'There Is No Fear': A Ukrainian Mother Risks All to Retrieve Her Son
https://www.wsj.com/articles/there-is-no-fear-a-ukrainian-mother-risks-all-to-retrieve-her-son-11648389838
There Is No Fear: A Ukrainian Mother Risks All to Retrieve Her Son
Olena Sirotiuk was working in Poland when the war broke out. She took a dangerous journey into Ukraine to reunite with her 12-year-old child.
By Matthew Luxmoore and Natalia Ojewska
March 27, 2022 10:03 am ET
USTRONIE MORSKIE, Poland Olena Sirotiuk was on the night train moving east toward the front lines in Ukraine when she got a call from her 12-year-old son. Dont come Mummy, he said. Theyre shooting.
Ms. Sirotiuk, a cleaner living in western Poland, was one of the few women on a train packed with men headed back to fight the Russians. She wanted to retrieve her son, Nazariy, from behind what had suddenly become enemy territory.
You go because your child is there, said Ms. Sirotiuk, 50. In that moment, there is no fear.
The lights on the train were turned off to avoid alerting Russian army patrols, Ms. Sirotiuk later recalled. Instead, the corridors were illuminated by the glow of cellphone screens detailing news about the war and messages from relatives stuck in bomb shelters or negotiating their way to safety abroad. The train trundled along at about 30 miles an hour, and slowed more when artillery fire or shelling could be heard.
It was the start of what would be a five-day, 2,100-mile journey for Ms. Sirotiuk to the industrial city of Zaporizhzhia and back, by light rail and bus from Gryfino, on Polands border with Germany, to Lviv, in Ukraines west, and then by train deep into areas pummeled by advancing Russian forces.
Ms. Sirotiuk looked at a photo of her son on her phone.