Ukraine families divided by Russian occupation hope to be reunited

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — On a recent Saturday morning, several dozen volunteers at a youth center are weaving strips of cloth to make camouflage netting for the Ukrainian army. They are in the capital of Ukraine’s southeastern province of Zaporizhzhia, about two-thirds of which is controlled by Russian forces. The front line is 25 miles from here. But this city — the biggest in the province, and a major industrial hub — remains firmly in Ukrainian hands.

Many of those helping in the war effort here today fled homes that are now in Russian-occupied territory further south. That’s the case for 36-year-old Kateryna Kyshkan, one of the volunteers, who lived for a year and a half under Russian occupation.

“It was terrible,” she says. “It was very scary because there were a lot of tanks and bombs. And they would come into my house.”

Many people fled immediately. Kyshkan says she stayed so long because she believed the Ukrainian army would save them. By the summer of 2023, it was increasingly difficult and dangerous to get out.

Kyshkan shows the route she and her 14-year-old daughter took in July 2023 on a map.

To enter Ukraine from occupied territory, you have to pass through Russia or a third country, such as Belarus. It also means going through Russian checkpoints, where soldiers search your phone, your belongings and your person, in a process called “filtration” that Kyshkan describes as “frightening.” All the more so because she has a patriotic Ukrainian tattoo showing the vyshyvanka, a traditional needlepoint that has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, on her forearm that she says she hid under long sleeves.

One of Moscow’s demands for ending its war in Ukraine is the recognition of four Ukrainian provinces, including Zaporizhzhia, as belonging to the Russian Federation. The other three are Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk.

While the Kremlin’s forces do not entirely control these regions, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims their residents chose to join Russia in referendums. But those referendums, held in the fall of 2022 at gunpoint, were condemned as illegal by the U.N. General Assembly and had no validity under international law.

Kyshkan remembers Russian soldiers coming to her house with the ballots. She says she locked her door and hid upstairs. She says many people hid — or, if they were too afraid, they just went ahead and voted as the Kremlin wished.

Empty streets and distrust of the U.S.

Zaporizhzhia’s streets are nearly empty. There are no Russian soldiers in the city, but there is always the threat of Russian drones and missiles, and sirens wail many times a day.

Twenty-three-year-old Alyona Serdyuk and Sergey Vasylko are waiting for us in the parking lot of a drab grouping of apartment blocks. They live on the 6th floor of one of the buildings, along with Serdyuk’s parents. Alyona’s mother Vita Serdyuk, 48, is at home.

The family, including Vasylko’s parents, fled their hometown of Komysh Zoria, about 50 miles southeast of here, a couple months after the war started. Vasylko’s parents now live elsewhere in the province.

“Before the war, we had a really good life,” says Alyona Serdyuk. “We had a house, we had a business, we traveled.”

The family owned a bakery. They thought they could stick it out. But Serdyuk says it became clear very quickly that they would have to leave — conditions were lawless and everyone was afraid. Young women dressed as unattractively as possible and never went out alone.

She says the Russian soldiers could do anything they wanted.

“If they want to kill, [they] kill. If they want to confiscate [your] car, they confiscate your car. Take your house…”

One night, she says, drunk soldiers killed an entire family on their street. “Two children and a mother and father.” Everyone who could leave, left, she says.

A family from the Crimean Peninsula has since moved into their house. A neighbor who stayed behind tells them the new family is taking care of it.

They heard what President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview last month with Tucker Carlson about the eastern Ukrainian regions partly occupied by Russia. “They’re Russian-speaking,” Witkoff said. He was unable to name the four regions. “There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated they want to be under Russian rule,” he said.

This stunned the family. “What he said is frightening” — “it’s terrible,” mother and daughter say, speaking over each other. “Because this is our home.”

Vita Serdyuk says before the war, everyone spoke Russian as well as Ukrainian. “We lived in peace and it didn’t matter which language you spoke,” she says.

One of the Kremlin’s justifications for the war was to save Russian speakers, who it said were being persecuted in Ukraine. 

Serdyuk says now speaking Russian, which she calls the language of the occupier, “disgusts us.” The family have all switched to Ukrainian.

The Trump administration has indicated that it may soon recognize Russia’s ownership of Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed in 2014, as well as Zaporizhzhia and the other three territories Russia has partially occupied since 2022, in a one-sided peace deal it is negotiating with Putin.

The governor of Zaporizhzhia province, Ivan Fedorov, says Ukraine will never accept the loss of its lands under occupation. But he told The Economist magazine, “We understand that without British, European and American support, we can’t liberate our territories.”

Federov said if a ceasefire were imposed on Ukraine, it would only be a matter of time before the war resumed. “Trump can make decisions about the territory of the United States, but not that of Ukraine,” he said.

Family conversations stick to neutral subjects

Sergey Vasylko’s 69-year-old grandparents stayed behind under Russian occupation. He calls them every day.

They answer the phone, clearly overjoyed to hear the voice of their only grandchild.

They ask him about sports — he loves to play soccer — and his job as a local emergency worker.

As they speak, Alyona explains that they are very careful to never discuss anything that could get the couple in trouble — like the war or the Russian soldiers who now control their lives.

“I love you and see you soon,” Sergey says to his grandparents as they hang up.

Sergey’s grandparents have a garden and are able to grow some of their own food. But medicine is scarce. And with health care workers all gone — many Ukrainians in specialized professions fled — it’s difficult to see a doctor.

This close-knit family still hopes to return home and be reunited. But that’s looking less and less likely the longer the war goes on. Alyona and Sergey had hoped his grandparents could be at their wedding this September. But with their region still divided by war, they’ll likely have to go ahead without them.