UNAWATUNA, Sri Lanka, April 6, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - As the sun dips below the
Indian Ocean waves, Ukrainian tourist Viktoria Makarenko and her daughter
light incense every evening at a temple in a Sri Lankan beach resort to pray
for a return home.

   Russia's February invasion of the 35-year-old's homeland has left
thousands of foreign travellers from the two countries stranded on the
tropical island.

   But Ukrainians with empty wallets, distraught over the fate of loved ones
back home, say they have been overwhelmed by support from locals -- despite
their own travails in the face of a worsening financial crisis.

   "I love Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan people," Makarenko told AFP. "Everybody
wants to help us."

   She, her husband and their five-year-old daughter had been travelling
around Sri Lanka for weeks when Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

   They were running low on cash and despairing of their predicament before
locals in the resort town of Unawatuna rallied around them, offering free
accommodation, food and even incense sticks to light on their daily trips to
the shrine.

   "The owner of this hotel let us stay here as long as we need. We have
food, water, we don't have a headache (over) what to eat tomorrow," Makarenko
said.

   "We stay safe here and they take care of us."

   Along the white sands of Sri Lanka's southern coastline, dozens of
tourist-oriented businesses are advertising offers or assistance for stranded
Ukrainians.

   Ahesh Shanaka, the manager of the Blackgold cafe in Mirissa, said he asked
one Ukrainian customer carrying a baby whether she was returning home.

   "She said, 'I cannot go back, my house was destroyed, where can I go?'"

   A sign outside offers half-price meals upon presentation of a Ukrainian
passport, and nearby guesthouses have given empty rooms to small cohorts of
backpackers from the country.

   Shanaka believes that his fellow Sri Lankans' generosity stems from still-
fresh memories of the island's own experience of conflict -- a decades-long
civil war that ended in 2009.

   "We also faced a situation like that before... We know the suffering, we
know the pain," he said.

   Sri Lanka's current hardships have been bad for business: long queues for
petrol and electricity blackouts are threatening to upend operators and bring
a budding post-pandemic tourism revival to an abrupt end.

   "We are in a bad situation, you know. The crisis, our economy is going
down, everything is bad," said Shanaka.

   "But we are also people, they are also people, that's why we try to help."

   - Gone to ground - Official figures show around 15,000 Russians and 5,000
Ukrainians visited Sri Lanka in the month the conflict began -- making up the
island's first and third-biggest tourism sources respectively.

   Sri Lanka has granted free visa extensions for citizens of both countries.

   Many Russian tourists are also stuck in the country, cut off from funds
after US sanctions on international payment networks.

   But no offers for them are being advertised, and they are reluctant to
talk.

   "We have to go meet friends," one young Russian man replied tersely,
before he and his companions turned to contemplate the ocean view at the
historic Dutch Fort in Galle.

   Public sentiment overwhelmingly backs Ukraine in the conflict -- slogans
condemning the war are daubed in the yellow and blue of the country's flag on
walls up and down the coast.

   "There is great compassion on their part, given that they are also in
difficult circumstances," Darina Stambuliak, another Ukrainian whose stay in
Unawatuna was involuntarily extended by the war, told AFP.

   The 33-year-old said she was previously forced to flee Donetsk when pro-
Russian separatists declared a breakaway region in 2014.

   She now spends much of her time anxiously keeping up with news from home.

   But a generous discount on her accommodation has given her one less cause
for worry.

   "Business owners have wrapped us in love and support," she said. "We are
so grateful."