‘Protected only by guardian angels.’ How a Lexington woman escaped war-torn Ukraine.
Lana Duychak went home to Ukraine because she needed dental work.
Sure, there were rumors of war, of a Russian invasion, the same talk and rumors there had been since Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, and when Ukraine’s Crimea region was annexed by Russia in 2014.
But the dental work was good, and cheaper than anything she could get here in Lexington. And she could see her mother, father, brother in Western Ukraine and visit all her friends in Kyiv. So on Feb. 6, she left her husband, Viktor, her four kids, her Kentucky landscaping business and headed home.
“The Russians have been a threat for eight years,” she said. “Nobody was taking it seriously and neither did I. We thought Putin was bluffing again.”
She and Viktor first came to the U.S. in 2005, following family who had settled in Florida. They moved to western North Carolina, where the mountains and rivers reminded them of home. But when it came to buying a house, the prices around Asheville were too steep so they tried Lexington instead. They both became U.S. citizens in 2012.
But home is still home, and Duychak had never stopped visiting Ukraine to see her family and friends who still lived there.
This time, Duychak, 42, spent two weeks in Kyiv, staying at her old school, the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary. In between dental treatments, she walked around the big city, saw old friends. “It was a wonderful time and nobody expects war,” she said.
By Feb. 22, the work was done, and she had a few days to see her family in Western Ukraine before heading home on Feb. 27. Except for the text from United Airlines canceling her flight, which she thought was strange, but part of modern day travel.
On Feb. 23 she had dinner with friends at their apartment. On Feb. 24 at 4 a.m., Lana, along with the rest of the city was woken by a loud boom. The Russian invasion had begun.
“What we were afraid of has happened,” she recalled.
In a few days, bombs and guns were all they heard. The apartment house where she’d had dinner was destroyed. Kyiv residents started to flee, but with no flight, no airport even, Duychak was stuck.
Under siege
Now she huddled in a basement with the seminary students and staff, sleeping on mattresses they hauled down. Luckily, because of the school cafeteria, they had plenty of water and food for a while. If anyone wanted a shower, they had to risk going up to the third floor. Duychak sneaked upstairs once or twice, praying to god, please don’t let me be bombed, I don’t want to be killed naked!
Her husband, still in Lexington, frantically searched the internet for a way out for her. He found her a taxi to get her to the relative safety of western Ukraine. When she broke curfew to go out and meet it, the street ended with a bridge that had just been blown up. The taxi was on the other side.
At the same time, some of Duychak’s friends in Western Ukraine were making plans. They bought a second-hand bus because you couldn’t rent one, filled it with food, water and gas and drove to Kyiv. They pulled up at the seminary on Feb. 28. About 50 people from the seminary got on the bus and began the trip toward Western Ukraine.
The Russians were bombing the main highways out of Kyiv as civilians tried to escape so the bus was forced onto back roads, making a 8-10 hour trip take two days. Duychak talked to the other riders — women, children still in shock, traumatized, depressed and unsure about what would happen next. “For me, the adrenaline kept me talking with many laughs and jokes. It was our antidote to the horror. It helped us not think of what was going on Kyiv.”
Nerves were further shattered as night fell. There was a loud bang, making the bus buck and shudder, sending some passengers into hysterics, sure they had been hit by Russians. It was only a blown tire. They were stopped by Ukrainian military checkpoints who made everyone get off the bus to show their papers because they were looking for Russian spies.
They spent the night at a church in a village that was sheltering about 100 people. They ate donated food and slept on the floor.
“We were protected only by guardian angels, and it was enough,” Duychak said.
Finally they reached Western Ukraine, a collection of tiny villages in the mountains. The biggest city is Lviv, about 140 miles away, which had already sent a stream of refugees because the Russians were bombing it too. Duychak’s brother lives near her home village of Polyana, and like every house there it was full of people, friends and relatives who’d fled to somewhere safe. Her brother’s house had about 30 people staying there.
Duychak’s father takes care of his 90-year-old mother, so he was not going to leave. Her mother, Maria Kapustey, had a U.S. visa because she was already planning to come visit in March, but the ticket was through Kyiv. She didn’t want to leave right away; she wanted to make sure her three-bedroom apartment would be used by refugees and there was too much to organize to leave right away.
On March 3, Duychak’s brother drove her over the border to Ubla, Slovakia. The Slovakian government welcomed refugees with food and clothese and shelter, but still “everyone was so scared and depressed,” she said. “There was so much misfortune in their faces.”
Meanwhile, Viktor had gotten flights for himself and the four children — Khrystyna, Emmanuel, Daniel and Benjamin — to Rome where they rented a car. On March 5, they drove their rented car from Rome to pick her up in Slovakia. She had not seen them for a month.
Provided by God
The Duychaks spent a week in Rome, where Lana spent much of her time trying to wrangle flights for her mother to get to the U.S. Maria Kapustey got to Budapest and then flew to Istanbul, where she was delayed by a freak snowstorm. Another flight to Madrid, then to Lisbon and Chicago. She was expected in Lexington Tuesday night.
Duychak is now home, trying to marshal more aid for the people in Western Ukraine as they attempt to house and feed refugees. When she looks back on her experience, she said, she was scared, but unlike her fellow travelers, she knew she had a home in Lexington to return to. And she knew her friends in Lexington were praying.
“I want to say thank you to everyone,” she said, “because I really felt your prayers. I was in danger but I didn’t feel it. I was provided by God in everything. God is real in my life. I don’t see him but I feel him through people.”
For more information on how to help Ukraine, you can email Lana Duychak at svitlanaduy79@gmail.com. For more information on how to give, go to https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article259626404.html
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 11:28 AM.
