- An aged Ukrainian girl recounted her experiences fleeing Russian invaders twice earlier than she died.
- Kateryna Lihusha advised The Wall Street Journal that she first fled house as a child in 1932.
- Lihusha castigated Vladimir Putin and his “bastards” in an open letter earlier than she died this yr.
A Ukrainian nonagenarian who died earlier this yr was pressured to flee Russian invaders twice all through her life — first when she was a child after which once more within the last yr of her life.
Kateryna Lihusha recounted her story to The Wall Street Journal final yr quickly after she left Ukraine following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion in February 2022.
Before she died, Lihusha was among the many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have been displaced by the conflict and are actually scattered all through Europe and past.
In the final months of her life, Lihusha penned an open letter to the nation of Poland, thanking its folks for taking her in amid the battle, and lambasting Putin and his cronies within the course of, the Journal reported.
“Could I have ever imagined ending up at the Polish border, that Putin’s bastards would ruin my old age, scatter my grandchildren all over Europe, and mutilate Ukraine?” she wrote.
Lihusha’s life story exemplifies the price of Russia’s centuries-long goal to regulate Ukraine and strip the nation of its independence, a violent quest that has bred generations of Ukrainians who time and time once more are pressured to decide on between survival and residential.
Her story dates again to the late Nineteen Twenties, when Soviet authorities stripped Lihusha’s ancestors of their land within the jap Donbas area and compelled them onto a collective farm, in line with The Journal. In the next years, the Soviets would search Ukrainian grain to promote overseas in a plot that in the end resulted in widespread famine and hundreds of thousands of deaths throughout Ukraine.
The first time Lihusha fled Russian invaders was as a child in her mom’s arms in 1932, the Journal reported. Her household left their house in an jap Ukrainian village for the close by metropolis of Horlivka after Soviet authorities took management of the village’s grain provide.
Many of her kin who stayed behind would later die of starvation, Lihusha and her daughter advised the outlet.
During World War II, Lihusha and her household returned house to their village. But within the post-war years, Ukraine was hit by a wave of Russification that led to a dwindling Ukrainian tradition within the nation, the Journal reported. Lihusha taught Ukrainian language and literature within the village.
When Ukraine held a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Lihusha’s daughter, Valentyna Pryshchepa, advised the Journal that she satisfied all her members of the family to vote sure.
Lihusha’s household purchased her a home close to Kyiv in 2004 the place she lived till Russian troops invaded final yr. Once once more, she was pressured to flee her house. Lihusha and her daughter went to Poland, they advised the Journal.
The village from which she first fled as a child is now close to the frontlines of preventing within the Donbas space, in line with the outlet.
“I have nothing left here, only my memories,” she advised the Journal in a spring 2022 interview.
Lihusha died a yr later of kidney illness. She is buried subsequent to her husband in a cemetery close to Kyiv, the outlet reported.
