There are two flags flying over the youth hostel on Arranmore Island, a speck of land off Ireland’s northwestern coast, visible from the ferry as it pulls into its tiny port: the Irish tricolor and the blue and yellow banner of Ukraine.
Yaroslava Risukhina, a refugee from Ukraine, remembers the joyous feeling that swept over her when she saw the flags fluttering above the village. "When we arrived by ferry, it was the evening, and it was beautiful,” she said, marveling at the view from the room her family shares at the hostel. "Here, everyone knows everyone, everyone says, ‘Good morning,’ and for us that’s unusual.”
Since the middle of this summer, she and her children have been among 25 Ukrainian refugees living on the remote island, where the population had been steadily dropping for decades.