Chronicles from Minsk INGLESE
The story of a seven-year love story. When will the logic of war give way to the reasons of peace?
by Alessandro and Maria Pia Manfridi
It’s been snowing incessantly for three days. New Year’s Eve under the snow.
Minsk is a spectacle, with its wide streets decorated with flashing lights and Christmas symbols, the Svilač River and the “Island of Tears” becoming one, embraced by this expanse of white that makes the city center even more charming, accompanying the lights, colors, and Christmas carols wafting through the squares and from the stages set up for the celebrations.
“It’s been five years since we Belarusians saw such snowfall. We weren’t used to it anymore. It took us by surprise, too,” says Tania, our young friend, whom we met with her husband Mose and their three young, lively, blond children on New Year’s Eve.
Tania is the daughter of Irina and Ivan, the managers of the foster home where our children were welcomed as children and are now raising them.
It’s a friendship that has lasted for years.
Seven, to be precise.
Once upon a time, there were “Welcome and Rehabilitation Trips.”
These projects were born in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.
For decades, generations of Belarusian children have been welcomed by thousands of Italian families through trips organized by various associations.
Channels of love, acceptance, and sharing have been created.
Many of those children, now adults, have kept the memory of Italy in their hearts and the relationships with the families who welcomed them for years.
Many others have gone through adoption processes and moved to our country.
I remember that welcome projects are different from adoption processes.
In the national and international adoption process, the relevant institutions provide a complex process aimed at bringing the adoptive couple and the children together, with varying timeframes depending on the children’s countries of origin.
In reality, however, their adaptation to their “new life” is not simple, and sometimes even painless, for both the children and the couple.
It is not easy to “plan” or “predict” the various developments, despite the input of all the specialists required by institutional regulations.
The reception of Belarusian children, which began as remediation projects for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, presents a rather different picture.
The children, coming from Belarusian foster homes and orphanages as well as from biological families, were welcomed by host families for one month between December and January and three months in the summer, from the age of 7 to 18.
This experience offered the opportunity to build bonds, knowledge, and sharing, which sometimes led the orphaned children to “choose” their families, rather than “be chosen.”
While this was not the intention of any adoptive family, nor the rationale of the legislator, it is a feeling that sometimes cannot be avoided, because the time between the beginning of an adoption process and the final placement of the child is incomparable to the years of placement enjoyed by Belarusian children.
My wife and I began this experience by chance.
Between 2018 and 2019, we joyfully welcomed into our home four times a small Belarusian child. From the age of 7 to 8, he had recently started school in Belarus and already understood Italian fluently and was beginning to speak it.
Then, in 2020, the first closure of reception facilities occurred due to COVID-19, while we were in the midst of the lockdown.
In May 2021, the EU sanctioned Belarus, banning Belarusian airline flights to all EU countries, once again preventing minors from flying to Italy to host families.
https://www.vinonuovo.it/attualita/arcipelago-giovani/mi-chiamo-sergej-lettera-alle-autorita-italiane/
Since 2022, with the start of the “Special Operation,” the tensions associated with it—in the well-known geopolitical context—have strained relations between EU Member States and Belarus, resulting in a further flight ban and the subsequent blocking of orphaned minors placed in foster homes and orphanages.
The result has been catastrophic for these minors.
The seven thousand orphaned children and adolescents—considered “children of the Belarusian state” in Belarus—who had been taken in by their Italian families for years, have been denied this opportunity for six consecutive years.
Many organizations have closed.
Many families have no longer felt like continuing the process.
Many minors, after years of longing and waiting, dreaming of a future in Italy, have tragically seen these opportunities denied them, their dreams shattered.
Many of them decided to forgo these ties to live their lives in their homeland.
Conversely, some associations (including Puer) and some families persisted.
For some, the goal was closer, because after years of development, the minors were approaching adulthood and thus eligible to settle in Italy as they wished.
For others, like us, who had had the joy of welcoming, knowing, and growing fond of this child earlier, an uphill journey began, one that continues to this day.
With the children no longer able to fly to Italy (in the meantime, we have also “welcomed” their younger brother), we manage this “long-distance relationship” with video calls and visits that we regularly make twice a year, during the Christmas holidays and in the summer. For us, every journey is a very tiring one, full of uncertainties (in the sense that crossing the Polish or Lithuanian border can take anywhere from a few hours to a 48-hour wait…).
Minsk, as mentioned, has always fascinated us, not only this winter, with its “white atmosphere,” but since our first trip in the summer of 2021.
It is a capital city with enormous, busy avenues, abundant greenery, parks, and bike paths, very tidy and clean.
We don’t see a single piece of paper on the ground, nor a single pothole in the asphalt. On the sidewalks, we were immediately struck by the presence of flowerbeds, plants, and flowers, all well-kept.
In the parks, we meet hundreds of young women with young children in tow.
Their President, as our Belarusian friends told us, implements social policies that encourage birth rates: for every child born, financial assistance is provided to help them pay for a house or pursue university studies.
The city center is crowded and bustling with people, many of them young, with piercings, tattoos, and belly buttons that make them look like their peers in other European countries.
One question we asked ourselves is this: here in Minsk, supermarkets and shopping malls are full of Italian and European products and brands.
With the 19 sanctions packages imposed by the EU, we thought we’d find none of this.
So, who do these sanctions actually affect?
They certainly aren’t being paid by these companies, who, however, continue to trade. They certainly aren’t being paid by companies that produce or trade in weapons and perhaps speculate on energy, whose profits have skyrocketed in recent years.
Not even those targeted by the sanctions themselves are being affected, since the gas is being sold to China and India instead of the EU. https://youtu.be/8HDSnAr7eC0?feature=shared .
So, who pays them?
The “poor” as always?
Significantly, these are our African friends, victims of the “lords of speculation” in the food and energy sectors. But not only that!
In fact, the European populations are also paying more than the Americans did under Biden.
It’s also clear that if for years and under successive governments we’ve found billions of euros in national budgets to pay for defense spending, they must necessarily be diverted from education, healthcare, research, and welfare.
And while the cost of bills and consumer goods rises, real wages (for those who enjoy them) cannot sustain these increases, and millions of families in Europe have fallen into poverty. Some have cut back on medicines to be able to choose food costs.
The latest “collateral victims” of the perverse logic of these sanctions?
Yes, they are! These seven thousand minors and their Italian “host families.”
Today, of these seven thousand, perhaps only a hundred or so remain, thanks to the perseverance of the families who travel to Belarus to meet them.
However, it’s pointless to hide the fact that they have been deprived of their childhood, a priceless gift. I’m not just talking about family affection, but also about sun, sea, diverse foods, and leisure activities that they objectively cannot enjoy in Belarus.
There’s much talk around the world about human rights, but in this case, the rights of these children have been ignored by anyone…
Who knows if all this isn’t better understood today, even by those who believe that the “logic of weapons and war” is more decisive than that of a “disarmed and disarming” peace. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/it/messages/peace/documents/20251208-messaggio-pace.html .
We’re back in Italy, and in our hearts we carry this long love story, capable of crossing distant borders and facing every dark, cold night.
A different climate awaits us, more Mediterranean food, but we will miss that embrace that, without words, says it all.
Alessandro and Maria Pia Manfridi