Thursday night's first autumn chill sent an emphatic message to the residents of a cardboard shack in a weedy, overgrown field in southwest Moscow.


"We cannot stay here much longer, not with the cold," said Blaise Joau Videira, 26, one of 13 African refugees living in the flimsy structure. "We don't know what will happen, but it will be very bad for us."


Living in the field across from the Park Place office complex on Leninsky Prospekt, the refugees have hung on despite a chronic lack of food, police harassment and the loss of clothes and documents when a previous cardboard shack burned down. Now, it appears the weather may defeat them.


With skimpy clothing and about $2 a day from selling empty bottles, Videira said the group is getting desperate. They have decided to wait until Saturday for expected aid from the French relief agency, Equilibre. If no help comes, he said the men will start camping out Monday on Equilibre's doorstep.


"Maybe the head of Equilibre will see us and help us," said Vidiera, a small, lively man who had been studying math and physics before fleeing his native Angola.


Catherine LaBoucheix, of Equilibre, said Friday, "We try to help the most needy persons, but it is impossible to help everybody."


Although there are 17,000 foreigners in Moscow who have applied for refugee status in the 1 1/2 years since the United Nations High Commission for Refugees opened an office here, the Africans living in the woods are a dramatic example of what has gone wrong, according to a human rights worker who has been assisting them.


"Anything can happen to them," said Ruben Mangue, the head of Moscow's International Lawyers' Alliance. "If they were to get sick there is no guarantee that they will get medical assistance ...We cannot expect anything good unless their problem is solved immediately."


The 13 refugees, all from war-torn African nations, said they came to Moscow because it was quick and relatively simple.


"I left Angola because the government was looking for young people for the army," said Antonio Naku, 29, who arrived in Moscow on Sept. 3 and heard of the encampment through an African student at nearby Patrice Lumumba University. "The only easy visa to get was the Russian visa."


Some residents of the cardboard encampment had hoped simply to pass through Moscow on their way to western Europe but got no further.


"Historically, we have had good impressions of Russia, but the reality is quite different," said Videira.


Warming himself by a campfire Thursday night was John Bunenes, 27, an auto mechanic who fled Rwanda in May after both his parents were killed.


"The conditions here are so bad that I wanted to go back," said Bunenes. "I had a ticket for the flight to Kigali but when I got to Sheremetyevo, they asked me for a Russian visa and I had no visa. So, I came back here -- to the woods."


Like many other refugees, Bunenes cannot legally work in Russia because he does not have proper documents.


The situation for the men living in the field grew worse after a Sept. 18 visit by Moscow police. In an afternoon raid, the refugees said, officers burned two cardboard structures, their clothes and documents, including passports.


"I have not any hope now," said Naku who, in Angola, was a skin-lightening cream salesman. "I don't have good food. I don't sleep. I want to go home, but now it is impossible without a visa or a passport or a ticket."