JAKARTA - A Belgian animal shelter has retrieved two young lions evacuated from Ukraine, which it said were under threat by Russian troops when it found them outside Kyiv.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine not only caused casualties and millions of people were displaced. Animals are also affected by the war between the two countries, with heroic efforts being made to save them from the war.
Born in January 2021, male lion twins named Tsar and Jamil were due to be transferred to Belgium in May, after Ukrainian authorities confiscated them from their private owners who had abandoned them.
However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine meant displacement had to be imminent, with a shooting in Kyiv, where they are kept, leaving the twins stressed and injured as they jumped into their enclosure.
Frederik Thoelen, a biologist who has worked in a Belgian shelter since 2007, recounts the two lions' strenuous five-day journey from Kyiv on February 26 to Poland's Poznan zoo, starting with a meeting with the Russian military outside the Ukrainian capital.
"Russian soldiers, they pointed their guns at the guards. They threatened to kill the animals. The guards said 'no, that's our animal. If you touch an animal, you have to touch us first'", Thoelen told Reuters as quoted on March 13.
"So they really risked their lives to save the animals. Finally, the Russian army let them through. Then they traveled a very long way to the Polish border", he explained.
They have to go through different small routes to avoid traffic jams", said Thoelen.
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Meanwhile, Russia denies it has targeted civilians in military activities labeled "special military operations" in Ukraine.
The lions arrived at the Natuurhulpcentrum shelter, one of the few capable of providing immediate care to the wild animals, on Tuesday evening last week.
Shelters will keep them in quarantine for three months and nurse them back to health before starting to look for permanent homes, such as asylum in Africa.
For information, the shelter said the twin lions were very small when rescued, lacking essential elements such as calcium and malnourished after being fed expired meat, while X-rays revealed broken bones.
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