Lions rescued from Ukraine settle into a new life

SMARDEN

One malnourished lioness had spent her life confined to an apartment. Another was so shell-shocked she could barely walk.

They are among five traumatized lions rescued from the war zone in Ukraine who are settling into a new home in England after an international effort to bring them to safety.

Male African lion Rori and lionesses Amani, Lira and Vanda arrived this month at the Big Cat Sanctuary after a 12-hour journey by road and ferry from temporary homes at zoos and animal shelters in Belgium. They join lioness Yuna, who arrived in August, at the sanctuary’s new Lion Rescue Center, which officially opens on Tuesday.

All five were found near the front line in Ukraine’s war against Russian invasion, neglected and abandoned by their owners.

“All of these five lions were originally from the illegal pet trade and wildlife trade,” said Cameron Whitnall, managing director of the Big Cat Sanctuary near Ashford. “None of them came from zoos.”

Yuna was kept in a small brick cell and was shellshocked after missile debris fell near her enclosure. Rori was mistreated in a private menagerie, while sanctuary staff believe siblings Amani and Lira were bred to have their photos taken with tourists as cubs.

Vanda, kept inside an apartment, was malnourished and infested with parasites.

Whitnall says in her new home Vanda, like the others, can “become the lion she deserves to be.”

The lions were saved by the Wild Animals Rescue Center run by Natalia Popova, a Ukrainian woman who has saved hundreds of abandoned pets and zoo animals since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, deer, monkeys and more have passed through her shelter, a converted horse stables near Kiev.