Children from Poltava arrive in Ostrava: first night without sirens

A group of Ukrainian children aged ten to fifteen from Poltava has arrived in Ostrava for a ten-day trip around Czechia. They reached the first stop on their route at two o’clock on Thursday morning after spending 34 hours on a FlixBus coach. The carrier sent the bus to Poltava and will pay for the journey back.

The children left home to the sound of sirens, and danger accompanied them on the road. It is about a thousand kilometres from their city, which lies between Kyiv and Kharkiv, to the Polish border, and at the border they had to wait another twelve hours: repeated alerts over missile and drone attacks closed the crossing for several hours.

The children spent their first day tired but happy, most of it at the “Big World of Technology” exhibition in Dolní Vítkovice near Ostrava. According to Maksym, who organises the trip on the Ukrainian side as head of a department at the Poltava veterans’ centre, the children said at breakfast that they had slept peacefully for the first time in many years and very soundly. It felt strange to them to spend a night without explosions and sirens, and they were surprised to see aeroplanes in the sky until the adults explained that these were civilian, not military, aircraft.

Life in constant alarm

In Poltava, Maksym says, the alerts never stop: sirens sound several times a day, often for more than twelve hours at a stretch. Most missiles and drones fly over the city deeper into Ukraine. Children are often in shelters, where lessons are also held, and everyone sleeps badly at night. “That is why it is wonderful that our friends from the Czech Republic invited us and organised such a trip,” he said.

The children will spend ten days in Czechia: they will see the sights of Ostrava, spend three days in Zlín and its surroundings, and finish with Prague, where a tour of Prague Castle awaits them. The trip is under the patronage of Eva Pavlová, wife of the Czech president, and her charitable foundation is paying for the children’s transport around the country.

Around Prague guide on the topic: Главные достопримечательности Чехии

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz