Russia Rules Out Ukrainian Comeback: How Malta’s Ukrainian Community Copes With Endless War

**Russia’s War Machine Rolls On: What Malta’s Ukrainian Diaspora Feels When Moscow Says “Never Retreat”**

Valletta’s Upper Barrakka gardens were unusually quiet at dawn on Tuesday, the usual clatter of cruise-shate selfie-sticks replaced by the soft clink of amber worry-beads. Below the gun-salute battery, a small cluster of Ukrainian women—waitresses from St Julian’s hotels, carers for elderly Naxxar couples—stood motionless, phones glowing with the same headline: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov vowing Russia will “continue the offensive” and dismissing any chance of Ukraine retaking occupied land.

For the 1,400 Ukrainians who have made Malta home since February 2022, the statement is more than geopolitics; it is a personal door slammed on the hope of return. Oksana Petrenko, 34, who used to manage a beauty salon in Kyiv and now colours hair in a Sliema boutique, translates Peskov’s words into Maltese reality: “It means my parents’ village near Zaporizhzhia stays Russian. It means another summer selling ħobż biż-żejt to tourists instead of picking cherries with my son in our own garden.”

Malta’s government has walked a careful diplomatic line—sending field hospitals, freezing oligarch yachts, yet stopping short of NATO’s more muscular rhetoric. Foreign Minister Ian Borg reiterated Malta’s “full respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity” on Monday, but inside Castille the worry is palpable: a prolonged war keeps energy prices volatile and tourists hesitant. With Russian market share already down 60 % on 2019 figures, every fresh offensive headline risks knocking another 5 % off winter bookings, according to the MHRA hospitality association.

Still, the cultural ripples reach deeper than balance sheets. At the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic mission in Ħamrun—an 18th-century townhouse where icons share wall-space with Maltese limestone crucifixes—Father Volodymyr Savchuk fields calls all morning. “People ask: if the land is gone, where do we pray for? Do we light candles for a cemetery that now has a Russian passport?” His answer is to ring the church bell at 20:00 every evening, synchronised with simultaneous bell-ringing in Lviv, a sonic lifeline across 2,000 kilometres.

Maltese villagers have found their own gestures. In Żejtun, farmers last month loaded 300 crates of early potatoes onto a charity lorry bound for Poland and ultimately Kharkiv. Donations came with hand-written tags in Maltese, English and Cyrillic: “Minn qalbna, għal qalbkom” – from our heart, to yours. Eighty-year-old Toni Zahra, who still ploughs with a mule, explains: “We lost everything in the war too, 1942. We know what it means when someone says ‘you’ll never go back’.”

Youth activism is growing. University students from KSU have teamed up with Ukrainian classmates to stage a “Virtual Village” exhibition—3-D scans of destroyed Mariupol theatres projected against the baroque façade of the Valletta campus. Curator Sasha Dmytriyeva, who arrived on a humanitarian visa 18 months ago, says the aim is to keep the idea of return alive even if the land is barricaded. “If Russia says we can’t retake it, we will rebuild it in memory until the tanks rust away.”

Yet even among the most engaged Maltese, fatigue is creeping in. Supermarket aisles still stock tins of Ukrainian borsch, but the QR-code donation posters at the checkout are starting to curl at the edges. “We care, but we also have utility bills,” admits shopper Claire Bonnici, 42, from Birkirkara. “Every time Russia says ‘no retreat’, my husband calculates how many more months we keep the air-conditioner off.”

The government is preparing contingency plans. Sources close to the energy ministry tell *Hot Malta* that a new LNG shipment earmarked for September has been advanced to July, hedging against another market spike if fighting intensifies around Crimea. Meanwhile, 50 Ukrainian children who enrolled in Maltese schools last year will sit for their first SEC exams this month—writing essays on *Il-Ġrajja ta’ Malta* while WhatsApp-ing cousins who spent the night in bomb shelters.

Back in Valletta, the women leave the gardens as the first ferry from Sliema disgorges early-bird tourists. Oksana pockets her phone, Peskov’s face still on the screen. “I used to watch Russian cartoons,” she says. “Now I teach my son Maltese nursery rhymes. Maybe home is not a place anymore; maybe it’s the sound of a language no army can occupy.”