Bombs, bandits and a frozen border: NJ native recounts harrowing escape from Ukraine

The day the Russians stormed into Ukraine, Uljana Zamaslo wrestled with the same decision that millions of other Ukrainians simultaneously grappled with: should she risk her life to stay in her home, or flee without knowing if she would ever return?

The 48-year-old yearned to remain in her cozy apartment in Lviv, in western Ukraine, with all of its conveniences. But then came a call at 4:15 a.m. from a Ukrainian friend.

"The bombing started," she said. 

It was a terrifying turn to a journey that had begun three decades earlier for the New Jersey native. Zamaslo grew up in Rutherford and Wayne in a Ukrainian family. She first visited her ancestral homeland in 1991 as the Soviet Union was dissolving and Ukraine was emerging from decades under totalitarian control. In 2008, she decided to make her home there, excited to be part of a nation rebuilding itself. 

But two weeks ago, the Russians returned. The invasion sent Zamaslo, her 9-year-old daughter Dzvinka, and a thrown-together collection of refugees on a perilous flight toward the Polish border.  

Recounting her journey to The Record and NorthJersey.com this week, Zamaslo said she considered what would be best for her daughter, as well as for a house guest staying with her in Lviv, an elderly American with health issues. If the air raid siren blared, she feared, he wouldn't make it down the four flights of stairs in her building to the bomb shelter. 

"It's not going to get any better, and it will be on my conscience if something bad happens," she told herself.

A mad rush to leave war zone

So she decided to leave. Zamaslo wouldn't sleep from sunrise on Thursday, Feb. 24, when the Russian incursion began, until two days later.

She packed a few bags into her car. But in the mad rush, she neglected to take food, an oversight that would be felt throughout her arduous two-day journey to the Polish border.

They left at night, but still found the roads busy. "We got stuck in the line for hours outside the border," Zamaslo said. "It took us three hours to get through the first kilometer and it kept getting worse after that." 

On the way, the trio spied two mothers walking along the side of the road with small children. They were headed to Sweden. With empty seats in her car, Zamaslo thought, she might as well help others fleeing to safety.

"I am thankful to my friends who stayed up with me the entire time and kept texting me so I wouldn't fall asleep behind the wheel," she recalled.

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Zamaslo left Vladimir Putin's shelling behind her, but found more danger ahead. 

"Local mafia bandits had turned the border crossing into their personal money-making machine, and we ran into one of their roadblocks every few miles," she said. Some tried to crash their vehicles into her car, hoping to wreck it and then force her to pay them for transportation. 

The group survived those threats but at the border found more criminals delaying passage. 

Bandits at the border

"People would pay them to get through the lines quicker because they were scared to death. It was basically bribes to get through to the border. They had cars jumping out into my path, and trying to hit me from the back. It took me 37 hours to get to the actual border. A lot of people walked those 10 kilometers [6.2 miles]."   

Back in Rutherford, Zamaslo's father, Peter, tried to keep in touch, although his daughter's phone kept running out of power.

“Of course I was worried about her, but there weren’t many options," he said. "She was seeing fighter planes overhead. Had she stayed, she would have been locked in.”  

Zamaslo's father said he and his wife are children of Ukrainians who were pressed into forced labor during World War II and born in Germany. They emigrated to the U.S. but have retained a close connection to their parents' culture, teaching Ukrainian to their children and traveling back to the country frequently.   

After reaching Poland, Zamaslo didn't have a place to stay. Through friends, she found a local who would take them in for the first night. Another friend helped her to find permanent housing in Warsaw.

"The hotels in Poland are all packed," she said. "The first hotel with a vacancy was over 80 kilometers away from the border."

The Polish people "have been fantastic," she said. "They have welcome stations at every border crossing with basic necessity items like soap and shampoo. They have buses taking people places." Some of the refugees have places to go and just need rides while others need shelters that are set up with cots and food.  

Fall of the Iron Curtain

Zamaslo studied political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and subsequently became a registered nurse. After she paid off her student loans, she made her way to Ukraine.

"I thought it would be fascinating to witness the birth of this new, modern country in light of the fact that they had been forced to conform to Soviet thinking for so long," she said.

"I don’t think anyone recognized the amount of psychological, collective trauma that Soviet rule left on people. You can't sit on a couch in New Jersey to witness this." 

Zamaslo, who is divorced, found that she and her daughter couldn't live on a nurse's salary in her new home, so she began working as an English teacher and translator. She also volunteers as a nurse on the side. 

"Life here doesn't differ much from life in the USA," she said. "Before the invasion, it was quite peaceful. People here are resilient. That’s one of the positive legacies the Soviet Union left. You would be hard pressed to find people that didn’t have relatives who were sent to the gulag or that didn’t have to endure something terrible."   

She spoke to a reporter this week from her temporary home in Warsaw and said her daughter is adjusting well to her new surroundings. "She’s doing quite well. She tends to look at things in a positive way. She's trying to learn Polish."

In the meantime, she's working odd jobs to support herself, helping out other refugees, and, like everyone else, dreaming of the day she can return. 

"Our plan is to go back to Ukraine as soon as we can and help rebuild."

Deena Yellin covers religion for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to her work covering how the spiritual intersects with our daily lives, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: yellin@northjersey.com 

Twitter: @deenayellin