Just one week after coordinating an evacuation route out of Ukraine for her mother, Wilton resident Ulyana Filinskyy knows how lucky she was to make that happen. But with more family members still there in danger, and watching the situation grow more dire every day, Filinskyy is urging U.S. government officials and residents alike to do more to end the conflict and help the citizens of Ukraine.
The most recent count puts the number of Ukrainian refugees at more than 2.86 million who have fled the country in only three weeks — that’s unprecedented. What’s happening in Filinskyy’s homeland is consuming almost every waking hour. She has taken part in rallies and vigils, even in front of the White House. She’s reached out to elected officials. She’s networking within the Ukrainian community in Fairfield County and the wider network in the U.S. She’s watching news stories almost around the clock.
But it’s the helplessness of knowing that every day more of her country’s citizens will die that makes her so emotional.
“We are trying to persuade the world to give us [humanitarian] help in the no-fly zone, to patrol those areas in the cities where the people live. [The Russians] are insane. You probably saw that they bombed the maternity hospital. What do they think? There is no heart, they don’t have a heart. I just read a news [story], there was a tank on the street and there was a car, with a kid and parents — they just smashed, rolled over the car. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable,” she said.
Filinskyy knows the world is just as stunned as she is watching the events.
“Nobody could believe that in the 21st century, in 2022, someone can come and they will just attack the whole country, in the middle of Europe,” she added.
Getting her mom out
Filinskyy’s mother, Nadiya Lukashova, had recently returned to Ukraine in January after spending Christmas with her daughter in Wilton. Travel to and from America had been easy before the fighting began as Lukashova has a U.S. green card.
But as the conflict grew in intensity, Filinskyy started looking at options to get her mother to safety, connecting with other Ukrainian friends in the U.S. to see what she could do.
“A friend of mine in New Canaan said, ‘Listen, there is a bus leaving from Lviv [the largest city in Western Ukraine] tomorrow to Warsaw. It’s nine o’clock in Ukraine in the evening. I have one more ticket for that bus — do you want your mom to go?’ I was lucky that she called me, that she had a spare ticket,” Filinskyy acknowledges.
With the bus leaving early the next morning, that would mean Lukashova would have to pack and find a way to make the 90-minute car ride to Lviv from where she lives in Ternopil with little time to spare.
Filinskyy called her mom and urged her to get on the bus.
“She said, ‘Okay, I’m going.’ It was lucky because it was the first wave of refugees running to Poland, and then it just stopped for like two days because it was miles of people, cars and buses waiting to cross the border.”
In the meantime, Filinskyy booked a hotel room in Warsaw for her mom, and when Lukashova arrived in Poland, she was met by a second cousin who lives there, to get her to the hotel. Lukashova flew to New York the next day (Saturday, Mar. 5).
But the worrying is far from over for the women.
Lukashova’s mother, Filinskyy’s 88-year-old grandmother, is still in Ternopil. Even though the most intense fighting and warfare is happening in Eastern Ukraine, life has been upended in its own way where she is further west. Her grandmother said there are air sirens that sound off multiple times a day and through the night.
“In the first days she would just go to the shelter at night. But imagine you’re 88 years old, three times a night you just go to the shelter? It’s just right here,” (she gestures to the side,) “in the basement. She lives in an apartment building. So she said, ‘I’m not going anywhere. She will put the lights off and just sit in the bathroom where there are no windows, so if a blast comes, there is no glass [to shatter] in there,” she described.
Not all refugees from Eastern Ukraine have left the country; many have fled to the western part of Ukraine where Filinskyy’s grandmother is. When Lukashova left for the U.S., she provided her apartment as temporary shelter for a family of refugees from Kyiv, the capital.
“My mom left, they came the next day,” Filinskyy recounts. “A woman with her kid and husband, they stayed one week. But then they went to Poland because it’s still scary — you have the sirens in the middle of the night.”
The influx of refugees from the east is adding even more burden in the cities in the west. “There is no food in the stores now, no food, no medicine, nothing,” Filinskyy said.
Some of Filinskyy’s extended family members have sought safety outside of Ukraine, including a cousin with three children who left for Poland.
