‘Please save her life’: Sask. woman takes in niece fleeing from Ukraine

Maryna Shkarupa’s sister had to make a heartbreaking decision — sending her 16-year-old daughter away to escape the war in Ukraine.

“This isn’t a one-night decision. My sister (Ludmyla Gerevianka), she has a boy who is 22 and a daughter, who is 16. My sister decided we have to save this young girl,” said Shkarupa, who lives in North Battleford.

“They made this decision quickly because things are growing worse and worse every day. People in Ukraine have stressed all the time when they hear those sirens before bombs come.”

She said high-intensity attacking areas were about 150 kilometres from their town, Kryvyi Rih.

“My sister wants a better life for her daughter,” Shkarupa said. “She didn’t want to come. She asked me, ‘Maryna, please save her life and future.’ ”

Shkarupa and her family have lived in Saskatchewan for nine years after leaving Ukraine.

“When it’s night here, we can’t sleep because you are worried about your relatives. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’d wake up and check messages,” Shkarupa said. “During the first three days (of the war) I couldn’t stop crying.”

She said the decision was made for her mom to accompany her niece, Kateryna Gerevianka, on the trip because she was living alone and had already visited Canada before and had a visa already.

“(My sister and niece) made this decision in the evening and they cried together all night. In the morning they said that they wouldn’t go,” Shkarupa said. “They changed their minds a thousand times.

“They came to the train and the crying — my sister didn’t want to let her go but (at the) last minute she pushed her into train and door closed and that was it. That’s a true story. She just couldn’t stop crying.

“It’s heartbreaking. For a 16-year-old it’s too much stress and too much for her to go through.”

Shkarupa said the trip isn’t an easy one to get out of Ukraine.

“It was almost a full three days. On the train, they spend 17 hours standing. My mom is 66 and she has to stand and didn’t have a chance to sit on the floor because it was so full,” Shkarupa said. “(There were) lots of women and kids in the train, no men. Women crying, kids crying, so many families broken. Each person in this train had to leave someone.”

Shkarupa said they got out of the train and got to Poland, saying there were a lot of volunteers to help out.

They waited for six hours to get through the border with so many people trying to get through.

Shkarupa said her mom got slightly ill while making the trip.

“She gets sick and her legs were so swollen after this train and lots of cramps because of it,” Shkarupa said. “When they get into Poland, they get put into a bus and get shelter in some other place.”

Now they are waiting in Poland, waiting for Gervianka’s visitor visa to be approved to come to Canada to live with Shkarupa.

Shkarupa said she applied for her visa last week and said this week, the Government of Canada updated its website to indicate Ukrainians will be given priority. She said she called a hotline that gave her instructions on what to include so they can expedite the process.

“Now I start thinking that I hope she will be OK mentally when she is here because she won’t know anyone and her mom is on the other side of this big world,” Shkarupa said. “It’s tears non-stop, even for me because I feel their pain.

“I tell my sister, ‘I will give her my whole life. My house will be her house.’ My kids are so happy to see her.”