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Lions rescued from private Donetsk Oblast zoo could move to UK before Christmas

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by Olena Goncharova

A lioness, Aysa, who was rescued from a zoo in war-torn eastern Ukraine, might find a new home in the U.K. along with her cubs, BBC reports.  

Aysa, who was pregnant when abandoned at a zoo in Donetsk Oblast, later gave birth to cubs named Teddi, Emi, and Santa at another facility in Ukraine.

In mid-June, Aysa and her three cubs along with another lion crossed the Ukraine-Poland border after traveling for close to 20 hours. The evacuation of the big cats was made possible through a collaboration between the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Wild Animal Rescue, UAnimals and Poznań Zoo.

Now the U.K.-based Yorkshire Wildlife Park is actively pursuing the necessary permissions to relocate the lions to the U.K., aiming for this move to happen before Christmas. Currently, all four lions are temporarily residing at Poznan Zoo in Poland.

A spokesman for the wildlife park near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, said it wanted to give the lions "a better life and a brighter future."

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The Kyiv IndependentAbbey Fenbert

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Olena Goncharova

Special Correspondent

Olena Goncharova is the Special Correspondent for the Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.

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