Four years on from the invasion, we talk to the Ukrainians who have settled in Co Kerry, why they chose to come here, the heartbreaking stories from their homeland, and dealing with the 'small percentage of haters' The vast majority of the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who now live in Ireland could never have imagined they would still be here four years after the full-scale invasion of their country by Russia.
There are about a million Ukrainian refugees in Poland, according to UNHCR statistics from September. Kholkina is not one of them; she is one of nearly half a million Ukrainians in the country who arrived prior to 2022, and has lived in Poland for more than a decade. I'm more Polish than Ukrainian now but I never thought someone would lecture me on how to talk to my own family, she said.
Rosemary Duckett, 80, a retired magistrate and former chair of her local YMCA, and her husband, Anthony, 88, have been providing accommodation in a room above their garage to Ukrainian refugees since 2022. The couple were dismayed when the council recently told them they could no longer use the room, which has a small bathroom attached, to provide somewhere for Ukrainians to live without applying for a change of use for the room, at a cost of 600-800.
I realized that without speaking English or Spanish, there was little she could do here. At some point, he asked if she could bake. When she responded, of course I can, adding, every girl in Ukraine can, it was Zabelin's lightbulb moment.
