EXCLUSIVE TO ROMEA TV: Interview with Romani soldiers serving in the Army of Ukraine at the front

A group of Romani soldiers has been serving on the front line of the Russo-Ukrainian war for two weeks now. They all come from the same town and now, like other Romani people in Ukraine, they have volunteered to defend their country from the barbaric attack being perpetrated by the Army of Russia. 

"We get up at 4 or 5 AM, whenever necessary. There are days we don’t sleep," one Romani soldier from the Army of Ukraine says in this exclusive interview with ROMEA TV.

According to him, the Roma are not afraid on the front line. "What’s to fear now? We knew where we were going. The main thing is for our families to be ok," he told ROMEA TV.

These soldiers are not the only Romani people defending Ukraine from the Russian aggressor. "The young Roma have gone to fight in the Donbas, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Odessa or Kherson. They are also defending Kyiv," Myroslav Horvat, a Romani activist from Uzhhorod, Ukraine, said in an earlier interview for ROMEA TV.

Russia attacked Ukraine in the early morning hours of 24 February 2022. The attack is the biggest by one state against another in Europe since World War II. 

More than a month since the Russian attack began, upwards of 3.8 million Ukrainians have fled into the European Union, of whom more than two million have found refuge in Poland. Among other countries in the region, the Czech Republic, where there are already around 300 000 refugees from Ukraine, is one of those most involved with their reception.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy assesses the current overall situation as tense in Ukraine, despite the partial successes of the Army of Ukraine in recent days. According to him, the Ukrainian defenders have managed to push Russian troops out of the city of Irpin near Kyiv, but fighting continues in other parts of the country.