“But how long will they have to stay there?” Filinskyy asks. “What do you pack? What do you take? To run away, with what? Where? For how long? What are you going to do? For most of the people there, the house or the apartment is all what they own. My cousin said, ‘I really don’t know what to do.’”
Every day, people like Filinskyy are trying to help the Ukrainian refugees who have been able to escape. They’re getting information and navigating different programs in various countries that may be able to take in people, helping to secure temporary work permits, housing, and visas. Filinskyy hopes the United States will begin accepting refugees soon as well.
“I understand the politics, but it is just, we need help. Really, we need help,” she pleads.
Filinskyy is involved with the bigger Ukrainian community in Stamford. They’re working to collected clothing, medicines, money and other supplies, and figuring out other strategies to help, even trying to get bulletproof vests and helmets to help supply soldiers who are fighting.
The parents of Filinskyy’s husband Yevgen are also still in Ukraine, living in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region. Even though the fighting is happening elsewhere, it’s grim there in other ways.
“They took everyone who was younger than 55 years old, the men who were walking on the street, they will just put them in the car and send them to the war. We have a friend who lives in Donetsk, he’s going to turn 55 in September — he can’t leave the house because he knows if he will step outside, they will just grab him and they will just send him to the war. There is no freedom, and they’re saying that now the coffins start coming [back from the areas where the fighting is], but they’re not allowed to talk [about it],” she describes. “That’s how pressure is there, you know?”
Doing Nothing to Doing Something
Filinskyy said it’s understandable that no one knew what to do at first.
“I’m still thinking maybe it’s a bad dream? The first news came from CNN, the CNN correspondent was standing in the middle of the capital, and he was saying, ‘There are attacks on Kyiv.’ And I said to my husband, ‘No, this is impossible.’ Then there was another air attack in Kharkiv. It’s just really insane,” she said.
Although she knows that global politics and statecraft are complicated, from the simple level of humanitarian concern Filinskyy wants to see a faster response.
“I know it’s hard. Nobody wants to be involved in the war. But on the simple things, if you go in the street and someone is beating somebody, are you going to turn around? You’re going to run away? No, you have to help. That’s how we are human. This is the same thing. This country, thousands of people are dying, innocent people, and the world is watching, like a live show,” she said, adding, “They’re trying to play [by the rules]? Putin doesn’t play by the law. He doesn’t care about your law. He doesn’t care about you. He wants to do what he wants to do.”
She’s grateful that so many international companies have left Russia, and knows the sanctions have been important. Filinskyy also knows that the world has been responding with aid and pressure. She’s grateful for all of that but hopes world leaders take even more steps.
So what can people in the Wilton and surrounding communities do to help? Filinskyy asks that people write to American officials to push for more help.
“I would ask people to write to our senators, to write letters to the White House, just to say, ‘Ukraine needs your help, really help Ukraine.’ They have to know that people are watching and see this. How would you feel in 50 years when our kids read the history in the books? The kids will say, ‘The world was watching. They were able to help more, but they didn’t. Why?’ Our kids, our grandkids will not be happy. So this is what I would ask Americans, to write and to put this pressure.”
Standing by and watching is not enough, she says — a history lesson we should have learned.
“Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the world was watching. If at that point the world didn’t [just] watch, there would be millions of lives saved. We cannot watch someone do whatever they want. If Americans can put the pressure on their government that we cannot [just] watch this, because history cannot go in the same loop.”
In fact, says Fillinskyy, history won’t forgive the world watching for so long and not doing anything.
“We can’t just watch this for long because the Ukraine will be destroyed. I’m not worried about how we will rebuild the Ukraine. I’m worried how many people will die.”
Filinskyy’s grandmother, who is still in Ukraine, was born in 1934, and has memories of World War II as a 10-year-old.
“She remembers very well. She said, ‘I would never imagine in my life that I would see another war in my life. I thought that war was the end, that people learned the lesson and will never have this thing in this world. No, it’s just happening again.’”
moving story. makes you imagine the disruption, anxiety and fear these families face, including the men who leave their families and join a war they’re not trained for.