Ukrainian best friends reunited as refugees in central Kentucky
NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. (WTVQ) – Many Ukrainian refugees are coming to the central Kentucky area because of the Ukrainian Pentecostal Church on Brannon Road. The church is helping to set these refugee families up in furnished apartments. Families like Lidiia’s and Margarita’s, two best friends from Ukraine.
The pair says when they met for the first time, it was like they had known each other their whole lives. Lidiia’s granddaughter Paulina translates their remarkable story of friendship.
“They met each other taking those kids out of Chernobyl on the bus, they were working in one organization. They’d seen each other before but that’s when they started talking more and knowing each other better,” Lidiia recounts of when she first met Margarita.
Lidiia and Margarita say even though they didn’t know exactly what happened at the nuclear power plant, it was important to each of them to help the children, animals and country in any way they could.
The two have lived through some of Ukraine’s darkest days, from Soviet rule to Chernobyl’s explosion up until the war with Russia, but through it all have kept their light. Lidiia fled with her daughter and grandchildren very soon after the war started, getting to Kentucky in late July. Margarita, her daughter and her grandchildren didn’t leave until recently, landing in Louisville on Sunday.
“[Margarita] was living on the ninth floor in the big building and for her, all those bombs falling, she’s seen those bombs,” says Margarita about living in Kyiv during the beginning of the war. “It looked like a flame falling from a roof nearby. When the air raid alerts were going, they just hid in the corridor.”
Both women say if it weren’t for wanting to save their families, they would have stayed in Ukraine.
“Every day, they are remembering Ukraine, thinking about it and crying. Because they have all their lives that have been in Ukraine, a huge part of their soul in Ukraine,” Paulina translates for Lidiia.
But, Lidiia and Margarita are happy to be in America, saying it’s the first place that’s felt like home.
“When we were going through many different countries in Europe, we felt like it’s not home there. It’s just some place we would stay for a couple of months, days, weeks,” says Lidiia. “When we got here, it feels like home.”
Lidiia and Margarita have faith that this isn’t their new permanent home and are looking forward to the day they can return home to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Pentecostal Church is looking for donations to continue supporting the refugee families coming in from Ukraine. You can drop gently used or new furniture off at the church on 1101 Brannon Road in Nicholasville. For more information, visit the website HERE and Facebook HERE.
