Ukrainian woman and son who fled home reunited with family in Cork

“God love you, you must be shattered,” said Niamh in Immigration. “Don’t you worry, we’ll get you sorted in no time. What’s the little lad’s name? He’s gorgeous!”

As Larysa arrived at Dublin Airport an official called Niamh came out of her booth to tell her she was safe now and to make a fuss over little Matviy.

After quickly processing Larysa and Matviy’s application for refugee status, Niamh gave Larysa a welcome pack, and a shopping bag of healthy snacks.

She told The Echo that she finds herself becoming emotional several times a day when meeting Ukrainian people.

“Sure we’re all barely holding it together ourselves here when we see how traumatised people are,” she said. “The least we can do is try and let them know that we empathise with them and let them know that they’re welcome in Ireland.”

Larysa Boryspolets is a 36-year-old laboratory technician who last week was sheltering from the Russian invasion in a bunker with her two-year-old son in Brovary, a suburb of Kyiv.

“The Russians don’t advance at night, because they don’t know the area, but in the morning they start shooting and bombing again,” she said. “So we knew it was morning not by clock but by gunfire. The gunfire and the explosions were very loud, and very frightening.”

Larysa’s husband, Serhiy, was able to rig up an electric heater in the bunker, but the cramped, underground space remained cold and damp. Serhiy stayed in Ukraine to defend the country, as is mandatory for all Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60.

“I was looking at my phone, at the photos from before the war came, and I feel like it is a picture of someone else’s life, like something I saw in a film,” Larysa said on Tuesday.

“I had my home, my job, we had our family, and we were together, and now everything has changed.”

Help from a Cork family 

Larysa’s older sister Maryna had left Ukraine two weeks ago, making the arduous drive across country with her 11-year-old son Zhenia.

When Larysa and Maryna were children, St Aloysius Girls Secondary School in Cork organised a scheme to bring Ukrainian children to Ireland in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In 1994, Larysa and Maryna stayed with Liam and Rose Cotter’s family in Kerry Pike, and they have remained friends with them over the years.

When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine two weeks ago, the Cotters suggested the sisters come and stay with them in Ireland. Maryna made the trek to Poland, before eventually flying with Zhenia into Shannon. Larysa had initially resisted the idea, but last week it became apparent she had no choice but to join Maryna in Cork.

As Russian forces intensified their attack upon Ukrainian military and civilian targets, Maryna and the Cotter family became increasingly worried for Larysa and Matviy’s safety. When Liam and Rose’s daughter Lisa saw that Cork Penny Dinners co-ordinator Caitríona Twomey had travelled with Cork Humanitarian Aid Ireland to deliver aid to the Ukrainian border in Poland, she went to Penny Dinners and volunteers there called Ms Twomey.

“At that stage, Caitríona had been hoping to deliver aid inside the border to Lviv, and she offered to meet Larysa and Matviy there,” Ms Cotter said. “That plan changed a bit, but what a difference it made that Caitríona was able to meet Larysa at the border and then get her to safety. It meant the world for us and for Maryna to know that her sister was with people she could trust.”

The journey to Cork 

Meeting Laryssa and Matviy as they crossed the border at Medyka on Sunday, Caitríona Twomey brought them to Tarnów, two hours from the border, where they were able to rest for a few hours before getting on the train to Wroclaw.

The rules of Poland’s idiosyncratic train service apparently mean that booking a first-class ticket just means you can travel in first-class, but actually reserving a seat there costs extra. When people who had known to reserve seats came demanding that Laryssa and Matviy move, two young Indian men, Manpreet Singh and Sharan Randhawa, Sikhs who had been volunteering at the border, insisted on giving up their seats. At the end of the grueling, six-hour train journey to Wroclaw, at almost 4am, the young men bought baby food for Matviy and paid for a taxi to take them to their hotel.

“I still cannot believe how kind those two men were,” Larysa said. “They were strangers, and they didn’t have to do anything, but they helped us. There are really good people in the world.”

When daylight came, it was onto Wroclaw Airport for a flight to Munich, and an onward flight to Dublin.

On Tuesday, Larysa spoke with The Echo in Rose Cotter’s living room in Kerry Pike while Matviy and his older cousin Zhenia played, kicking a tennis ball back and forth across the floor. Rose and Lisa Cotter, warm, friendly women, were there, and Maryna said they had been looking after Larysa since she arrived.

“We have been friends for 27 years, and they are like family to us,” Maryna said.

Arriving at Dublin Airport, one of the first things Larysa saw was a welcome sign showing a heart symbol coloured in Ukraine’s distinctive yellow and blue. She said that seeing that, and then meeting Niamh, the Irish immigration official who told her she was safe now, had made her feel better.

“It made me feel I had come to a good place,” she said.