‘I lost my husband in the Ukraine war – I came to Dubai to be safe’ | EUROtoday

Ukrainian widow Olga Garbuz, who misplaced her husband to the warfare in Ukraine, got here to Dubai together with her daughter in 2022 to rebuild her life.

But the current escalation within the Gulf has revived the fears she thought she had left behind.

“The war in Ukraine took many things from me and my daughter. My husband got killed. We got displaced multiple times. I cannot imagine going through any of these again, Mrs Garbuz tells The Independent.

Her husband Yuriy Volchkov was killed in Kharkiv, a frontline city in eastern Ukraine, in March 2022, when the vehicle he was travelling to distribute humanitarian aid was shot at by the Russians. He was 45 years old.

After fleeing Kharkiv, which fell under the Russian occupation in the early months of the war, Ms Garbuz and her daughter moved repeatedly across Ukraine before eventually leaving the country.

“We had to move 13 times from city to city,” she says. “Each time packing our things and setting up a new home was incredibly exhausting.

“I arrived in the UAE with my daughter Maya and just two suitcases four years ago. Since then, I have been working hard for the well-being of my daughter.”

A couple of days earlier than the escalation started with Iran’s retaliatory strikes throughout the Gulf, she stated she had lastly begun to really feel, after three years, that life was returning to regular.

Her greatest worry now’s having to uproot her daughter once more.

“Now we have been living in the same apartment for almost two years. My daughter goes to school regularly.

“It would be an absolutely heartbreaking situation for her if we had to move again,” she provides.

But the sound of missile interceptions over the Dubai skies has introduced again previous instincts.

“I found myself again packing an emergency bag. I knew which documents to include, that we must have water at home and cash on hand.”

The explosions additionally deliver again the bodily reminiscence of warfare: “Sometimes my body tenses up because I remember what it was like and what usually followed.

“I still try to remain calm and not give in to panic.”

Despite the strain, she says she nonetheless trusts the UAE authorities: “I believe they will be able to resolve this conflict diplomatically as quickly as possible.”

Per week on from the navy escalation, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian apologised for focusing on his Gulf neighbours, however Iran has continued to fireplace Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia with contemporary assaults.

On Friday, the UAE’s ministry of inside issued an emergency alert throughout Dubai urging residents to hunt fast shelter following warnings of a possible missile risk. The UAE intercepted 9 ballistic missiles and 109 drones, the Ministry of Defence confirmed.

Amid the rising stress, Ukraine’s international minister Andrii Sybiha stated he had acquired assurances from the federal government of the United Arab Emirates that Ukrainian residents within the nation can be protected.

About 250,000 Ukrainians are presently residing within the Middle East.

For Ukrainians like Kateryna Moskviechiev and her husband Dmytro, who relocated to the UAE for security, being caught up in one other battle removed from house in Abu Dhabi was the very last thing they anticipated.

“It feels like the war has followed us to Dubai,” Mrs Moskviechiev tells The Independent.

The household together with their two sons, aged eight and two, moved to the UAE in September 2024. An estimated 5.2 to six million Ukrainians moved overseas following the warfare.

“We left Ukraine because we didn’t want our children to grow up in a war zone,” she says.

But the sight of Russian missiles and Shahed drones flying overhead close to her residence on the Corniche, and the sound of loud explosions as air defence techniques intercepted them, left her “shocked and surprised”.

“That’s not what you expect in the UAE,” she says.

“It brought back my worst memories of Ukraine when our family hid in the bathroom while Russians bombed Kharkiv,” provides Mrs Moskviechiev.

“The three of us slept on the floor of a bus stop that had thick walls and no windows.”

As the current Iranian drone and missile assaults throughout the Gulf are far much less intense than the bombardment Ukraine has endured, she stated she isn’t scared.

“I’ve lived through this before,” she says. “And I’m impressed by how effectively the UAE’s air defence systems are responding. I definitely feel safer here than in Ukraine.”

Mrs Moskviechiev says she is praying this escalation will finish shortly.

“We know what a prolonged war can do to a country and its people – this war must stop.”

Another Ukrainian in Dubai, Alexandra Govorukha, a PR skilled, says she moved to Dubai six months in the past after relocating to the United Kingdom from Ukraine in 2022.

“And the danger is near again. One rocket was shot down not far from our house,” Ms Govorukha wrote in a publish on Facebook.

She says her nine-year-old daughter, who’s finding out remotely “knows what the war is and is already hardened by life.”

“We need to learn to have a Plan B everywhere and be prepared for any situation unfolding.”

Mariana Yevsyukova, a UAE resident since 2017, says the escalating tensions within the Middle East have stirred painful recollections for a lot of Ukrainians residing within the nation.

“We carry the trauma of witnessing war. We ran away from the Shahed drones in Ukraine, and now they are hitting the UAE.”

Mrs Yevsyukova, a mom of two kids aged seven and one, stated even kin again house in Ukraine are apprehensive in regards to the assaults within the Gulf.

“My family in Kharkiv checks on me several times a day. A friend who is struggling without power in this harsh winter messaged me to say he is there if I need anything.

“Even in the middle of a war, they are thinking about others.”