Luda’s journey: a father’s rescue from the war in Ukraine

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Luda was determined to rescue her aged parents, still living in Kyiv. Now 63, she was born in Moscow but grew up and went to university in Kyiv, where she met and later married an American.  She became a US citizen and qualified as a tax accountant.  Her parents had visited her several times, but she could not persuade them to live with her permanently.  She now showed considerable courage and was willing to risk her life for them.

Her concern became urgent when her mother died on February 23rd, the day before the war began.  There were many civilian deaths, so Luda could not get a death certificate required for burial and her mother’s body remained in the morgue for ten days.  Her 92-year-old father, a civil engineer, was seriously ill with a urinary infection, but most doctors had now fled, he had no medicine and sometimes no food.  A friend finally found an expensive private doctor who came to his flat to replace his catheter.  The airport was closed and no plane tickets were available.  People, fearful and suspicious, believed in foreign conspiracies and thought American visitors were spies.  The train station, close to where her father lived, was being bombarded. Friends told her, “Don’t even think about coming.”

Her father was too ill to leave the flat, but had some help from neighbours in his building.  They suspected a man who’d brought food to ingratiate himself and had learned all the details of her father’s life.  Con-men frequently persuade old people to sign over their scarce apartments.  Stubborn as ever, Father would not go into a shelter during the bombardments and said he was “too young” to be put into an old folks’ home.  Luda’s daughter, afraid of losing her, cried “What about me?”  But she started a Go-Fund-Me to help pay for the dangerous trip.

Luda had to get a visa from the consulate in San Francisco to enter Ukraine, and then find out how to rescue her father.  Massive evacuation had started and refugees from Donbas were streaming through Kyiv en route to Poland.  Most bridges were closed and it was difficult to get accurate news about the war.  She heard of a 20-hour bus ride (double the normal time), starting from Kyiv but far from Father’s apartment, that would take him to the Polish border.  It was nonstop and he was advised to wear a diaper.  She also heard about Global Guardian, a worldwide organisation that would go anywhere and transport anyone to any place—for $75,000.  Sick and depressed after the death of his wife, her father resisted all her efforts and could not be convinced to get ready.  As the April 15 tax filing deadline approached, Luda put all her clients on extension.  One of them protested, “What if you don’t return?”

She decided to rent a car in Bucharest for $862 and meet her father on the Romania-Ukraine border.  She also arranged for a driver to bring him the 325 miles from Kyiv to Chernivtsi in southwestern Ukraine for $3,000.  Fuel was scarce during the war and rationed to five litres a day, so it took weeks for the driver she hired to gather the necessary amount for him to leave Kyiv by car.

On April 1 she flew on Lufthansa from San Francisco to Frankfurt and Bucharest.  She met up with Marcel, a Romanian friend and engineer, who arranged for a car and hotel.  In Raudauti near the Romanian border, she found a local man who for $750 would take them across the frontier in his own car, pick up Father and bring them all back.

In previous peacetime visits, she had to give the Romanian border guards $20 with her passport to avoid standing in line for hours.  They no longer demanded a bribe and waved them through.  She rented three rooms in Chernivtsi, which cost $700, for herself, Father, Marcel and the Romanian border-driver, and paid for all their food.  The Ukrainian driver, afraid of being forcibly drafted, did not want to get too close to the border.  The guards were looking out for young men trying to escape.

On the Ukraine border a huge tent village had been set up to aid refugees, with a veterinarian for sick pets.  At the last petrol station in Ukraine the owner heard them speaking English and quickly put out a sign saying “cash only.”  Since they were leaving the country and had no Ukrainian money, they had to pay in dollars.

Back in Romania, they went to a refugee centre in a large building, with several families living there.  The six young relief workers, who were generous and kind, gave them food and offered a room.  But their job was to find countries, such as Finland and Ireland, that would accept Ukrainian refugees.  They advised Luda to ask the American Embassy in Bucharest to assist her.

The 325-mile drive from the border back to their Airbnb in Bucharest took a whole day.  The Marine guard at the embassy would not let her enter the gate, pointed to a printed notice with a telephone number, and told her to call and leave a message.  It was now April.  When the embassy finally called they said the next available appointment to get Father’s visa would be in August.  Not knowing what to do next, Luda had to stay in Bucharest for several unnerving weeks, afraid of running out of money.  Father was very negative in Bucharest.  He did not think he would get a visa, and often repeated that America needed young capable people, not old men like him.

In America a devoted tax client organised an appeal to her local Congressman and his support cheered her up.  President Biden then gave permission for 100,000 Ukrainian refugees to enter the United States.  Though Luda’s father qualified as the parent of a citizen, and was not part of the refugee quota, Biden’s declaration forced the embassy to act.  She finally got his visa in early May.

The Lufthansa next-day flight cost a prohibitive $5,000 for each ticket.  So she took a good flight on Turkish Airlines from Bucharest to Istanbul, continued nonstop to San Francisco and arrived home after six weeks on May 8.  The total cost for the heroic journey was more than $15,000.

An only child, devoted to her sick and obstinate father, Luda risked injury or arrest, but was determined to overcome all the obstacles of war and bureaucracy.  Fortunately covered by Medi-Cal health insurance, Father had been in hospital, treated for his serious infection.  The doctor frankly told Luda, “It’s not a matter of if, but
when.”  Father, who can’t speak English, spends his time watching Ukrainian television, tending his flowers and taking short walks.  Despite the dangers in Kyiv, he constantly thinks of returning to the war zone instead of remaining safe in America.  Every day he asks about his Covid certificate that has to be translated into Ukrainian and Russian.  Luda and her father have agreed that he will wait in America till the end of the war and return home when it is safe.

Jeffrey Meyers has recently published Robert Lowell in Love and Resurrections

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