‘It happened so quickly.’ A Wilmington family finds safety in Poland after fleeing the war in Ukraine

On the first day of the invasion, Tatiana Poladko was outside with her children when Russian helicopters roared over Kyiv, seemingly close enough to touch.

The kids, all three of them then under 7, began screaming and running.

It was not how Poladko and her husband, Atnre Alleyne, Wilmington residents who run a Delaware-based college-access program, imagined life would turn when they journeyed to her Ukrainian homeland in 2021, wanting their children to experience the culture and country. Ten days after the start of the war, the family walked into Poland, fleeing the violence among what quickly became a millions-deep flow of refugees.

And today, on the one-year anniversary?

“We’re relatively well,” Alleyne, 38, said in a Zoom call from Warsaw, with Poladko, 39, by his side. “It happened so quickly.”

Everyone’s safe, they said. The children are settled. And the future is barely more possible to predict than it was a year ago.

On Friday, the family will join millions around the world, and in Philadelphia, marking the anniversary in ways big and small. In Warsaw they’ll hold conversations with friends and grassroots leaders about how to support the Ukrainian army and make more people aware of the nation’s needs and suffering. Poladko is helping their daughter, Zoryana, who turns 8 on Saturday, prepare a presentation to her school classmates.

In the Philadelphia region, home to one of the nation’s largest Ukrainian American communities, people have planned a weekend of observance and commemoration.

Hundreds are expected at a Friday evening candlelight vigil at the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center in Jenkintown. The next morning at least seven buses will head to a major rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., departing from Jenkintown’s Manor College and St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church, and from the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Philadelphia.

“We will win this war,” said Iryna Mazur, the honorary consul of Ukraine in Philadelphia. “Ukrainians at this point, they are the symbol of resistance, and the symbol of hope.”

Still, she said, as the anniversary lands, “I’m sad because I know how many people are dying, and how many people are wounded.”

Poladko sees it every day as the injured and weary arrive in Poland, a place she never expected her family to be.

In a way their path toward Warsaw commenced when the pandemic hit in early 2020. Poladko’s mother died in Ukraine, but she couldn’t go to the funeral because the borders were closed by travel restrictions.

A year later, as limits relaxed, and with her father growing older, she and Alleyne decided it was time for the family to spend an extended period in Ukraine. Their nonprofit, TeenSHARP, which prepares Black, Latino, and low-income students to attend top American colleges, had moved online during the pandemic, so they could work from overseas.

Federal immigration laws also played a role. Poladko is a Ukrainian national, and her visa required a two-year return to her homeland. That’s not nullified by marriage to a U.S. citizen or even by having citizen children.

In January 2021, the family headed to Kyiv. And 13 months later erupted the greatest conflict in Europe since World War II.

The family escaped to northwestern Ukraine, and from there to supposedly safer Lviv, where a friend lent them an apartment. But within days even Lviv no longer felt safe.

They joined the throng heading to the Polish border. A stranger with a car offered to drive them most of the way, then they started to walk.

Poladko carried Taras, now 3, while now-4-year-old Nazar clung to her dress, and Zoryana walked beside. Alleyne helped Poladko’s ailing father go forward.

They walked more than four miles, entering Poland, where authorities were putting refugees onto buses to the town of Przemysl, which operated as a kind of welcome site. From there Poladko and her family quickly headed to Warsaw.

Since then, avenues have opened that would permit their return to Delaware, particularly through Uniting for Ukraine, the Biden-administration effort that welcomes Ukrainians fleeing the war, provided they have an American sponsor.

But other factors tug.

Poladko’s 82-year-old father left Poland and returned to Ukraine, in what’s thought to be a safer village near the Romanian border. The family wants to be close to him.

The children are settled after changing schools and homes — they vividly remember the fear of that first day, how the helicopters dropped flares that looked like fireballs. The couple believe they can do more for Ukraine from nearby, already raising about $40,000 for humanitarian aid and to buy drones and night-vision goggles for soldiers.

In summer, Poladko traveled back to Ukraine, to renew her passport and to retrieve belongings left behind in their Kyiv apartment. It sits 18 miles from Bucha, site of one of the worst Russian massacres of the war.

It was eerie, she said, to travel familiar streets now strewn with wreckage. At night the air-raid alarm on her phone signaled, but no bombs fell.

“I don’t think I have survivor’s guilt,” she said, “but you police yourself. Should I feel enjoyment? Should I be enjoying life? To what extent? When there is so much need.”

They press, her husband said, to keep American friends and colleagues engaged in Ukraine, not easy as time goes on and fresh disasters and conflicts dominate the news. In fall, Alleyne traveled to Delaware to share updates with U.S. Sen. Chris Coons and U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester.

And in fact, Americans are softening in their support, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The January survey found 48% supported sending weapons, down from 60% in May. Support for economic aid dropped from 44% to 37%, and willingness to accept refugees fell from 64% to 55%.

The one-year anniversary offers a chance to raise awareness and engagement.

On Thursday at Manor College — founded by Ukrainian nuns in 1947 — school president Jonathan Peri, U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, and State Rep. Ben Sanchez baked “war bread,” to be distributed to some of the estimated 15,000 Ukrainians who have sought safety in Pennsylvania. Most of those coming to Pennsylvania have settled in Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, and nearly all, as is true across the country, are women and children.

The recipe for the bread came from a Ukrainian chef who relied on ingredients that can be found even amid the scarcity of war. Wheat is a major crop in Ukraine, and bread plays a cultural role as a traditional symbol of welcome.

Sunday will begin with prayers at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in Philadelphia, and continue with rallies outside the Art Museum and on Independence Mall. In the afternoon the Jenkintown center will host a bilingual memorial concert, “The 356th of February: Music of the Unbreakable.”

“Moscow has murdered tens of thousands of people, has displaced millions and has ethnically cleansed millions more,” said Eugene Luciw, president of the Philadelphia branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. “Moscow continues to destroy Ukraine’s power, heating, water and sanitary systems in a conscious effort to make Ukrainian life brutal and short.”

For Poladko and Alleyne, the days begin and end with news from Ukraine.

They’re not sure what comes next for their family.

“It’s been a blur,” Alleyne said. “Our kids are happy. We’re sitting with that … and open to things.”

“I think,” Poladko said, “we stay here for as long as needed.”