Ukrainian refugee living in Dallas marks one year since Russian invasion — and seeing her parents

DALLAS — A year ago Sunday, Yuliia Skibina boarded a packed train only knowing she needed to go west.

“I talked to my parents [about] what I should do, whether I should go,” she said. “Everyone was talking that we have to leave now because if you don’t do it now, it’s going to be impossible to do it after all.”

It was two days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine with its eyes on Kyiv, the capital and Skibina’s home. Exactly a year later, the deadly war continues to claim lives every day.

“When I left my home I thought, ‘ok, maybe it’ll be like 3-4 weeks and then I will come back,’” she said. “I just took with me my documents, my laptop because I work online, four or five items of clothes, my cat and food for a cat.”

She’d bought her apartment a year before the invasion began. Her fridge still has the same food from when she left. Her windows have been shattered by explosions and her apartment has also been flooded from water in the unit above her.

U.K. intelligence reports up to 60,000 Russian soldiers have died. Ukraine officials say 13,000 of its troops have been killed along with 8,000 civilians.

“I can’t even describe the thankfulness that I have for all the countries all over the world,” Skibina said.

She first stayed in Poland with a girl she met on her train out.

“She was alone, and I was alone and in the most critical situations, you bond even stronger I think,” she said.

Skibina later went on to Hungary and then back to Poland, eventually arriving in Dallas last March, where she knew friends.

She couldn’t get to her parents who stayed in Ukraine and were cut off by bridges strategically destroyed by Ukrainian military.

“It’s been a year. I don’t even have words to describe that feeling,” she said. “I want to touch them. I want to hug them.”

They video call or text every day, but she hasn’t hugged them since Christmas of 2021.

Skibina is now 28 and works as an IT contractor and at Whole Foods part- time. The U.N. reports 13 million people have been displaced due to the war in Ukraine, including 8 million refugees.

Skibina is one of the millions hoping to one day return home.

“You have your life,” she said. “You have your plans, long term plans, short-term plans. They’re all canceled.”