Ukrainians return to Bulgaria holiday resort as refugees

They've been here before as holidaymakers. Now they're back as refugees -- hundreds of Ukrainian children and their mothers, sheltering in a Bulgarian Black Sea summer camp.

Everything has been shut for the winter in the tiny resort of Kitten and there's hardly a soul in the streets under the sunny but chilly March sky.

One hotel however hums with activity -- toddlers running around, women chatting in the corridors, distributing towels and snacks or sitting glued to the news on their phones.

Hotel owner Kostadin Milev, 32, has been welcoming Ukrainian holiday makers every summer for the past 10 years. When Russia invaded its neighbour, it was only natural for Milev to open up earlier than usual to offer them shelter.

Thanks to his Ukrainian tour operator, Aleksander Lishanski, buses started running to and from Ukraine at least once a day to fetch distressed children, mothers, grandmothers and aunts and bring them to the place they now call "our home from home".

Over 400 people have been taken in so far. 

They arrived to find the benches around an outdoor stage painted in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. On the pavement outside, children have written "Slava Ukraini" ("Glory to Ukraine").

"This was the only place abroad that we knew would accept us, shelter us and help us," Yuliya Molchanova, 43, said. She hugs her 12-year-old daughter Nastya, who has been here five times before.

When their northeastern city of Kharkiv was shelled by Russian forces, they spent five days in an underground shelter before making it to Kiten a week ago.

"We couldn't take anything when we left. Now we have everything," Yuliya smiles, showing off a pink sweater donated by a stranger.

She reads out a poem she wrote thanking Bulgaria for sharing "its peaceful skies, warmth and love, bread and water".

Bulgaria has long been a popular destination for both tourists and seasonal workers from Ukraine. Some 470,000 of them visited in 2021.