World Refugee Day: Displaced musician says Scotland 'feels like home'

Harpist Yeva Panchenko was on tour in the UK with a municipal orchestra when the conflict broke out.

The news of the invasion reached her and her fellow musicians while they were performing in Torquay and Yeva described how they all “cried for days” as they tried to keep in touch with their families back home.

Eventually, it was Glasgow who welcomed her and her friends with open arms as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) offered to support them while they were on temporary visas.

Now, thanks to housing association the Wheatley Group, they are being supported to continue their studies at RCS from September after the company’s charitable trust have offered six education bursaries worth £3000 over two years.

At the Wheatley’s Group’s headquarters in Glasgow on World Refugee Day on Monday, an emotional Yeva told The National how Glasgow felt safe and familiar.

She said: “[Scotland is] the most safe place for us and it’s like home. Glasgow feels really familiar, it feels like Kyiv and Kharkiv, when you see in the streets all the old and very beautiful buildings with the modern glasshouses.

Ukrainian students (left to right) violinist Anastasiia Syvash, violinist Ihor Solodovnik, vocalist Dalia Moskaliuk, harpist Yeva Panchenko, vocalist Oleksii Zasiadko and trombonist Viktor Kovach, during Minister with Special Responsibility for Refugees from Ukraine Neil Gray's visit to the Wheatley Group

“Glaswegians have been really friendly as well.”

Yeva said the news of the war seemed otherworldly and all she felt was panic.

As she recalled the day, she added: “On that day we were in Torquay, and it was 4am when the invasion happened and we didn’t sleep because of the news.

“We all talked with our families and we were worried. We just all cried and it feels like that’s been constant.

“We didn’t stop crying for a few days. We just panicked and didn’t know what to do. When you leave a peaceful country and you hear the word ‘war’, you just think it’s something from another world, far away.

“I just hope one day all the wars in the world will stop.”

Yeva was able to meet with Refugees Minister Neil Gray at the Wheatley Group as the company announced it would be offering 300 available homes to local authorities across Scotland to support Ukrainians fleeing the war.

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The firm will make the offer of the homes to strategic housing partners at councils in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, West Lothian, Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire.

Gray said the offer was a great example of the warm Scottish welcome being given to Ukrainians.

He said: “I’m delighted the Wheatley Group has come forward to provide a safe place for people displaced by the war in Ukraine so they can rebuild their lives.

“It’s part of the warm Scottish welcome our constituents expect and obviously that’s expected and deserved by people arriving from Ukraine so I’m really grateful for their offer.

“I’m also really grateful for the work they are doing with the conservatoire to provide sanctuary to those musicians and ensure they are able to continue their studies.

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“It’s been really rewarding to see Ukrainians settle here. We definitely have more work to do, there’s no doubt about it. I do want to have a faster pace with property checks and disclosure checks for the individuals and ensure that the matching between those that arrive from Ukraine and those that want to host can happen as quickly as possible.”

Gray added refugees make an important contribution to Scotland and said the path the UK Government was taking with its plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was “abhorrent”.

The first flight due to take refugees to East Africa was grounded last week following a late legal intervention from the European Court of Human Rights.

Gray said: “Anyone coming and choosing to make Scotland their home has a contribution to make to Scotland.

“The diversity that they provide, the additional culture offer and skills they provide, as well as the feeling of Scotland being a safe place to call home is really important to me.

“That’s why it’s so disappointing and abhorrent, in fact, that we see the UK Government taking this path, breaking the International Refugee Convention by looking to trade in human misery and deport people who are trying to claim asylum to Rwanda.

“It’s not a surprise there’s been such a strong backlash, not just in Scotland but across the UK, to this awful policy. I hope we will see the UK gov reflect on it and stop it.

“Even on its basic principle of what they say it’s trying to achieve, I don’t think it will. Unless the UK Government sets up legal and safe routes for people to come to the UK and claim asylum, the people traffickers will always have a business model to follow and that is the issue they need to tackle.”