A 20-year-old Ukrainian, Anastasiya Sytnyk, who is fighting to evacuate her family from Ukraine to Ireland says her ongoing effort to help relatives make the journey means "my day begins and ends with the phone".
After a fortnight of working to persuade her grandmother to join her in Dublin, Anastasiya's evacuation plan involves what would normally be a 13-hour bus from Cherkasy to the Polish border, and flights to Dublin for her grandmother Valentina (68), aunt Anna (35) and cousin Ava (11).
Anastasiya’s family left their hometown of Cherkasy in central Ukraine on Thursday morning and expect to reach the Polish border on Saturday. They had previously hoped to “wait it out” in their hometown.
Anastasiya has stayed in regular contact with her family throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine and speaks with them “every hour or two hours” via phone. She says “I go to sleep, if I sleep, watching the news”.
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“The older generation don’t want to leave because they feel too afraid to. . . they are afraid of their house being looted; they are afraid of dying while they are getting out,” says Anastasiya.
“They feel it will be safer to wait it out, unlike taking the risk on the outskirts when you don’t know what is going to happen.”
The family eventually decided to make plans to leave on Tuesday but say the logistics are making the journey out of Ukraine challenging.
Anastasiya says the bus journey is dangerous, tickets are difficult to secure and cost €123 each, while finding accommodation in Dublin is challenging as she rents a room in a house with five other people.
"From my city to Poland it's a 13-hour drive, and you can't really travel by car because there is a limited amount of petrol you can buy. Trains are extremely full and there are extremely long queues."
Anastasiya says the prices of flights from Poland to Ireland are currently “not the cheapest but they are affordable, I can buy them for my family”.
“I honestly couldn’t care less about the financial side of it, I just want my family to be with me.”
The most stressful part is the bus journey to Poland. “Once I know they are in Poland I can finally breathe. . . I have such trust in the Polish people. Now it’s just trying to catch the bus and hoping that the bus doesn’t get shot”.
School
Anastasiya is arranging with a school in north Dublin that will accept 11-year-old Ava when she arrives. “They were so welcoming, they said absolutely no problem. Thankfully the schools are being super supportive. They were very open and didn’t ask me for detailed documents.”
The family is not registered with the Irish Red Cross but Anastasiya says when they arrive she will register them for PPS numbers, social welfare benefits and find a job for her aunt Anna.
“She will be able to take care of herself but my grandmother will stay with me”.
Anastasiya’s other grandmother has chosen to stay in Ukraine. “She feels like she is too old to work and doesn’t feel she could bring any value to the country she’s travelling to,” she says.
“She doesn’t want to become a bother to anybody so she says ‘I’ll just wait it out, if I survive I survive and if I don’t that’s how God wants it’. It’s painful to hear that”.
Anastasiya’s father has been drafted into the Ukrainian army as a reserve and cannot leave the country. Her mother lives in the US.
Back in Ukraine, family members have been sheltering in the basement below their apartment, a space that is shared with around 10 people at any one time.
“Sometimes they spend all morning there and then come out during the evening time, have lunch and dinner and then go back down”.
Anastasiya says there are “constantly planes flying over my city” but so far Cherkasy has been “lucky”. She says her family can hear explosions and gunfire during the night. “They are fighting on the outskirts of my city, in smaller villages and smaller towns.”
Anastasiya moved to Ireland at nine years of age to study and is currently the only member of her family in Ireland.