Yuliia Kuzma spent four days travelling across war-torn Ukraine to bring her 12-year-old adopted son Maxim home to Proserpine last Thursday.
Separated by 13,000 kilometers for almost two years during the Covid pandemic and then by the outbreak of war in the Ukraine, Yuliia was finally reunited with Maxim – her biological nephew - in the city of Kremenchuk last week.
Yuliia Kuzma had been planning to bring her adopted son, Maxim, to Australia from the war-torn Ukraine since the early days of the Russian invasion.
Last week, the Proserpine mother made what she said was a “last minute decision” to travel overseas and retrieve the 12-year-old, booking tickets to Warsaw, Poland in mid-April.
From Warsaw, Ms Kuzma headed to the border with Ukraine travelling with another Ukrainian family, and she said the volunteers at the Polish border almost brought her to tears.
Giving away items such as clothes, toys, and even dog food to refuges and their pets as they crossed the border, it soon became clear to Ms Kuzma that she was about to travel into a war zone.
From here she journeyed by bus to the city of Lviv, and from Lviv, she caught a train to her destination, Kremenchuk.
She met with other men and women during the journey.
“They told me the horrible stories of what they had experienced. It’s very hard to hear and accept it, that it is happening,” Ms Kuzma said.
“To see this happening to my country - it is so sad.”
Maxim had been staying in Kremenchuk with a guardian – one of Ms Kuzma’s close friends – with the city relatively safe because of its hydroelectric station, which provides electricity for 40 per cent of the country.
It has been an asset the Ukrainian army have been eager to keep secured, although there are still “five or seven” bomb sirens each day.
The horror of war was pacified by a human moment when Ms Kuzma was reunited with Maxim.
“He rushed from the second floor to see me, there were hugs and cuddles – it was so wonderful,” Ms Kuzma said.
There was a 28-hour drive back to the Warsaw border, followed by a 24-hour flight before Maxim arrived in the heat of the Whitsundays – a change from the -2 degrees of the Ukraine-Poland border.
Ms Kuzma said there are new challenges for Maxim now, but they are good ones to have: he must grow accustomed to Australian food and learn English.
“Everything will be good, I know it, because my family is whole again” she said.
“I have to thank the people of Proserpine, because I feel I have been blessed with everything.”
Yuliia and Maxim Kuzma
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