AN Irish-speaking Ukrainian woman, who learned the language at An Chultúrlann in Belfast, has spoken of her family’s gruelling journey from war-torn Kyiv to Cork.
Human rights worker Nadia Dobrianska fled her home in the Ukrainian capital as Vladimir Putin declared war on February 24.
Having learned Irish while studying at Queen’s University in 2019, Nadia has been a prominent feature in Irish language coverage of the war in outlets such as TG4, Raidió na Gaeltachta, and Belfast’s own Raidió Fáilte.
Nadia Dobrianska on her journey out of Ukraine
Nadia, a project manager at Human Rights Centre ZMINA, told how her journey began after convincing her elderly parents to leave their home as Russia began killing civilians.
“In theory, if I was on my own I would have left before then, but given that my parents are not very mobile, it’s hard for them to leave the country,” she explained.
“They hardly wanted to leave Kyiv in the first place.”
After being forced from their home by the Russian onslaught, Nadia and her family stayed with family in the countryside before making an almost two-day journey to the Polish border, where they waited for at least another 30 hours.
“It used to be more quiet on the border, but by the time we were leaving more people were leaving the country because the murder of civilians by Russians had really escalated,” Nadia explained.
“We were in a queue for two kilometres. We were in the car, but I could see some people were walking and there were buses bringing people to the border and then they crossed on foot. It was really rough.
“The queue stretched into the villages near the border. As you can imagine, huge crowds of people were standing in queues through those villages and pretty much all the food was wiped out from the local shops.
“There were garages where you could go to the bathroom, but there was quite a distance between the garages, so you basically had to go to the toilet outside. The villagers were not extremely happy about that. In between the villages there were woods that were full of shit, to be honest. I even stepped into it, my shoes and my trousers were stinking and I couldn’t get rid of them because I was in the car.”
Nadia described the experience as “horrendous”, adding that that her family were “lucky” to have been able to stockpile food and to have access to a car.
She told of people walking through villages without luggage, hoping to chance upon some food in the sparsely stocked shops en route.
The one-time Belfast resident later stayed with friends in Krakov before making it to Cork, where she and her family now reside.
Asked about the Western response to the war, Nadia said she was “grateful” for the “enormous response from ordinary people.
She welcomed sanctions against Russia by Western states, but called for an escalation of those measures.
“I really welcome the sanctions – it should’ve been done in 2014 when Russia took the Crimea and started the war in the East,” she said.
“Much of this could’ve been avoided if Russia had been sanctioned for their actions years ago.”
