'I am not scared'

Kyiv, Ukraine - Mosab Albasyouni describes Ukraine, where he has lived for six years, as his "second homeland".

But when Ramadan comes around each year, the 24-year-old medical student from Gaza feels a pang of homesickness.

"During the holy month, of course, there is a better atmosphere in Palestine," he says, "especially the social aspect that occurs then in our society, between people and their relatives."

After eating suhoor - the pre-sunrise meal Muslims consume before commencing the day's fast - with his cousin Hadi, who is temporarily staying with him, he completes his morning prayers.

Mosab's days are filled with studies as he prepares for his medical exams and this busy schedule means he cannot join his friends who meet at the city's Islamic Cultural Centre for iftar, the evening meal that breaks the fast.

But before leaving their apartment each morning, Mosab and Hadi always prepare typical Palestinian dishes for iftar - as a small reminder of their families back home.

"Ramadan in Ukraine is difficult because of the loneliness you feel when you live abroad - but I thank God anyway," Mosab says.

Palestinians in Kyiv

For many of the thousands of Palestinians living in Kyiv, life has become considerably more difficult since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country on February 24, 2022.

Anas Abu Ashaba, a 31-year-old Palestinian, greets three Egyptian men who are regular customers at the halal butcher's on Dehtiarivska Street where he works. Lined with barbershops, Arabic restaurants and grocery stores that import food from the Middle East, the bustling street is the beating heart of Kyiv's Arab community.

Anas was 20 years old when he moved to Ukraine to study 11 years ago. He is now married to a Ukrainian woman and lives in a village just outside Kyiv. When Russian forces laid siege to the capital in the first two months of the war, his village became the site of fierce fighting. With communication networks destroyed by Russian forces, Anas and his wife were forced to spend several anxiety-ridden weeks cooped up at home.

It was an experience he says brought him closer to his local community, where there are not many other Arabs, as people bonded and shared vital supplies of water and food to stay alive. In moments like those, he explains, it does not matter where you come from. "War does not discriminate," he reflects, shaking his head.

Anas speaks to customers in Arabic and Russian, which most Ukrainians speak fluently and Anas learned when he arrived more than a decade ago, as he weaves past refrigerators and chopping boards. A young Ukrainian man dressed in a matching hoodie and jogging trousers orders a few cuts of meat, which Anas delicately prepares for him.

Anas says he feels as at home in Ukraine as he does in Palestine or Jordan, where his family now lives. "I see a lot of similar things between Ukrainian culture and mine," he says. "Both are very hospitable and welcoming."

However, Anas explains that, like most of the area's establishments, the butcher's shop has seen sales plummet as many of their regular customers have left the country.

"A lot of people from the Middle East left Kyiv when the war began," he says. "Men with families also made sure their partners and children went abroad."

"I didn't leave because I love Kyiv," he adds with a smile.

Iyad, a soft-spoken Palestinian in his 60s who preferred not to give his last name, moved to Ukraine in 1975 to study architecture and ended up staying. He now runs a popular restaurant serving shawarma and falafel on Dehtiarivska Street.

The war has decimated his once-thriving business and he can now only afford to employ a few of the 30 staff who worked for him before the invasion. He speaks through the window of a food truck located outside his restaurant as he watches an Arabic-language news channel on his phone. A Ukrainian kitchen worker walks up the restaurant's stairs, clutching a bucket of lettuce.

Iyad wistfully recalls a time when demand was so high that he used to travel to the United Arab Emirates to secure imports of Middle Eastern ingredients.

During the chaotic early weeks of the war, his white Mercedes Benz was used by the Ukrainian territorial forces as they scrambled for supplies to repel Russian forces from the north of the city. He believes it was later destroyed in fighting near the border with Belarus. Despite the challenges, Iyad plans to stay in Kyiv and attempt to rebuild his business, but he remains uncertain about the future. "We will just have to wait and see," he says, shrugging his shoulders.

Although he will always feel Palestinian, Iyad also loves his adopted country. "There are a lot of similar things in the way Ukraine and Palestinians act, we do not restrict our emotions," he explains, smiling. "We can both scold someone on the street, and we both love children."

He says he now relies on many local Ukrainian customers who visit the street to taste Middle Eastern cuisine after a YouTube vlogger filmed a short video from the area a couple of years ago. "Many local people come here; they love our cuisine," he says enthusiastically.

‘We've seen even worse war in Gaza’

Hundreds of kilometres from the front lines, life in Kyiv has returned to relative normalcy since Russian forces were driven from the areas surrounding the city in late March 2022.

