‘It’s like being a single mum’ – Ukraine family separated by war 12 months on

The wife of a church pastor in Ukraine whose family split up weeks after Russia’s invasion has said “it’s like being a single mum” almost 12 months after evacuating the country with her daughters.

Luda Sviridok, 48, fled Kharkiv with her two daughters, aged 17 and 10, on a train along with a number of other women and children from the church community – her husband Sergey, 46, and her son, aged 20, stayed in Ukraine.

Twelve months on from Russia’s invasion, she remains in the Czech Republic teaching English as a second language, and has only seen her husband – who continues to take humanitarian aid to villages – twice since leaving Ukraine.

“The first time my husband was able to come over to the Czech Republic in summer and we did a bit of travelling as a family. And for Christmas this year I had to go to Ukraine with my daughters, of course not home, but to the western part of Ukraine, which is much safer.

“It’s still very difficult for all of us to have split families. It’s really hard. It’s like being a single mum almost. I’m responsible for my girls.

“The first meeting was quite happy. But the Christmas meeting was, I don’t know, for me it was depressing and sad.

“When we left Ukraine, we just thought we were going for a few weeks, or maybe a couple of months. But now we’ve been here for a year, and we don’t know when it’s going to finish.”

Luda said her parents, who “cried when I came to say goodbye” in 2022, joined them a month later in the Czech Republic.

Her daughters meanwhile go to Czech school in the morning and attend Ukrainian school online – she said that learning the language has been “hard for us” adding “I don’t know why”.

“The younger one, she cries a lot and she’s reluctant to study in two schools,” said Ms Sviridok. “She wants to go home so much, misses her daddy, and so it’s been hard.”

“Every day I pray for my son and my husband and other relatives who still live there,” said Luda.

“We start the day by reading the news. The moment you open your eyes, you take your phone and you go to the news web pages and the Telegram channels with the news.

“And we check if they are online. Even if it’s early in the morning, if they have been online you know that everything must be fine.”

Ms Sviridok dreams of a return to Ukraine in the summer, an ambition which relies heavily on the direction the war takes in the coming months.

However, she remains positive about the progress made by Ukrainian forces, and thanked those who have supported the war-torn nation.

“We don’t want to think about the future because we don’t know what to plan or anything,” she said.

“We’re thankful to the Czech Republic and the Czech people who have helped us so much and we feel comfortable as much as possible here – but we truly want to go back and get reunited and things but we just don’t know when it’s going to happen.

“Ukraine has been strong and we’re happy about it. We are waiting for complete victory… like, enemy totally out of the territory.

“And we are thankful to all the countries that are supporting Ukraine and giving weapons – the more we get, the better the army is going to perform.”