Hostel in Hungary opens for Ukrainian refugees

Nearly 300 Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, are being housed in a hostel outside the city center of Hungary's capital.

It's part of an initiative by a Hungarian humanitarian organization that the country's right-wing, anti-immigration government has long opposed.

As tens of thousands of refugees began entering Hungary after fleeing the violence of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, non-profit organization Migration Aid rented an entire five-story building in Budapest — initially designed as a workers' hostel — to provide temporary accommodation for those escaping the war.

Tatiana Shulieva, a 67-year-old retired epidemiologist who fled from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and plans to travel on to Egypt, said the one night she spent in the hostel was "like a fairy tale."

"I spent one night here feeling very positive with pleasant emotions because we came from a place where we lived in the basement because we were constantly fired on by rockets and planes," Shulieva said.

Migration Aid, which coordinates the dozens of volunteers and the daily operations of the hostel, was formed in 2015 in response to the more than 1 million refugees that fled war in Syria and Iraq and passed into Europe, many of them through Hungary.

But Hungary's government, which firmly opposes immigration and has refused to accept asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, took strong steps to prevent refugees from entering the country and limited the ability of civic organizations to assist them.

Migration Aid's support for refugees in 2015 made them the target of Hungary's anti-immigration government under nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and the subject of attacks in government-aligned media that accused the group of acting on behalf of foreign actors and facilitating illegal migration.

But Marton Elodi, who manages the hostel for Migration Aid, said the volunteer-run accommodation is currently the largest facility hosting Ukrainian refugees in Hungary, and has overshadowed the role of Hungary's government in providing aid for those fleeing the war.

"As far as the government goes, obviously most people know the story, they have been very anti-refugee and anti-immigrant since 2015," Elodi said.

"Now they kind of accept the help of Migration Aid and they approve that we have more experience in these kinds of situations than they have."

Most guests of the hostel stay for two or three nights and use the hostel as a waypoint where they can rest and regroup before moving on to further destinations in other countries, Elodi said.

Image: AP