UKRAINE FROM A1

called and started screaming at her to get out — so she and her kids made the trip to Madrid, then Guadalajara, Mexico, to Tijuana.

Three days of traveling later, they crossed the border in the U.S. with no plan other than reuniting with her husband and older son.

“When times come like that, you’re not good at making decisions,” she said.

Eventually, they came to Lorain County and were connected with housing at Amherst’s St. Peter’s Parish parsonage — large enough to fit the family of five comfortably while the younger children enrolled in school and the oldest attended Lorain County Community College.

Natalia Glotova, who sat next to Kobiakova in the basement of St. Mary’s, was the first Ukrainian refugee to come to Lorain County — arriving in the early days of the war on a travel visa with her daughter, son and two cats from Brovary.

Her husband, Roman, helped drive the 30-hour trip to the western border with Germany, then turned back to stay with his own parish and infantry unit. She and Belenki talk to him often.

Glotova’s son, David, is an American citizen born in the county while his parents were there on a visa 14 years ago — but that doesn’t help his mother or sister with the uncertainty in their statuses.

The Glotovas’ travel visas are set to expire in three months, and while Natalia’s applied for an extension, she hasn’t heard back yet. She said they

Panas said. Russ Panas attended the first Earth Day March in 1970 in Washington, D.C. and the couple attended the Women’s March in Cleveland in 2017.

She said at one point

Russ turned to her and remarked they’re really in Washington, D.C., struck by their surroundings.

“There’s something powerful about going to Washington, D.C.” she said. “The monuments that are icons to democracy and being surrounded by that, it’s just a very powerful thing.”

She said she was surprised to see a diversity of people in the crowd amid the blue and yellow flags: different races and different ages.

“It was a long way to come for a short period of time but it was worth every mile as far as I’m concerned,” she said.

She said later, “If you have a voice you need to use it ... and I think that’s what we all did (Feb. 25).”

One of the best signs Tatiana Panas said she saw Saturday was one noting appeasement didn’t work in 1929 and it won’t work in 2023 — referencing the collectivization of Ukrainian farmland in 1929 that led to famine in the early 1930s.

She said the ongoing arrived three weeks after the cut-off to qualify for temporary protected status, and is reluctant to risk leaving the United States at its southern border and entering again to apply for humanitarian parolee paperwork.

“It’s getting really stressful because you don’t know what is going to happen,” she said. “You can’t really plan and build anything because you just have this day and you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.”

She added, “Every time you have to think about everything. … It feels like fighting, fighting just to be here. It’s not easy.”

In the year since they began arriving, Ukrainian families in Lorain County have taken English as second language courses at Lorain County Community College. Their children have gone to school and started to make friends, but all are facing uncertainty as the war at home drags on and their visas or temporary protections expire soon.

In the first month, Tiurkina got to Ohio, she got very sick and required surgery, she said.

“I thought, ‘I came here to die?’” she said. “Why didn’t I stay home and die quickly? I felt very down .. but it took my attention from the war because I needed to switch my attention because it will be too much if I thought about my sickness and my dying and the war.”

Her husband was thankful they’d made the trip — as even if they’d stayed in Ukraine and avoided the destruction around them, conflict will never be solved at the negotiating table, and Russia must be pushed back.

“What you see in Ukraine is what your future will be if (Ukraine) doesn’t get the support that is needed for victory,” she said, noting if Russia moves into countries that are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States and other Western nations will be forced to get involved.

The couple attended the rally, bundled in layers to stave off the cold, but left before the attendees marched to Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov’s residence about a mile away.

According to Washington, D.C.’s NBC 4, attendees chanted in front of the ambassador’s home.

Wearing a Vinok, or flower wreath, Tatiana Panas said a woman on the metro saw the headdress and the couple’s blue and yellow face paint and said “Slava Ukraine!” to them on the train.

She said when the war started, she was constantly explaining her nationality and where Ukraine was in the world — but now, she will never have to do that again.

“The world knows Ukraine now,” she said.

Valentyna would have probably not been able to get medical care.

Now, while still waiting on the Lorain Social Security Office to correctly process Tiurkin’s paperwork granting him a Social Security card so he can work in the U.S., the couple hear from friends still in Ukraine.

The war is becoming normal for some.

Tiurkin said he’d called a friend who said just moments ago the post office he was in had been bombed and people ran to shelters, but after a few minutes everyone went back out and moved on with their day.

Some stories are still sobering, his wife said — like social media posts of friends, now soldiers, injured on the front line.

Their humanitarian parolee status is set to expire in April — like Kobiakova’s — but they have little guidance for what’s next.

Belenki said it has left the parish in a lurch, too — deciding whether to sponsor those already here again, or bring more families while worrying about the status of its first refugees.

“We’re bringing them at the same time we already have an issue with those who just came. Because one year flies by so quickly,” he said.

He said later, “Uncertainty is the biggest issue. You’re thinking like, ‘What to do with my future? Should I build and make plans or just let it go as it goes?’”

It’s left families torn between two places and they could soon be citizens without a country, he said.