'It was home': Pittsburgh-area Ukrainian family hopes to someday return to Kyiv
Natalia Rusyn can still recall the terror she felt at the sound of air raid sirens and explosions shortly before she fled Ukraine in late 2022.
“It was so stressful,” she said, quietly mourning her home country, under assault from Russia. “I was so scared.”
Rusyn, 52, a pastry chef from Kyiv, left her life behind in November 2022 at the behest of her sister, Valentina Gladkov, 59, who lives in the Westmoreland County community of Acme near Donegal.
Rusyn became a refugee in the United States, living in a temporary house in Homestead as a single mother to her 10-year-old son, George.
“It was not my dream,” Rusyn said of living in the U.S. “(Ukraine) was a part of my life. It was home.”
What was supposed to be a temporary move has lasted more than two years — with no clear end in sight.
Russia’s invasion
Rusyn was in Riga, Latvia, on a ski trip in February 2022 when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
She extended her Riga trip with her then-8-year-old son, knowing it was not safe enough to return to Kyiv.
Toward the beginning of the war, it was hard to even drive anywhere in Ukraine because of the attacks. Vans and buses were being destroyed. Civilians routinely came under attack as they tried to flee to safety.
The sisters’ male cousin was drafted to serve in the military and is still fighting for Ukraine.
“We don’t communicate because it’s hard,” Gladkov said of their cousin’s active duty.
During the early days of the war, Rusyn thought about going to work in a hospital in Ukraine. But she knew her family was depending on her.
“I had to get my parents out of Ukraine,” she said. “It was my responsibility to move them and my son to safety.”
As of February, 6.9 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded globally, and there are 3.7 million internally displaced people in Ukraine, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.
A federal program called Uniting for Ukraine allows Americans — especially relatives and friends of people who live in Ukraine — to become sponsors and invite Ukrainians to the United States. Through that program Gladkov’s parents, Rusyn and George, had the opportunity to come to the U.S.
By November 2022, it was safer to drive in Ukraine, and the number of people trying to flee had lessened. The sponsorship was approved for her family to come to the U.S. by that time as well.
So Rusyn returned to Kyiv from Latvia to get her parents and animals — four cats and one dog — ready for the overseas trip to America.
The signs of war were ever present.
Rusyn could hear loud explosions in Kyiv from her house, which sits 6 miles outside of the Ukrainian capital. Burning debris fell from the sky about a mile from her home.
“It’s not normal,” Rusyn said. “It’s unbelievable for real life.”
She was met with a profoundly changed atmosphere. The stress of living under war was evident in her neighbors. Children George’s age were going to school underground in the shelters.
But Rusyn’s home was still standing — alongside her garden of French roses.
“My garden (was) still blooming because nature doesn’t know what is with war,” she said. “There’s still life.”
In addition to George, she has two older children. When the war began, they were pursuing degrees in Britain; they still live there today. Rusyn, who has a master’s degree in management and hospitality, was one year into her doctorate in digital marketing before the Russian invasion.
Rusyn hopes to start her own business one day as a pastry chef. For now, she cooks for friends and family in the Pittsburgh area while taking care of George. She’s thinking about looking for a job since she doesn’t know when she will be able to return to Ukraine.
Rusyn studied at the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and won a silver medal in the 2016 International Exhibition of Culinary Art, also known as the Culinary Olympics, for her sugar flowers. She brought her tools to make sugar flowers with her when fleeing Ukraine.
Having to leave her house behind was like experiencing a death, she said.
Traveling overseas
Gladkov’s path to America started in the early 1990s. She met a Ukrainian man, a U.S. citizen, who was visiting his homeland. They married, had a daughter and moved together to the U.S. in 1994. She became a citizen in 2007.
Gladkov later remarried. Today, she works as a helper at the assisted living facility where her second husband is living with Alzheimer’s. She also has worked as a nurse and owns Airbnb properties. She doesn’t have any other family living in the U.S.
