Ukraine has the second-largest HIV epidemic in Europe after Russia. Those refugees who fled the full-scale invasion to Poland with HIV have been forced to seek treatment and adjust to different approaches to the disease. In the end, the experience can provide lessons on how to better help those afflicted with the disease.

When Anna Aryabinska fled from Kyiv in March 2022 with her ex-partner’s children, she had little idea that she would end up supporting not only his family, but many HIV-positive Ukrainians in Poland. Until Russia’s full-scale invasion, Aryabinska had been an activist for the Ukrainian organisation Positive Women, supporting women with HIV. Now she is one of a group of volunteers assisting fellow Ukrainian refugees to keep taking medication for HIV, as well as integrate into healthcare systems in European countries which have very different epidemic profiles and standards of treatment.

Russian-annexed Crimea has three official state languages. In practice, languages other than Russian are being squeezed out through a policy of persuasion, coercion and repression.

The Kalinina farm collective near Pervomaisk, northern Crimea, was busy with seasonal workers loading sacks of cabbages, or gathering up carrots in the big muddy fields. It looks like a successful harvest, but it’s a result of almost three years hard struggle to adapt to new conditions after vital water supplies from the Ukraine mainland stopped in 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

On September 27th 2014, 18-year-old Islyam Dzhepparov poured coffee for his father Abdureshit at home in Belogorsk, Crimea, before leaving the house to visit his uncle’s family nearby.