Displaced Ukrainian women in Geelong unite

Ukrainian women who fled their motherland after Russia’s invasion have told of their struggle to call Geelong home.

Larissa Sichivitsa, Valya Bazalicki and Luba Pryslak. Picture: Alan Barber

As the war drags on in Ukraine and its people scatter globally, women who have fled to Geelong are fighting to stay connected to each other and their homeland.

When 73-year-old Larissa Sichivitsa left Lviv two years ago to live with her daughter in Torquay, she didn’t know how long she would stay.

Ms Sichivitsa has begun to call Geelong home, supported by the regions’s thriving Ukrainian Women’s Association.

“Part of me is here, part of me is in Lviv,” Ms Sichivitsa said.

“It is very, very painful.”

Ms Sichivitsa said Lviv was a beautiful city, full of western Ukrainian culture and good food.

While living there, she went to the opera house and theatres two to three times a week.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ms Sichivitsa watched her friends and family scatter across the globe, to Poland, German, Latvia, and the UK, scrambling for safety wherever they could find it.

“When the war started my brother called to ask where I was,” Ms Sichivitsa said.

“I said ‘I’m with my children, I’m in Australia.’

“And he said, ‘thank God … you are safe.’”

She said he has not contacted her since, due to fears relating to Russia.

Ms Sichivitsa said she has also lost contact with many of her relatives in eastern Ukraine, and worried for their safety.

Many of her friends stayed in Ukraine for their husbands and sons, as men between 18 and 60 cannot leavewhile the country remains under martial law.

“Can you imagine that four, five times a day there are sirens, and people have to go to the basement,” Ms Sichivitsa said.

“It is like a horror film.”

Larissa Sichivitsa, Valya Bazalicki and Luba Pryslak. Picture: Alan Barber

Last year Association of Ukrainians in Victoria Geelong president Luba Pryslak, who is first generation Ukrainian-Australian, volunteered in Ukraine feeding frontliners and working in a rehabilitation hospital for soldiers.

“The beautiful city (Lviv)that’s full of historical statues and buildings … if you go there now, they’re all sandbagged … because they could get ruined any time,” Ms Pryslak said.

“They’ve got canvases around them sometimes with a photo of them or a painting of them.”

The war, Ms Pryslak said, feels like history repeating itself.

“The Ukrainians were scattered all over the world in World War II,” she said.

“We’ve ended up here, and again … Ukrainians are being scattered all over the world.”

The president of the Ukrainian Women’s Association Geelong, Valya Bazalicki, is a first generation Ukrainian woman who coordinates a trauma program at the Geelong Clinic.

“That’s what happens with trauma, you adapt to the uncertain, and that lack of safety,” she said.

Ms Bazalicki said numerous local Ukrainian women contactedher in distressdue to the Moscow Circus performing in Geelong.

Although the circus is not from Russia, the women were upset by the association of the word ‘Moscow’ with something fun.

On Saturday May 11, the Ukrainian Women’s Association Geelong is hosting its third annual Mama’s Market at the Ukrainian Community Hall on Pakington St to raise money for women and children still in Ukraine.

“We send all of the money for women and children in Ukraine, it’s beautiful,” Ms Bazalicki said.

“It’s bought X-ray machines … food packages … lots of things.”

Originally published as Displaced Ukrainian women in Geelong unite