FES BRIEFING UKRAINIAN REFUGEES IN BULGARIA In the Trap of Non-Existent Integration Maria Cheresheva April 2022 Two months after the commencement of the Russian mil­itary invasion of Ukraine, Adelina Banakieva, a volunteer from Sofia, does not know the exact number of Ukrainian refugees for whom she has provided shelter and support. „At the moment there are 26 people, adults, without the children. I don‘t know how many cats and dogs there are,” she said. For years she has been working to help children with dis­abilities in Bulgaria and their mothers, which is why she faces some of the most serious cases among those flee­ing the war in Ukraine- children with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. She sends these cases abroad, because in Bul­garia there are no mechanisms to ensure adequate treat­ment for them, nor opportunities for their parents to start work. And she does this alone, without the help of institutions. There is help from donors, volunteers and the media.„I have the feeling that I am driving along a motorway and I don’t have time to look at the navigation and I don’t know where I am going. That‘s how it is for all of us volunteers at the moment,” Adelina commented. As in many other countries, in Bulgaria it was volunteers and civil society organisations that were the first to wel­come the unprecedented stream of refugees caused by the war in Ukraine. As fast as lightning, the Bulgarian cit­izens organised themselves, opened their homes to the Ukrainians and began to provide them with transport to the borders of the country and also from the Ukrainian border regions. With the help of business and the non-governmental sector, they took over the provision of humanitarian and psychological support, child care, cul­tural and entertainment activities to bring a drop of nor­mality in the new daily life of temporary asylum seekers in our country. And if in the first days of the crisis this could be considered quite normal, bearing in mind the greater flexibility and adaptability of the civil sector, then in the second month after the start of hostilities among volunteers, weariness and dissatisfaction with the cum­bersome response of institutions could be observed. „WE ARE FACING A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER” According to data from the Council of Ministers, pub­lished on the official government portal in support of Ukrainian refugees, as of April 18th, nearly 195,000 Ukrainian citizens had crossed the borders of the country, and just over 91,000 had chosen to stay here, 35,000 of them children. The data published also shows that are over 50,000 Ukrainian citizens accommodated in hotels or state and local departmental buildings under the Pro­gram for the Use of Humanitarian Aid for Displaced Per­sons from Ukraine, which entered into force in mid­March. This means that more than a third of the refugee flow from Ukraine has been taken in by Bulgarian citizens. The program is in force until the end of May, and at the moment the government has no plans to extend it. It pro­vides the places for accommodation with 40 BGN per day per refugee for shelter and food. From the very begin­ning, this has been the subject of criticism because, on one hand, it legitimises only business and state property as beneficiaries of financial support, whilst nothing is provided for volunteers, who meet the needs of refugees out of their own budgets, and on the other it cannot be sustained due to the upcoming summer tourist season. Most of the Ukrainians are indeed accommodated in ho­tels on the Black Sea coast because of the large number of beds, but also due to the fact that they themselves know the Bulgarian seaside resorts as tourists and prefer to opt for the familiar. The fact that there are serious Rus­sian and Ukrainian-speaking communities in the region of Varna and Burgas, which provide great support to newcomers, should not be overlooked. However, this is leading to the overcrowding of coastal towns and resorts, which do not have the capacity to offer the health, social and educational services necessary for tens of thousands of mothers with children. 1