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'All we have is our talent': Ukraine violinists find peace in Denmark
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Ukrainian musicians (LtoR) Olesia Kliepak, Marharyta Serdiuk, Nadia Safina and Kseniia Kucherova pose in Stevns, Denmark on March 10, 2022. (AFP/Thibault Savary)
W
ith three friends, all violinists like her, Nadia Safina fled the invasion of Ukraine to find peace at a music school in Denmark, a horrific ordeal that took 10 days.
Now, "all we have is our talent. Not boots. Not clothes, not jewellery. Only our talent and our instruments," the 24-year-old says, a weary look of despair in her eyes.
Safe but with her "heart in pain", she arrived this week in Stevns, an hour outside Copenhagen, far from the bombs falling on her hometown of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine which she fled on the first day of the war.
The four women are now at the Scandinavian Cello School, which frequently welcomes artists from around the world but is now focusing exclusively on bringing over Ukrainian musicians.
"We support them with exactly the same conditions as everybody else. We give them a place to study and to stay for free, and food," the school's director Jacob Shaw says.
Thanks to his professional network, he was able to arrange for the four women's exodus on the first day of Russia's invasion on February 24.
The school is now hosting six Ukrainian musicians who have fled the war, and three more are expected in the coming days.
