A young Ukrainian woman living in Ireland has said she feels "helpless" as her mother and father sleep in bomb shelters in Kyiv, and she is considering travelling to the country's border to help refugees fleeing the conflict.
Alex Pishcheiko (24), who was born in Kyiv, said her parents were refusing to leave the city, despite the escalating violence following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ms Pishcheiko has lived in Ireland for three years, having come to the country to study on the Erasmus programme and afterwards stayed to work.
While her mother and father were currently in Kyiv, her twin brother was in the south of the country in Odessa.
“My parents are in Kyiv and they don’t want to leave, I can’t convince them,” she told The Irish Times. “The war is very close. They sleep in the bomb shelter at night and then go to their apartment during the day,” she said.
Her father, who works for the government, is assisting the Ukrainian forces defending the city, taking part in night patrols, she said.
Watching the conflict unfold through constant updates and videos on her phone had been almost “impossible”, she said.
“I’m thinking of going to Poland to people on the border, or western Ukraine. I know that my people need people. . . I can’t sit here,” she said.
Ms Pishcheiko, who works for a software company in Dublin, said she wanted to volunteer to help the thousands of Ukrainians crossing the border towards Europe to flee the conflict.
Her 59-year-old father and twin brother would not be among them, due to a ban on men aged 18 to 60 leaving Ukraine.
Proud
She had tried to plead with her parents to leave Kyiv, and travel by train away from the immediate fighting. “It is their home, they believe in our army, they are trying to protect our home. . . I am proud, but they are my parents, I want them to be safe,” she said.
On a recent family video call, her twin brother held up a gun, and “my mother almost fainted,” Ms Pishcheiko said. “I hope he never has to use it. . . Everything is worrying,” she said.
“I am proud the men in my life are willing to fight, I just pray they will be safe,” she said.
The community of Ukrainians in Ireland had been brought together by the conflict. “We are together in need, trying to help as much as possible, collecting money and donations for humanitarian aid,” she said.
On Wednesday, Ms Pishcheiko was part of a group of Ukrainians protesting outside of Facebook and Google’s Dublin offices, calling for the tech companies to remove Russian president Vladimir Putin’s propaganda from their platforms.
The protest, supported by campaign group Uplift, called on the companies to take stronger steps to tackle Kremlin-backed outlets pushing disinformation online. “It is critical the information war is won by truth”, Ms Pishcheiko said.
