‘They Told Me, If You’re Black You Should Walk’: Racist Treatment At Ukrainian Borders Is Putting Lives At Risk

‘We sat on the floor of the station and cried, the way they treated me made me ashamed of my skin colour. Me and all my friends, we were ashamed to be Black.’ Jessica Orakpo, 22, is a Nigerian medical student who up until Monday had lived in Kyiv, Ukraine for six years. She is one of more than one million people who have fled the country since the Russian invasion began last week, but her experience getting out was defined by another kind of brutality: racism.

Jessica attempted to leave Ukraine via the Polish border, but she speaks to me from Debrecen, Hungary where she eventually fled. ‘On Friday 25th at 8am, I took a taxi to get to the Polish border with three friends,’ Jessica tells me over the phone from her current temporary accommodation. ‘When we got to the line of cars, they had been there for two days already so the driver dropped us where Google Maps said would be one hour walking to the border. So we walked, but it kept going. We walked for more than 12 hours.

‘Eventually, a traffic warden saw us and said we could rest in a shelter where we would be given food. He said that there would be a bus going from the shelter to the Polish border the next morning, so we woke up at 4am to make sure we were as early as possible to get on. But when we got there, there was an obvious separation between Ukrainians being allowed to leave and anyone else. African people were not even being allowed on the bus.’

Desperate to escape, Jessica says she begged the official in charge to let her on the bus. She falsely told him she was pregnant in hopes that it would make a difference, but in her words, ‘he didn’t care’. ‘The official looked at me and said in his language, “Only Ukrainians allowed, if you’re Black you should walk”,’ Jessica says.

Jessica’s experience is not an anomaly. Over the past week, scores of foreign nationals who were living in Ukraine have posted online about similar experiences trying to leave the country. In response, the United Nations has put out a statement condemning discrimination against different nationalities, saying they will intervene to ensure equal treatment.

‘You have seen reports in the media that there are different treatments – with Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians… there are instances which it has happened, there has been a different treatment,’ Filippo Grandi, the organisation’s High Commissioner for Refugees said on Tuesday. ‘There should be absolutely no discrimination between Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians, Europeans and non-Europeans. Everyone is fleeing from the same risks.’

Korrine Sky, 26, a British-Zimbabwean national from Leicester, went viral earlier this week after documenting her attempt to leave Ukraine - where she was also studying medicine - live on Twitter. Her posts sparked outrage and caused #AfricansInUkraine to trend on Twitter, where others shared their experiences, too.

‘When my group was on our way to the border, a man held a gun up at me and told us that if we don't leave [the area] in five minutes he will shoot us,' Korrine tells Grazia from her temporary housing in Romania. 'I was also lunged at by one of the civilians [at the border] and other Black women have reported being shoved, women with children, too.'

Korrine travelled to the Romanian border from Kyiv by car and waited in a queue for over 40 hours. There was one queue for cars, another for pedestrians, but as her group got to the front they were told to leave their car and join the pedestrian queue instead.

'It seemed as though there was evident segregation because in the pedestrian queue there were only people of colour,' she says. 'There were Asians, Arab people and Black people. There were no [white] Ukrainian people in that queue.’

Korrine then contacted the British Embassy for help because they were not getting any support from the Ukrainian military present. Of all the people queuing by car, it was only her group that was told to join a different queue. While the embassy officer tried to assist, Korrine says she thinks ‘their hands were tied’. Eventually, Korrine’s group were helped by a group of Indian students who witnessed the mistreatment and, in support, told them to go ahead of them to the front of the queue.

‘It was 100% racism,’ Korrine says of the experience. ‘The Ukrainian military are the ones in control of who goes where and they are prioritising Ukrainian people leaving Ukraine. Us students who have come to Ukraine to get an education or better life for our families, we are the least of their worries. If we were in the car queue for over two days, imagine how long the people in the pedestrian queue were standing there for?’

Jessica agrees that her treatment was blatant racism too. ‘I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions at first,’ she says. ‘That is why I asked the officer at the bus station directly, “Are you not letting people on the bus because of their race?" And they said, “Yes”. I explained to them, “What you are doing is very bad”. But I was too scared and tired to argue with anyone, I just wanted to leave.

‘I cried, I was devastated,’ Jessica continues. ‘My friends and I, we were embarrassed of our skin colour in that moment. We were freezing cold and had not eaten anything the whole time we were travelling. One of my friends did not stop crying for days, she even went to the hospital because she was worried about why she could not stop crying.’

Jessica’s group tried to walk to the Polish border when they weren’t allowed on the bus, but saw a man returning from the border who told them he had been there for two days and they were not letting non-Ukrainians through. They decided to return to Kyiv and exit through a different border, choosing Hungary after a friend gave them details of a train that would take them there. She has since found refuge in temporary housing, but says there is little help for African nationals to find more permanent accommodation.

Jessica had just three months left of her medicine course before she would graduate. Now, she has no idea how to restart her life or where to go next. While Korrine was in Romania when we spoke, she was able to return home to Leicester yesterday. But the fight to get people out of Ukraine is not over; she plans to continue her efforts supporting foreign nationals who are still trying to leave.

‘Right now we have over 1000 students stuck and they have no way out,’ Korrine explains. ‘I’ve been in communication with them and collated a database with all their names.’ She plans to launch a website where people can assist students trying to leave – but in the meantime a GoFundMe has been set up to help Black students, you can click here to donate and find out more.

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