‘We never thought one year later the war would still be going on’

When Iryna Zomula thinks of March last year she still gets visibly upset.

“It was in March that my husband and I gathered up any money we had and gave it, along with our two daughters, to my cousin as she was passing by our house in Kharkiv to go to a safer region in Ukraine. We were all crying because we didn’t know if we would ever see each other again,” she says.

Luckily, the two girls, aged 13 and 15, have since been reunited with their mother and have been living in Tullamore since last September, but their father is still in Ukraine where he works with the rail network and also volunteers his services to the war effort.

Iryna still finds it very hard to come to terms with how much her life has changed since Russia invaded her country just over a year ago. “I never wanted to leave Ukraine and I really hope in my heart that I will be able to return there.”

As well as leaving her husband behind, she has also left her parents, who live in the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk, and also her brother, who lives in an area also occupied by Russia. “It is very hard for older people to change locations and my parents have said they were born in Ukraine and they will die there,” she says. One of the many fears she has for her family and her country is that Russia will mobilise all the men living in the occupied regions which would result in her brother “having to fight for Russia against his own people,” she explains.

Her husband already has a brother who lives with his family in Moscow. “They are Russian now and we don’t speak, but my husband triesto keep in touch with them,” she says.

Huge gratitude

Since arriving in Ireland, Iryna has been living in Lynch’s Townhouse and speaks extremely highly of the “wonderful care” all the Ukrainian families have been receiving there. Her two daughters attend Clonaslee College and are very happy there, but she says her eldest daughter did not want to leave Ukraine. “She said she would stay and live in the basement until the war ended.”

Iryna and her family remained in Kharkiv for six months after the outbreak of war. “At first we didn’t want to believe it, and every day we thought the war will end tomorrow or maybe the next day, we were hopeful” she says “we never thought that one year later the war would still be going on.”

She had never been on holidays or on a plane before she boarded a flight from Poland to Dublin last September with her daughters. “I had a phobia about flying, but we are here now and we are so grateful to the Irish people for giving us a safe place to live and for giving us shelter and food…the Irish people have such an open heart and we will never forget you,” she says.

Hanna Ivashchenko arrived in Ireland from the Kherson region of southern Ukraine with her 16-year old son in April of last year and says she has not seen her husband for almost one year.

“We are planning to go back soon to visit him but we will have to rent a place maybe in western Ukraine because our house is no more and we do not have anywhere to live,” she tells the Offaly Independent.

Having studied English at university, working as a teacher and an interpreter, and also spending some time working on cruise ships, Hanna can speak fluent English which has helped her to secure a job as a clerical officer with the Department of Social Protection in Tullamore. “I had a friend in Ireland called Sinéad, whose husband is from Tullamore so when I arrived here first they helped me to get a part-time job with a local solicitor’s firm where I worked with wonderful people,” she says.

Her son attends Coláiste Choilm and is “very happy and settled” at school and while she dreams of one day returning to Ukraine, Hanna says right now she has “no home and no place to go back to”.

She said she found it “very unexpected the way the whole world has supported Ukraine” but like the other members of the Ukrainian community who now live in Tullamore she is “extremely grateful and thankful” for the support of the Irish people. “We are also very proud of our President and our people for defending our country,” she adds.

Leaving Ukraine alone

Three days before Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Anna Shepeta told her father that the Russians were coming “but he did not believe me,” she recalls. When the war started, the 2nd year political science student who lived with her family in the town of Bila Tserkva, outside Kyiv, made the brave decision to leave Ukraine, leaving her parents, younger brother and her beloved dog behind.

“At the start of the war we moved to Lviv in western Ukraine for one month and I suggested to my parents that we should leave Ukraine but they didn’t want to go, so I decided to travel to the Polish border alone,” she says.

Even though Anna admits to being “scared” and said it was “very difficult” for her mother to let her go, she was determined to make her way to a safe location. Because she was just 17 years old, Anna was not allowed to travel from Poland to any other country without having a legal guardian. “My friend's mother decided to become my guardian and filled in all the paperwork and we thought about going to England at first, but we needed to have a visa, so we came to Dublin instead.

“I didn’t know where I was going when I was sent to Tullamore, but I feel very safe here and the people are so supportive,” she says. “I speak with my family every day on Facetime and they tell me that right now things are easier for them because they have electricity and there is not so much bombing, but there are some drones and they often hear the sirens.”

She has not seen her family for almost a year and is planning to return to Ukraine at some stage this year to visit them. “Even though I have been here for almost a year the time has passed quickly,” she says. “But of course I would hope to return home to complete my studies when the war is over.”

The political science student says she is “very disappointed” with the actions of Russia, but she feels it will take “a long time” for the Russian attitude to Ukraine to change. “I think if Putin dies, nothing will change,” she predicts. “It is only when all the older people he surrounds himself with, and who all think the same, are gone that we might see some change, but it is a long way off yet.”

This same sentiment is echoed by Ernest Cherenkov, who is a native of Riga in Latvia but who has many relatives living in Ukraine. “Putin is one man, but Russian propaganda has been ingrained in the population for over 100 years and it will take a long time to change that,” he says. Even the winning of the war by Ukraine will not change “the attitude of the Russian people or its leaders towards Ukraine and its people,” he believes.

Ernest, who is a business graduate and former boxer, now works as a support worker in the Ukrainian Hub in the Offaly Volunteer Centre on Bury Quay, which is run by Deirdre Fox. The Hub has proved to be a lifeline and an important focal point for displaced Ukrainians, not just those living in Tullamore, but from right across the Midlands.