“But you know, it’s so tearing and touching to hear from a child, ‘Oh Mom, are Russians still bombarding us?’” Panivnyk said. Now that they are in the United States, the children are adjusting, with three cousins to play with. Panivnyk said there is a “green corridor” set up for people to cross the border “and according to all the global laws, military cannot shoot people who are crossing using that corridor, but Russians were shooting people.” “And you know, when I hear the word ‘war,’ it’s not war, it’s genocide, since they’re not killing just military people, they’re killing civilians on purpose. “They are destroying the infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads,” she said of the Russian army. While she hopes to return to Ukraine, Olga Panivnyk said she knows there will be much rebuilding to do. The two older children are already in school, so they didn’t make the trip to New Haven. Two days later, the Panivnyks flew to Pennsylvania, where Olga’s sister lives. And after going to the restroom, which was in the forest, for the last four days, five days, it was very awkward.” Leaving Europe behind “You know that your nation is suffering just a few kilometers away from this normal life. Panivnyk said while it was a relief to get to Poland, it felt strange to go into a busy gas station, with people buying food and coffee, in contrast to the empty ones in Ukraine. Once they reached Poland, customs agents gave food to their children and the Polish Knights met them. “And they were just giving away, not asking for money, etc., just supporting people.” “Despite these dark times, at some point, I believe it was evening of the second day, people in the villages along that road started preparing food, like some sandwiches and some hot soups, bringing them to the road,” Panivnyk said. People walking on the road began “unloading their luggage, leaving clothes, shoes on side of the road and you will see this clothing along the road,” she said. Four-day traffic jamīut before they could get to Poland the family had to sit in a 20-mile traffic jam for four days. The Ukrainian Knights also support the military hospitals in Donbas and Luhansk, where soldiers have been fighting Russia since 2014, Olga Panivnyk said. Roman Panivnyk, who speaks Ukrainian but little English, is director of programs for the Knights in Ukraine, integrating global programs into the country, such as supporting students in seminary, hospital chaplains and building and cleaning churches and collecting wood to heat the churches in the winter. But since he had three children, he was able to join them and they reached out to the Polish Knights. The family, which includes Danylo, 14, and Maria, 10, made it to the Polish border, though at first they were unsure whether Roman Panivnyk would be able to leave, because men were needed to resist the Russians. “Now reflecting back, a few days later a few places along the route we took were bombarded like they were battlefields, so we would not be able to take that road a few days later,” Panivnyk said. The trip to Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, normally a seven-hour trip, took 23 hours. “And there were notices about potential bombarding of the roads, since Russians knew that there were a lot of people on the road, and, you know, it was scary.” One-way traffic to Poland “We saw unexploded rockets in the fields … just rockets stuck in the field, and it’s dangerous,” Panivnyk said. The roads were packed with vehicles leaving the city, filling both lanes in one direction: toward Poland. So you go and we stay.”Īs they left Kyiv in north-central Ukraine on the afternoon of Feb. So they told us, you know kids, we’ve lived our lives, so it will be difficult.
#Dark side of knights of columbus plus#
And plus he has cancer and he was supposed to have the surgery exactly on that Thursday when war started.”īecause of her father’s weak condition, Panivnyk said, “it would be very difficult to survive that road. “We were trying to convince them to leave with us,” she said. That’s when she talks about having to leave her parents back in Kyiv. Telling the story of their harrowing journey out of Ukraine, there are only a couple of times when Olga Panivnyk tears up. They started receiving texts that the Ivano-Frankivsk International Airport, the city where Roman Panivnyk is from, had been bombed, and that rockets were flying just six miles away. But then there more and more news of what’s happening.” “But we still hoped … that it was just some kind of accident or we are not understanding it correctly. “I think we were just shocked, and Roman told me, ‘Ola, you have to pack necessary things, some warm clothes, documents,” she said. At first it was hard to believe war had started, Olga Panivnyk said.
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