet, local government officials said that the building had been in disuse for eight years and was hardly fit for human occupancy. It has not been examined by fire safety and health authorities recently, they said. A spokesperson for the Zhlobin District Executive Committee said that it had no information about the camp.
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The Belarusian embassy in Kyiv has been receiving a lot of inquiries from Ukrainian citizens about the possibility of moving to Belarus, Dzmitry Mironchyk, spokesman for the Belarusian foreign ministry, told reporters in Minsk on April, 17. In his recent interview to Russian TV channel NTV president Aliaksandr Lukashenka said that some 2,000 refugees wanted to move from Ukraine to Belarus.
www.belsat.eu/en, following BelaPAN
