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For many of the civilians trapped in the hell that has been Mariupol the only way out has been through the country that destroyed their city and their homes.
With access to the rest of Ukraine blocked, they were forced to flee through Russian occupied territory and then through Russia itself.
Russia has been processing refugees ostensibly as a humanitarian gesture, but in reality to filter out those who they believe can help the Ukrainian war effort.
The shortest distance by road and rail between Mariupol and Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is 2,500 kilometres. The 31 exhausted Ukrainian refugees who arrived into Dublin in the early hours of Sunday morning have travelled that distance and sometimes more.
They were helped by an organisation called Rubikus which is staffed by volunteers in Russia who are risking their own safety to help them.
When the 31 Ukrainian refugees got to the border with Estonia, the Russians refused to allow them travel on to Tallinn until they proved they were going somewhere else. Only when they produced proof they were boarding a Ryanair flight to Dublin did they allow them to proceed through Estonia to Tallinn train station.
The Irish leg of the journey was managed by Tom McEnaney and translator Margarita Kalinichenko on behalf of Flights for Freedom. It is an organisation set up by travel entrepreneur Paul Norton to provide flights for Ukrainian refugees to Ireland at cost price. It will be organising all future flights of these refuges.
“Given that this particular group of refugees are from Mariopul, survived being bombed and besieged for weeks, before being rounded up and forced into Russian camps, it was a particular privilege to be able to help get them to safety,” Mr McEnaney said.
Missile strike
Oleg and Olena Slobodyanyk say they will never return to Mariupol. The Russians destroyed their home and they retreated to a basement. When they emerged from the basement to fetch snow to melt for drinking water, their 19-year-old son Grigory was killed by a Russian missile strike and Olena was badly injured.
Olena’s mother Svetlana, Olena’s daughter Buryan and Biryan’s daughter Julia left for Ireland two weeks ago.
Yet Oleg and Olena would not leave Mariupol until they had a chance to bury their son in a Christian cemetery.
He would have been 20 this Friday and was looking forward to starting a job in an industrial factory where his father worked.
“He had not seen life. It’s very hard and painful to remember it, the heart wears and hurts, and this wound remains forever in our memory and in the heart,” Olena says, the pain evident in every word.
The 31 refugees included a 82-year-old woman and 86-year-old Maya Suhovei who belied her years and the experiences she has been through with her indefatigable energy and good humour. She is travelling to Ireland with her son Vladimir.
Mrs Suhovei, who was born in Baku, Azerbaijan is the daughter of a Soviet air force pilot who fought in the Second World War.
She refused to leave Mariupol at the start of the war because she did not want to leave without her cat and went, instead, to her brother’s house which was shelled as was the home of another brother. She spent a month in a basement under fire as Russian missiles rained down overhead.
Harbours hope
Mariupol is a Russian-speaking city and many residents living there have family connections to Russia. Mrs Suhovei said it is hardest to take that her own nephew is in the army of the self-declared People’s Republic of Donetsk and is therefore fighting with the Russians. Unlike many of her fellow refugees, she still harbours hope that she can return to Mariupol some day.
The youngest of the refugees is one-year-old Vladimir Priadkin who is travelling to Ireland with his father Vasily, mother Ira and brother Sasha (10).
Vasily was a safety engineer in a nuclear power plant in Kharkiv before the family moved to Ira’s home city of Mariupol six years ago.
Their first floor apartment was destroyed by a Russian missile. Vasily went out to fetch water and could not return again because of Russian military activity. He was detained by Russian troops who took all his money off him. The family were eventually reunited in Russia.
The Priadkins spoke of the looting they witnessed by the Russians in Mariupol, not just household appliances such as washing machines and televisions, but also car parts which they stole and then sold to buy food.
“We want to get jobs and put the children in school. We hear that Irish people are very friendly. We don’t expect to return to Mariupol soon,” he said.
Having reached the safety of Ireland, they will still have to be allocated accommodation at a time when 30,000 Ukrainian refugees are already in the country.
Many of the new arrivals know little or anything about Ireland, but anywhere is better than Mariupol. The feedback from other Ukrainian refugees living in Ireland has been good and there are few good alternatives.
Misha Morosov, his wife Nataliya and daughter Eve (15) endured temperatures of minus 15 degrees in February when the windows of their Mariupol apartment were blown in and all power and light was severed.
Refugee centre
They were taken to an undisclosed location in western Russia and put up in an indoor football pitch with 400 Ukrainian other refugees. They were given a choice of fending for themselves or go to another Russian refugee centre. Unsurprisingly, they choose the former option.
Mr McEnaney is now hoping to set up a network of Irish volunteers based in Estonia to bring more refugees who have been filtered through Russia. It only costs €250 per refugee as they have deals on flights and volunteers based in Estonia and Ireland will do the rest.
All Ukrainian refugees have been traumatised by their experiences, but he believes the ones who were trapped in Mariupol and could only escape through Russia are a special case.
“The challenge now, of course, is to get them to safety, and to raise the money to bring out another group,” he said.
“One of the questions I’m struggling with is what to call people from this particular group. ‘Refugee’ doesn’t seem enough somehow and deportee isn’t correct, given that they were forced out of their own country in what is classed as a war crime. I suppose ‘civilian prisoner of war’ is perhaps the most appropriate term.”
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