For the first time since the war began and since my daughter was born, I embarked on a journey abroad. As the Ukraine-based Campaign Coordinator for Eastern Europe at Naturewatch Foundation, I had the opportunity to visit Moldova and reconnect with animal welfare organisations and friends.
This trip was not just a chance to further our work but also a moment to step away from the daily challenges of living in a war-torn country.
We have several projects in Moldova, so I wanted to meet our colleagues and understand the situation in the country. I also planned to visit my friend, a Turkish animal activist, as I haven’t seen her for six years. She had invited me to live in her flat for a month. It would be a great opportunity to be able to work, as back home in Ukraine, we do not have electricity for more than 16 hours a day. My daughter went with me as I have nobody to take care of her – all our relatives are still in Kharkiv, from where we evacuated back in 2022.
The challenges of travelling from Ukraine
Just to remind you – there are no public flights in Ukraine now because of the war. The only train to Chişinău from Ukraine was from Kyiv. We were extremely lucky that a train from Odesa to Kyiv goes through the village where we live, and we were able to get tickets. (It was summer, so everyone who can wants to go to the seaside. As Russia has taken most of our coastline, the only place for Ukrainians to go is Odesa and the area around it, so tickets sell out quickly.) Our trip started at 4:30am, and my child experienced travelling by train for the first time in her life.
We arrived in Kyiv at around midday, so we had to spend all day there till our evening train to Chişinău. The day in the hot city was as challenging as the trip to Chişinău because of the weather – it was +36°C. The train had air conditioning, but it was working only while the train was on the move. When it was standing, like, for example, two hours on the border, I felt like I was sitting in an oven.
Chişinău greeted us with a warm welcome – friendly people and more temperatures of +36°C. But it was interesting to experience a peaceful life with perfectly functioning electricity, without red alerts, with people peacefully walking around and suffering only from the hot weather.
Catching up with animal welfare organisations in Moldova
I was glad to meet our Moldovan colleagues and discuss our projects with them.
It felt very much like I came to distant relatives, who really care about me and the things that matter to me.
We realised that our countries have a lot in common, and we can use our materials and experience from our former projects in Ukraine for the development of a Moldovan stray animal population control system.
Visiting a former shelter manager in Turkey
In Turkey, I was disappointed to find out that they were planning to introduce euthanasia, because for me, Turkey has always been an example of how to treat stray cats and dogs:
- All dogs are spayed and neutered.
- All cats have houses.
- Bowls with water and dry food are everywhere.
I was always so happy to see those huge friendly dogs with ear tags, and I was sure that I could pet any of them, and they would not be afraid of me or be aggressive towards me.
Besides, they have a great system of stray animal population management. In every town of any size, anyone who finds a stray dog or cat can call the municipality and set up a date for free spaying and neutering. And, if a stray animal is ill, the municipality would take them for treatment and return them afterwards.
The new law has attracted a lot of attention. However, my Turkish friend, who was a vet and a shelter manager for 16 years, has not found any difference between the new rules and the old ones. The procedure seems to be the same: same rules for euthanising shelter animals, same rules for taking them from the streets. There may be some points of this new law that we did not notice but, overall, it does not look that dissimilar.
Making plans with animal rescue volunteers in Moldova
Chişinău
On my way back, I stopped off in Chişinău again to meet with local volunteers, and we:
- Talked about what we can do in situations when they are not able to change the law.
- Discussed the experience of other countries, including Ukraine.
- Exchanged contacts with animal activists, vets, and organisations from all over Europe to start projects that would bring animal welfare in Moldova on the higher level.
- Agreed that, while we cannot do much in Chişinău, we can get bigger results in other cities, like Bălți or Leova, where we have started a very promising project on pet registration and microchipping, which is growing into a city programme for the sterilisation of pets.
Bălți
My next stop was in Bălți, where our colleague Karl Luganov has started work on helping local shelters. He has created a set of documents which helps keep track on animals, sterilisation, feeding, cleaning etc.
It is certainly more work for already overloaded staff, but it helps them monitor their tasks. There are only 10 staff and more than 500 dogs in the shelter, so it is very hard for them to keep it going properly. We want to do our best to help them arrange their work so that it would take them less effort and time to do them.
I also talked to the city counselors to ask them to help the shelter get budgeting for more staff and proper feed for the dogs. The councillors seemed ready to help and very open to new initiatives to make their city friendlier for animals. We have planned several steps to do together to improve animal welfare in Bălți.
We are also open for cooperation with anyone if it works well for the animals, so we have arranged a meeting with animal activists of Bălți and had a quite long and productive discussion with them as well. We hope that we will be able to get them on board with our Moldovan projects.
This visit to collaborate with Moldova on animal welfare issues would not have been possible without our supporters – it’s thanks to them that we can continue to make the world a kinder place for animals.
Keep up with our animal welfare work in Eastern Europe:
