Ukrainian residents leave S'pore for Europe to be reunited with families

Scores of Ukrainians living outside of Europe have headed for the region to be reunited with their families who fled their war-torn country.

Ukrainian couple Sonia Prokofieva and Alex Prokofiev will join them when they leave Singapore for the Czech Republic tomorrow with their two-year-old twins and Filipino domestic helper.

The family's helper, who will enter the country on a tourist visa, will help to look after the twins.

A bittersweet family reunion awaits them in Jindrichuv Hradec, a Czech Republic town near the Austrian border.

Mrs Prokofieva, 33, said: "Every day since my mother left Ukraine, she's been quite depressed. She says that she would rather stay in Ukraine.

"I want to support her, and I want my children to meet grandma."

Her 63-year-old mother fled Fastiv, a city in the Kyiv region, within a few days of the war's outbreak. She left the country after a missile hit a residential building a few blocks away from the maternity hospital she worked at.

She has been in the Czech Republic since Feb 28.

Mrs Prokofieva's sister, a civil servant, remains in Didivshchyna, a village near Fastiv. Her brother has been a citizen of the Czech Republic for more than 25 years.

Mrs Prokofieva and her husband, 35, who have lived in Singapore for six years, also plan to use the time in Europe to help transport medical supplies to Ukraine's border.

Close friends of Mrs Prokofieva's in the Czech Republic who are doctors will supply them with medicines.

"We just want to be closer to our country. It's very difficult to stay here when we have this pain, this hole inside. And we have to do something to make this pain go away," she said.

Like her, Ms Anna Gilliam, who has been living in Singapore with her American husband since 2016, felt she had to get involved.

The last time she was in Ukraine was last December, two months before the invasion.

The 40-year-old packed her bags and on March 13 boarded a flight to Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic.

She then spent 40 days there volunteering with Dignity, a non-governmental aid organisation.

Ms Gilliam hails from Cherkasy, a city in central Ukraine. Most of her family, including her father and three brothers, remain there.

From March 13 to April 21, she helped translate for displaced Ukrainians who could not communicate with the English-and Czech-speaking aid workers in Prague. She also befriended some of the refugees she met.

As at last Monday, the Czech Republic had granted 345,203 emergency visas to Ukrainian refugees.

Ms Kateryna, 29, who declined to give her surname, flew to Poland's capital Warsaw on April 14 to be reunited with her family. She then took them to Hamburg, Germany, and has been by their side since.

Her mother, 52, and three grandparents, all in their 80s, had fled their home in Dnipro in Ukraine via train on April 14.

But her father remains in Dnipro, as Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 to 60 are banned from leaving the country.

She has helped her family to settle documents, book appointments and arrange medical insurance, among other things. Her mother and grandparents do not speak English, Polish or German.

Emotional support is needed as well.

"Everybody is crying, so I have to calm them down. It's a bit chaotic right now.

"Everyone wants to go home, but I will not let them," said Ms Kateryna, who added that she does not plan to stay indefinitely as she has to return to Singapore for her studies.

Ms Kateryna has been working on her doctorate at the Singapore University of Technology and Design since 2019.

As at May 14, more than 700,000 Ukrainians had arrived in Germany.

"It's very, very hard here (to find accommodation)," Ms Kateryna said. "Houses, especially temporary ones that can be rented for a month, are gone within one hour of the advertisement being posted."

Mrs Kateryna Zakharova, 28, is documenting some Ukrainians in a photography project on Instagram called "Ukrainians from Singapore".

She was in Zywiec, a town in southern Poland with about 31,000 inhabitants, when she spoke with The Sunday Times on May 10.

According to the United Nations, as at last Tuesday, Poland had taken in 3,396,792 Ukrainian refugees, more than any other country.

Mrs Zakharova, who left Singapore on May 1 with her Polish husband and their nine-month-old son, is in Zywiec to be reunited with her 48-year-old mother and grandparents, aged 78 and 79.

They had left their home in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi for Poland on March 14.

Her 47-year-old father remained behind. He is a soldier with the city's Territorial Defence Forces, said Mrs Zakharova, who has been living in Singapore since 2018.

She said the pandemic had delayed trips home.

"I thought that Covid-19 would be the worst thing that could happen. Then the war started. We decided we would go anyway.

"From day one, I felt this urgent need to be with my people and I wanted to go immediately," said Mrs Zakharova, who is heading for Ukraine's border with Poland next week to capture the portraits and stories of recently displaced individuals.

"I hope my photos raise more awareness about the situation in Ukraine. I feel like we need to do more to tell people's stories so that Singaporeans will be more familiar with the situation, and understand what people are going through," she said.

In Singapore, Mrs Zakharova worked as a project coordinator at a law firm and pursued photography on the side. Her husband, 35, worked as a business developer for a German company.

Besides the photography project, Mrs Zakharova has been on the ground helping displaced Ukrainians with translation. She speaks Polish and Ukrainian.

Mrs Zakharova still holds out hope that she can be reunited with her father, but for now, she talks to him over the phone daily.

"We don't want to go back (to Ukraine), because my mother and grandparents will lose the apartment (in Poland), and it'll be almost impossible to find a new one. And once they leave Poland, they cannot regain their status as refugees," she said.

Mrs Zakharova says that she will stay in Europe for roughly two months.

She said: "I'm really afraid that the war will become a regular topic, that people will not care as much, then Ukraine will be left alone. It's really important to remind people that the war is still going on, people are still dying."

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• Visit @ukrainians_from_singapore on Instagram to view Kateryna Zakharova's photography project.