Members of the Roma minority enthusiastically serve in Ukraine’s army in the fight against Russia, but others are worried about persecution once the conflict is over.
“Defending Ukraine was his goal,” Angelina Debyosh, 23, says of her husband, who is battling Russian soldiers in Mariupol on the other side of the country.
A swarm of children pile onto a loose mattress that serves as the primary piece of furniture in her small and sparse house with a sloping floor in Uzhhorod, in the war-torn country’s southwest.
Igor Kotlar, Debyosh’s 31-year-old spouse, is a former cab driver who joined the Ukrainian army in 2018.
They have five little girls together and are both Roma.
The road through their town, Radvanka, is pockmarked and passes alongside a cement industry in the border city of Hungary and Slovakia.
The houses here are clearly hand-built from cinder blocks, with some holes in the walls and no running water or gas.
Trash collection and other municipal services are not available.
Despite being persecuted and marginalised throughout Ukraine’s history, the Roma minority, which numbers over 400,000 people, has actively participated to the war effort. Ukrainian flags are frequently seen affixed to buildings or on flag poles in decaying Roma neighbourhoods such as Radvanka. Since the Russian invasion began on February 24, Roma churches have gathered food and medication, and Roma volunteers have offered refuge to both Roma and non-Roma evacuees in western Ukraine.
