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A brand new Prague-based web radio station has began to broadcast information, info and music tailor-made to the day-to-day considerations of some 300,000 refugees who’ve arrived within the Czech Republic since Russia launched its army assault in opposition to Ukraine.
In a studio on the coronary heart of the Czech capital, radio veterans work along with absolute freshmen to offer the refugees with what they should know to settle as easily as potential in a brand new nation.
The workers of 10 combines individuals who have fled Ukraine in current weeks with those that have been residing overseas for years. Regardless of who they’re, their widespread objective is to assist fellow Ukrainians and their homeland going through the brutal Russian invasion.
Natalia Churikova, an skilled journalist with Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty mentioned she could not say no to a suggestion to turn out to be the broadcaster’s editor-in-chief.
“It was for my individuals, for individuals who actually wanted assist, who actually wanted help, one thing that may assist them begin a brand new stay or restart their lives right here after they’ve lived by way of very unhealthy issues attempting to flee from Ukraine,” Churikova mentioned.
Staffer Sofia Tatomyr is a type of who left to flee the struggle. The 22-year-old from the western city of Kalush was planning to maneuver to a different metropolis in Ukraine when a good friend known as one morning: “Sofia, the struggle has simply begun.”
Her mother and father and older brother opted to remain house, however they wished her to affix her aunt in Prague.
“It occurred impulsively,” she mentioned. She boarded a bus alone in Cherniutsi and arrived 28 hours later within the Czech capital, a metropolis she’d by no means visited.
“Once I was already overseas, I keep in mind the second that I used to be crying and I used to be attempting to purchase a ticket and I could not spell what ticket I would like. It was actually troublesome,” she mentioned.
Tatomyr labored as graphic designer and singer in Ukraine after getting a level as a writer and media editor. Radio broadcasting was a part of her programs on the college. To her shock, her aunt’s brother discovered an announcement about jobs for a brand new Ukrainian radio station.
She mentioned she wanted “a while to know that not all people might be on the frontline on the struggle and all people has to do what she or he can do the very best.”
“So that is how I am cheering myself up that I am doing my occupation, that I am doing what I can do the very best, and that is one of the simplest ways I might help our individuals, I might help Ukraine. That is how I am desirous about it,“ she mentioned.
Secure in Prague, she was nonetheless attempting to return to phrases with the invasion of her homeland.
“It is horrible,” she mentioned. “I can not nonetheless discover any logical rationalization for what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Within the twenty first century, a struggle? Why? We had been a peaceable nation residing simply our lives.”
One other announcer, Marharyta Golobrodska, was working as a copywriter for a software program firm when she obtained a name from Churikova, whom she knew from an internship at Radio Free Europe.
“I used to contemplate those that stand up early to be able to work from 6am loopy, however that is what I do now and I totally take pleasure in it,” Golobrodska mentioned. “That is what I at all times wished to do, to be useful for my nation, despite the fact that I stay so far-off.”
For 12 hours every weekday — and 11 hours on weekends — Radio Ukraine performs Ukrainian and western music whereas presenting information of Ukraine and the Czech Republic along with info for refugees each quarter-hour. It consists of particulars about the place they’ll get the paperwork they want from native authorities, how you can get a job or medical therapy, or how you can discover a place for kids at faculties. Kids can hearken to Ukrainian fairy tales.
A local of the southern metropolis of Mykolaiv, Golobrodska has lived within the Czech Republic for eight-and-a-half years. After the invasion, she travelled to western Ukraine to satisfy her mom and 9-year-old sister and drive them to security. In Prague, she acquired them concerned in her broadcast.
“My mum, for instance, instructed me she’d like to listen to what she’s not speculated to do right here. For instance, that she will’t park the automotive wherever she needs to love in Ukraine,” she mentioned.
Bohemia Media, which operates a number of radio stations within the Czech Republic, got here up with the thought to launch the station. It supplied a studio and its individuals cooperated with the Ukrainian embassy, the native Ukrainian neighborhood and others to make it actuality in three weeks. It additionally covers the salaries.
Lukas Nadvornik, the proprietor of the Mediapark, an organization that represents Bohemia Media, mentioned the plan is for the station to stay on air so long as it is wanted. The important thing process for now could be to let know as many potential listeners as potential about its existence.
One in every of them is Sophia Medvedeva. The 23-year outdated internet designer could not maintain again tears as she talked concerning the current six-day drive along with her mom and youthful brother from Mykolaiv to Krakow, Poland.
However in Prague, she joined her fiancé and Radio Ukraine helped her adapt to a brand new life. “I am so amazed concerning the likelihood to hearken to Ukrainian music once I’m not in my homeland. I really feel that I am not alone,” she mentioned. Her solely suggestion for it’s to ask a psychologist to “advise the Ukrainian refugees about how you can combat the survivor syndrome and how you can combat melancholy.”
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