When the war began in February 2022, she started persuading her sister and their parents to leave the country.
“It took me time to convince them to come here because it’s hard,” Gladkov said. “It’s a very hard decision, especially in this stressful and crazy time, to leave everything in your country and come here.”
Gladkov last visited her family in Ukraine in 2021. Before the war, she would travel back to see them every few years.
“My sister came forever, but my situation is temporary,” Rusyn said of the decision.
For Rusyn and her family, the journey out of Kyiv started with a train to Warsaw. Ukraine’s commercial airspace has been closed since the invasion.
“It was very dangerous, but then it was manageable,” she said of their travel.
They stayed in Warsaw for two days, along with their 12 suitcases, because Rusyn’s pets needed paperwork signed by veterinarians to enter the U.S. All five pets had separate passports — with pictures — to travel.
“It was harder probably for the pets than for the people,” Gladkov said of the process, laughing. But the pets had to come along because “they’re part of the family.”
From Warsaw, they flew to Frankfurt, Germany, and then to Washington, D.C., where Gladkov picked them up.
The family stayed in one of Gladkov’s Airbnb properties at first. Later, their mother, 78, and father, 83, moved to an apartment in Squirrel Hill.
Last year, their father had a stroke. Both of their parents have been depressed since emigrating, according to Gladkov.
“The process for them to adjust … was very hard and stressful,” she said.
George, who is now 10, goes to Sacred Heart Catholic Elementary School in Shadyside. He’s involved in swimming, chess, math and singing in the choir. His hobby is drawing cars and go-karting.
“Kids can pick up language better,” Rusyn said of adapting to English. “He learned the language in a couple of months.”
Hope for return
Gladkov, a registered Republican, cast her presidential vote for Donald Trump in November. But in the wake of Trump’s contentious meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in February, she was embarrassed.
“I want my country to be great, but not this way,” she said.
The Oval Office meeting escalated into confrontation in front of the media. By the end, Gladkov was in tears.
His actions weren’t what she was expecting when she voted for Trump. The meeting with Zelenskyy was a moment Ukrainian-Americans had been waiting for to glean more information about their country’s future.
It prompted her to attend the “We Stand With Ukraine” rally with Rusyn at the beginning of March on Grant Street in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Gladkov was unsettled by the way Trump and Vice President JD Vance spoke to and treated Zelenskyy.
“I’m worried about this uncertainty,” she said at the rally.
Rusyn said she hopes to one day return to her quaint home just outside of Kyiv. But she doesn’t know when it will be possible.
On April 26, Rusyn, her son and her parents will have to renew their Temporary Protected Status through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to stay in the country. They submitted paperwork to start the process, and the status is pending.
“We don’t know how long they’re going to prolong it,” Gladkov said. “They’re legal here, but I don’t know what (Trump) will decide tomorrow.”
There’s a possibility they could be sent back.
This war has been different than others in that it has been a hybrid war, Rusyn said. The physical attacks come also with a war of information and economics — propaganda and misinformation.
“If this wave of tyranny and murder is not stopped, the whole world will soon be mired in war,” she said. “It is always profitable for dictators to keep their people in fear and information isolation. Such people are easy to control.”
Rusyn said she’s grateful to the Pennsylvanians who have been supportive of Ukrainian refugees. She’s become friends with her neighbors in Homestead, who have expressed sympathy and solidarity.
“I don’t know what will be tomorrow, but I’m here (under) this peaceful sky,” she said from her temporary home in Western Pennsylvania. “In Ukraine, it’s not so simple.”
Megan Swift is a TribLive reporter covering trending news in Western Pennsylvania. A Murrysville native, she joined the Trib full time in 2023 after serving as editor-in-chief of The Daily Collegian at Penn State. She previously worked as a Jim Borden Scholarship intern at the Trib for three summers. She can be reached at mswift@triblive.com.
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