Scientists in Spain, wives of combatants in the Ukrainian war: "I don't know where my husband is"

Neurologist Tetiana Chernishova and her futsal coach husband had many plans for the future on February 23 last year.

They enjoyed a comfortable life, with their little house, their car and their three children.

They were already thinking about summer vacation.

They lived in Kharkov, a quiet Ukrainian city, very close to the Russian border.

On the night of February 24, however, they were awakened by a huge explosion.

A family like any other suddenly found itself on the front lines of a merciless war.

Today the futsal coach patrols the streets of Kharkov with a rifle in hand.

And Tetiana Chernishova is one of the 20 Ukrainian scientists who have obtained a contract in the largest science organization in Spain, the CSIC, thanks to a call to welcome researchers who fled from the Russian invasion.

Fifteen are women:

Chernishova, born in Kharkov 47 years ago, is a specialist in multiple sclerosis.

She has joined the López Neyra Institute of Parasitology and Biomedicine, in Granada, to investigate this enigmatic disorder of the nervous system, linked to the kissing disease virus.

The neurologist she lived with her family in a seven-story building, next to the Kharkiv train station.

“It was a strategic place and the bombs were falling everywhere.

We took refuge for 10 days in a basement, ”she recalls.

She then escaped with her two underage children, ages 13 and 14.

“We fled with what could fit in a suitcase.

We had nothing else, ”she laments.

Neurologist Tetiana Chernishova, in a traditional Ukrainian dress, at the López Neyra Institute of Parasitology and Biomedicine, in Granada.fermín rodríguez

That fateful February 24, the biologist Yulia Kobirenko was in her city, Lviv (Lviv), in the west of the country, theoretically far from the war front.

There she investigated legumes for animal feed.

In mid-March, the city also began to be bombarded by the army of the satrap Vladimir Putin.

The 33-year-old scientist escaped days before with her two children, ages one and three, across the border with Poland.

“It is dangerous to be in Lviv with small children.

Very close to my house there is a building destroyed by a bomb, ”she explains.

Her husband, without military training, also had to hold a rifle.

“He was a computer scientist.

He did not expect to end up fighting in a war, ”she narrates, still stupefied.

From Poland, Kobirenko sent his curriculum to the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture in Córdoba, where he now works with varieties of peas and soybeans.

“At first it was very hard to be alone with such small children.

Now I have adapted, I am very strong and I am not afraid of anything, ”she proclaims with a smile.

She can occasionally talk to her husband, but she doesn't know exactly where he is.

It is confidential information.

“Our men cannot leave Ukraine.

If I didn't have small children, I would have stayed too.

Now I try to help from here.

I have bought a generator for a hospital, because Russia is also attacking our hospitals and leaving them without electricity”, she recounts.

Almost a year has passed since the start of the Russian invasion and more than 160,000 Ukrainian refugees have obtained temporary protection in Spain, mostly women and children.

Twenty have obtained a contract —with a minimum duration of two years— at the CSIC and two other Ukrainian scientists have joined the Ciemat research center in Madrid.

The Minister of Science, Diana Morant, affirms that her department has responded to all the requests that have arrived.

“We have welcomed everyone, in one center or another, and we plan to absorb seven more people,” she explains.

Biologist Maria Goncharova, at the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology, in Madrid. Álvaro García

The five Ukrainian scientists interviewed by this newspaper repeat the same date over and over again: February 24.

Biologist Maria Goncharova says that she immediately fled with her family to a small town on the outskirts of kyiv, very close to Borodianka, where Russian troops entered with a knife at the beginning of the war.

“We heard shelling and shooting everywhere.

My children were very afraid.

We were practically isolated and surrounded, but luckily we managed to get out of there, ”she recalls.

Goncharova, 39, her husband and their two children managed to reach the Romanian border by car.

The man had to say goodbye to his family there and remains in kyiv, earning his living as a driver.

"He has no military experience, but if Ukraine needs him, he will have to fight," explains his wife.

The biologist and her two children began a three-day bus journey that culminated in the Valencian town of Bocairent, where Goncharova has a cousin.

There, the scientist went to work in a restaurant as a kitchen assistant.

“She needed money to rent a flat”, she clarifies.

The biologist is now studying trout gill cells to determine if they are useful for measuring the toxicity of nanomaterials in fish, in a project at the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology in Madrid.

If it is already difficult for a man from Madrid to find a rental home, for Goncharova it has been hell.

“The owners asked me for three payrolls.

I did not have three payrolls, I had two children of four and eight years old, ”she laments.

After going through a refugee center in Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), the biologist found a flat in Alcorcón, a working-class city on the outskirts of the Madrid community.

“We arrived in Spain with nothing, just the clothes we were wearing.

The Spanish are incredible, they have been very good to us”, thanks the researcher.

Hanna Liventseva, former president of the Association of Geologists of Ukraine, at the Geosciences Barcelona research center. MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI

Goncharova and three other Ukrainian scientists met with Diana Morant on Monday.

“They leave behind stories of bombings, of persecution, of death.

Here they are earning a decent living, without interrupting their scientific careers”, points out the minister.

"That knowledge that they are developing in Spain is good for us, but it will also be good when they return to Ukraine, which is where they are looking: to rebuild their country," she underlines.

Geologist Hanna Liventseva, 54, was born in Bilibino, a small town in the Soviet Union built around a gold mine.

When the war began, she was the president of the Association of Geologists of Ukraine and lived in kyiv, very close to Gostomel, the scene of the first fighting with Russian troops.

“The situation was very dangerous, there were explosions all the time,” she recalls.

The Geosciences Barcelona research center immediately offered her a job in a geothermal energy project and she arrived in Spain in March.

Her 60-year-old husband stayed in kyiv with his two daughters.

“I am alone in Barcelona.

My body is in Spain, but my dreams are in Ukraine, ”she says through tears.

The Ukrainian chemist Tetiana Hubetska, at the Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Research Center, in El Entrego (Asturias).Manu Brabo

Chemist Tetiana Hubetska, 29, also fled alone.

She speaks Spanish perfectly, because before the war she did her doctoral thesis at the University of Oviedo, on the synthesis of nanomaterials to clean up pollutants in the air or in the water.

When Putin's troops invaded her country, her former Spanish colleagues offered to return, but Hubetska resisted her.

“I didn't want to leave the Ukraine, I wanted to help our army,” she admits.

In kyiv, however, he could not work.

“The situation was very bad.

There were always bombings, you had to take refuge in the basement.

It was impossible to do experiments, ”he recalls.

Finally, he decided to join the Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Research Center, in El Entrego, in Asturias.

Her husband had a job at a construction company, but he was called up and is now a combatant.

“I don't know if she's at the front, she doesn't tell me where she is,” explains Hubetska, who synthesizes nanomaterials to kill bacteria and fungi.

One of the writers who has best captured the horror of wars was also a chemist: the Italian Primo Levi, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

In his

account of him, Levi reflected on the ties to the land and the trade: “The bond that unites a person to his profession is similar to the one that unites him to his country;

it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and usually not fully understood until it is broken.

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