Air raid sirens, however, still sound regularly, and the city has been the target of multiple drone and missile attacks since October, although most of these have been intercepted by air defence systems.

Despite the relative safety, members of the Palestinian diaspora in Kyiv have said their families worry about them after watching the news about the war in Ukraine.

Iyad says that his parents and brother, roughly 2,000km (1,200 miles) away in Palestine, regularly express concern for him. But, although "war is always bad", he says he feels relatively safe in Kyiv. His wife, who is from Ukraine, has moved to Vinnytsia, in southwest Ukraine, where Iyad feels she is safer.

Mosab’s family also fears for his safety. But he says that although conditions were much better in Ukraine before the war, everyday conditions are still better in the capital than in parts of Gaza.

"They don't know what reality is like here," he says, referring to his family. "I am not scared."

Hashem Mdoukh, a friendly 24-year-old International Relations graduate, echoes a similar sentiment. "In Palestine, we saw even worse war - here is not the war we saw in Gaza," he says, referring to his experience in Kyiv specifically and not other parts of the country.

The Muslim community in Kyiv

Dehtiarivska Street is home to one of Kyiv's mosques and a focal point for the city's Muslim community.

Inside the Islamic Cultural Centre, where the mosque is located, Arabic language schools, workshops and various social activities take place.

When Al Jazeera visited in mid-February, an air raid alert had been issued, and children attending classes were ushered into a brightly lit basement to continue their studies.

Seyran Arifov, the polite and welcoming president of the Council of Ukrainian Muslims, a union that promotes Islamic culture, civic activities and the development of the Muslim community in Ukraine, estimates that around half the people who frequented the mosque before the invasion have now left Kyiv.

"War creates day-to-day problems," he explains. "People lost jobs, there are power outages, missiles and air raid sirens."

Behind the elegant red curtains that line a whole wall of Seyran's office, the air raid siren wails for a second time, indicating the threat is now over. Children's chatter fills the hallways as they return to their classrooms.

Seyran says that before Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatists seized territory in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine in 2014, 1.5 million Muslims were living in Ukraine.

"It is very important to understand that most Muslims in Ukraine are now living under Russian occupation," he says firmly.

Seyran is Crimean Tatar, a Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to the Crimean Peninsula. Many of the 300,000 Crimean Tatars living there boycotted the referendum held by Russia after it occupied Crimea.

The occupying forces immediately began to crack down on Crimean Tatars and pro-Ukrainian activists.

Seyran highlights two key areas in which Islam and the war intersect, both of which the Council of Ukrainian Muslims has been working with the community to address.

The first he defines as the Islamic legal interpretation of questions that Muslims in Ukraine can pose related to their role in the war, such as: "Should Muslims stay neutral in the war? Should we fight as this is a war between two non-Muslim countries?" He says this has been a controversial topic, as several high-profile Russian Muslim leaders have supported the Kremlin in the war.

In response, Seyran says a Ukrainian Mufti has produced a fatwa - a legal edict or decree handed down by an Islamic religious authority - which states that Ukrainian Muslims should be allowed to defend their country.

The second aspect he defines as "moral support" for the community during the war. "We have been praying, preaching, calling on people to be patient and not to grow disillusioned," he says.

"There have been epidemics, earthquakes, wars before, these are all tests for us, and we believe that our community must show our best qualities during this time," he explains.

He says they have done this by providing aid during the war. "Muslims are helping provide food, clothing. There are Muslim doctors along the front lines who provide help free of charge."

'One of their own'

On the cultural centre's first floor, four women are hunched over frantically playing a game of table football between workshops, cheering each time someone scores a goal. In another room, a gregarious middle-aged Syrian man patiently teaches Arabic to an attentive young student.

The Ukrainian and Russian languages can be heard in the centre's corridors. However, Arabic is the most common, with various dialects audible, particularly Maghrebi and Levantine.

Ashraf Mekroud, an Algerian in his 20s, arrived in Kyiv from France in 2018 to study. He ended up staying because he says the locals in Kyiv "took me for one of their own", adding that he believes Kyiv to be much cleaner and more welcoming than Paris, where he lived before.

He now works at one of the kebab shops on Dehtiarivska Street.

Taking a break from work, he sips a soft drink in one of the establishment's spacious back rooms. In the corner, three Palestinian men warm themselves in front of a fireplace, swivelling around briefly to offer a hearty welcome.

"I don't feel the consequences of war. I feel very free," he says, adding that he will stay in Kyiv even if the war escalates. "I would feel ashamed to leave now, I would feel like I am betraying this place. I don't want to be egotistical. I don't want to be here when everything is OK and then just leave when it's not."