Inside a makeshift refugee center in Moldova, where a Russian antiwar activist is helping skeptical Ukrainians who fled his country's war

hallway at convention center — Refugees sleep on twin beds at the MoldExpo convention center in Chisinau, Moldova.
Charles Davis/Insider

More than 430,000 Ukrainian refugees have passed through Moldova, with nearly 100,000 staying there.
Some find housing at the MoldExpo convention center in the capital.
Insider visited the site and spoke to refugees, including an antiwar activist from Russia.

CHISINAU, MOLDOVA — At the convention center in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, there are about 300 Ukrainians spread over two buildings. Some are there for days, before they move on to better things, and some there for a month, convinced they do not need to move on because they will soon be going home.

There's one washing machine in MoldExpo, the main convention hall, and only a few more bathrooms. People sleep on twin beds in little cubicles separated by dividers. Near the entrance, there is a wall full of posters advertising potential jobs. One asks the displaced people here to come forward with any evidence of war crimes.

But it's not as chaotic and noisy as before: The dogs that people brought with them are still barking, but the children at least now have a dedicated playroom.

registration desk — Around 120 people sleep in MoldExpo in Chisinau, Moldova, which was previously used to test and vaccinate people against COVID-19.
Charles Davis/Insider

Sophie, 19, is wearing a hoodie that says: "Be Good, Do Better."

"I live in Odesa with my mother, born in Odesa, and my father, born in Odesa," she said when asked where she was from.

That's where her mind is. Her dad and her boyfriend are still there, men of a certain age generally prohibited from leaving. That's a "problem" there, she said.

She left soon after Russia's invasion with her brother, mother, and grandmother — their father drove them to the border with Moldova in their car, about an hour away, where they encountered a miles-long traffic jam. They got out and walked the rest of the way.

"Of course the reason is because Odesa was bombed," she explained. "But the main reason was because we couldn't sleep anymore — all the time there were air sirens."

The Russians, she said, "are using the same techniques as the Nazis did in the Second World War. They bomb cities during the night and they don't let people sleep. In this way they undermine our mental resistance — they attack not only our physical resistance, but the psychological."

She and her family now stay at an apartment in Chisinau with friends they knew before the war. She only volunteers at the convention center. But she's in the city for the same reason most Ukrainians are: Because she wants to return and this is "the closest country."

Alexandr Kudashev in front of wall of posters — Alexandr Kudashev volunteers at the MoldExpo convention center in Chisinau, Moldova.
Charles Davis/Insider

Alexandr Kudashev, 37, does not want to go back to his country ever again, at least not so long as Vladimir Putin is in power. He's Russian.

At the start of the war, "I was protesting every day," he said.

Kudashev, an electrician, is from Samara, a city about 700 miles east of Moscow — but he described himself as having come to Moldova from "police custody," because that's where spent most of his time after taking to the streets in a country where antiwar dissent is illegal. (Russia has detained more than 15,000 protesters since the start of the invasion on February 24, according to the OVD-Info tracker.)

Kudashev is renting an apartment in Chisinau and volunteering at the convention center to help refugees.

"Most people in Russia are pro-war because they are brainwashed by TV," he said. But he doesn't excuse that, saying that if people wanted to find the truth, they know where to look.

twin beds — Although most find more permanent housing, Ukrainian refugees can stay for days or even weeks at MoldExpo.
Charles Davis/Insider

Kudashev said he also wants people to know that not all Russians support what their country is doing to its neighbor.

"It's going to be hard to go back," he said of the once-friendly relations between most Ukrainians and Russians, many of whom have relatives in each other's country.

"You cannot just go back after the war finishes," he said. "You have to reestablish the relationship. And I want to help. I'd like more Ukrainains to see people like me, who are against Putin and do not support the war."

What do Ukrainians think?

Kudashev said most have been welcoming.

Sophie, the woman from Odesa, was a few feet away as he spoke. She was later asked what she thought of him, a Russian among the refugees.

How could she trust him — or any Russian — she replied, when her boyfriend is back home fighting them?

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

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