Limerick woman spends a week on refugee frontline to support those fleeing Ukraine

A LIMERICK woman has spent more than a week at the Poland-Ukraine border helping refugees fleeing the war-torn nation.

Ivonne Kennedy, who runs a small business near Newcastle West, travelled from Ireland to the Polish city of Rzeszów.

She then continued another hour to the border with Ukraine, which has been hit by Russian forces, where she assisted dozens of refugees who had made the life-threatening journey from their homes in the war zone to safety in the west.

There, she bought treats for young children leaving their homeland, as well as vital medical supplies, which she was able to purchase in Poland, thanks to a donation from a Limerick parish – the priest of which has requested to remain anonymous.

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Speaking to the Limerick Leader, while en-route back to Ireland, Ivonne said she felt travelling was the right thing to do.

“Despite how crazy it sounds, I had a voice in my head that I should do this, and I believe it was God guiding me,” she said.

Upon arrival to Rzeszów, Ivonne – who hails from Germany – made the train journey to the village of Medyka, right on the Polish side of the border with Ukraine, where she distributed items to arriving refugees, and offered moral and emotional support where she could.

“I had a donation from a parish in Limerick. I was going shopping every day in a store inside Przemyśl train station, another city close to the border, which has hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving. I was buying lots of different things. They wanted always a lot of sweets for the children, nappies for the children, squeeze fruit drinks for the babies, things like that,” Ivonne explained.

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As well as buying goods, Ivonne also dug into her own pocket to provide hostel accommodation for refugees on their first night in Poland.

“It’s been very emotional. At one stage, I stayed in a hostel for two nights. There, I met a [Ukrainian] couple, Tanya and her husband with a little girl. They had a private room in the hostel. I was talking with her, and she started sobbing all of a sudden. I just put my arms out and she gave me a hug. Her husband was taller than me, but he fell into my arms too. I just hugged them both together, and allowed them both to sob their hearts out,” said Ivonne.

When she was in Medyka, Lviv, the first major city over the Ukrainian border had yet to be invaded, and was seen by many as a safe haven, given its proximity to the European Union.

Due to limited internet coverage, Ivonne did not learn for a number of days that Russian forces were advancing on Lviv, and it’s something which she admits has given her the “shivers”, especially given how she had planned to visit the city to help while she was in the area.

Ivonne, who says she made “friends for life” from this visit, met a number of people with Irish connections.

In particular, she recalled a lady called Iryna, who was married to a man from Newry, and her niece, Victoria, a girl of around 30, living in Dublin, and whose stepfather is Irish.

Victoria was planning to meet family members at the Ukrainian border and bring them home to safety in Ireland.