Montrealers helping Ukrainian refugees at Romanian border

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began Sebastian and Christian Tirtirau knew they had to help.

“We know how it feels to arrive in a country [where] you don’t know anybody and you don’t know what you’re going to do and who’s going to help you,” says Sebastian.

The brothers were refugees themselves from Romania when war broke out there, eventually living in Montreal.

Now, through the Pilgrim Movement, a Canadian-based organization, founded by Sebastian, they are providing safe corridors, accommodation and food for mothers and children crossing into Romania.

“We knew from the beginning, both my brother and I, that we can actually have an impact on these people’s lives, especially the mothers with children and the elderly that were fleeing the country,” says Sebastian.

Pilgrim Movement they say is the only Canadian organization on the ground at the Ukraine-Romanian border helping Ukrainian refugees into various countries, across Europe and Canada, already helping over 200 families of mothers and children settle in other countries.

“People found themselves overnight grabbing a bag and their kids and just running away from their country into a completely unknown territory,” says Sebastian.

He and his volunteers have received over three thousand individuals needing help to come to Canada, while also providing food, accommodation, and transportation. By working closely with the Romanian army, police and firefighters, the Pilgrim Movement assists refugees, once in Romania in filling out online visa applications, then facilitating their transport to the Canadian Embassy in Bucharest

Something Sebastian says became a challenge. “We spent…from morning to evening for weeks on end doing this. Not only that, but these people have to sleep somewhere. They have to eat.

“We moved from Kyiv without anything… We didn’t think about clothes, about food, and about even money that we had in the bank,” says Nataliia Khara.

Khara and her fiance Oleksandr Musiienko are some of the people the brothers have assisted.

When the invasion began, Musiienko was in Turkey at a training camp and was able to make it to Romania, to reunite with Khara and his family members.

With the help of the pilgrim movement, they both recently settled in Toronto, along with their family of eight.

“Our meeting with Sebastian and the Pilgrim Movement was like fresh air for us because all our thoughts were at home in the war…they supported us a lot. They helped us to prepare documents,” says Khara

But helping those like Nataliia and Oleksandr is a task that requires resources – something Sebastian says he has not seen Canada provide.

“I know there are resources because I’ve been working in this field for 30 years. I know the amount of resources that can be quickly directed to a crisis like that. and unfortunately, from my own experience at that border, I have not seen them, especially from…my country, from Canada.”