Sarah Brown
In February 2022, the Martyniuk family found themselves making the hard decision to flee their country as Russia began bombarding Ukraine with missiles and tanks. It was a decision that would separate them from the patriarch of the family for more than a year.
After being apart for one and a half years, Viktor Martyniuk was able to embrace his family at the Portland airport last August and return with them to Sweet Home where they currently live.
The family, consisting of Viktor and Daniia, and their two boys Maksym (Max) and Daniil (Dan), had secured permission to leave Ukraine for Poland, but when they arrived at the train station just one week after the invasion began, they were confronted with masses of people who had the same idea.
Still, determined to get his family to a safer country, Viktor “shoved” his wife and kids into the train car, Daniia said. It was so packed, people slept on the floor and they were without water for the 24-hour trip.
Viktor, it turned out, could not join them due to a travel ban restricting most men between the ages of 18 to 60 to leave.
According to Daniia, Russia had temporarily obtained footing in northern Ukraine near the capital city of Kyiv in the beginning of the 2022 invasion. Some of their military had even slept in the city of Chernobyl where radiation from a nuclear explosion remains dangerous. That’s because, she explained, many Russians don’t know what happened there in 1986.
Today, the Russian military maintains control of a southeastern corner of the country and is just 45 minutes away from Odesa, the Martyniuk’s hometown. Located on the beachy shores of the Black Sea, the port city boasts approximately one million in population. Reports online indicate airstrikes on Odesa started before Daniia and her kids even left, causing damage to the city and killing citizens.
Through their friends who live in Foster (Dan and Carol Pollard), Daniia and her boys landed in Sweet Home during summer 2022. Daniia teaches special education at Oak Heights Elementary and is working to obtain her Oregon teacher’s license. She said she loves her coworkers in the school district, and Principal Todd Barrett, who is “awesome.”
Her son Max, 13, who seems to lean on the quieter side, likes to read science books and play chess. According to his mother, he wants to be a scientist. His brother Dan, 10, seems to be an outgoing boy who likes to tell jokes and share information about sharks and history, a boy who isn’t afraid to say his English is better than his brother’s.
“Russia is fighting for the land,” Dan said. “But the question is, Russia is not using 60 percent of their land and they’re just making wars for no reason for more land.”
When thinking about what he misses from his life in Ukraine, Dan recalled his cousin, the dark blue skies above his country, the smell of his mother’s cooking and taking long walks. Max said he misses the beach.
Daniia explained that Ukraine has the basic four seasons, and summers can be very hot, a season during which time she loved spending on the beach. During her first visit to Newport with friends, Daniia eagerly looked forward to going for a swim, but found she was “a piece of ice” while there.
Being apart from their husband and father was not a totally foreign experience for them. Viktor had often taken up work in Alaska for several months at a time, Daniia said, but this separation was much longer and involved the dangers of war.
To be reunited in America, Viktor had to obtain several permissions; permission to abstain from joining the military, permission to enter Moldova and enter Romania and enter Hungary and Poland and, finally, permission to leave Poland and enter the United States. It wasn’t as simple as having a visa or travel ticket.
“Can you imagine you’re moving to another country with (just) a piece of paper, without a visa,” Daniia said. “It’s a lot of concerns, like how it’s going to be (if it’s going to work smoothly).”
She explained that Ukraine, not being part of NATO, requires its male citizens between the ages of 18 and 22 to join the military for one or two years. If the country is engaged in war, the government must rally its citizens together in participation.
“Our country doesn’t have Army, we’re not military country,” Daniia said. “And for this case, each person has to stay.”
At this point in the conversation, Dan pointed out that Ukraine has the biggest nuclear power plant and is the biggest country in Europe (technically Russia is also part of Europe, so that makes Ukraine the second biggest country). He followed up with a political joke, more historical facts, and information about sharks.
Ukrainian men possess one type of “military ticket,” Daniia went on; either a “regular” one or a “white” one. The white ticket means the holder has never been in the military. That’s the ticket Viktor possessed because he missed the opportunity to join the military due to health issues.
“All his life he had white ticket,” Daniia said.
After one last recent check with the military clinic in Ukraine, Viktor was given permission to leave the country.
For all the time it took Viktor to obtain permission to leave Ukraine, it only took him two straight days to pass through four countries and arrive in Portland. He didn’t get much sleep during that time, though, he said; most particularly while staying in Poland where hourly plane activity kept him awake.
“The house where I stopped (in Poland), it was close to Warsaw airport,” Viktor said. “After Ukraine, it’s crazy. In Ukraine you hear something like this, it’s missiles or bombings. I don’t (didn’t) want to stay long time in Poland.”
It was a trauma-induced (PTSD) experience that Daniia, herself, understood. It takes some time to not have fear or stress when similar noises in safer countries permeate one’s surroundings, after living in a country where missiles and planes fly overhead and bombs explode nearby, she explained.
When the time came for Viktor to step into the Portland terminal, his family was there waiting for him.
“We were very excited to meet him,” Daniia said. “(The boys) drew the pictures and they took American and Ukrainian flag.”
Viktor noted the boys had grown up, and Daniia noted her husband was different, in a way. She said she could see in his eyes that he had seen “not good stuff,” he possessed a fear that her mother also carries from the war. Most recently he witnessed Russian drones and missile attacks that destroyed a multi-story apartment building.
“When you live day by day in this situation, it’s like habits (you get used to it),” Viktor said.
When asked, both Max and Dan said they were happy to finally see their dad again, but Dan found it a good opportunity to also share another joke and then pose a question about why light is the fastest thing in the universe but darkness is not equal to the speed of light. Max answered by saying that “dark does not exist,” or rather, it is emptiness or absence.
Daniia is fluent in three languages and can speak five. She was a teacher in Ukraine, holding master’s degrees in geography and cartography, and English as a second language. It is perhaps for this reason that her kids are prone to learning many things, although she did explain she rewards her boys for learning new things.
Viktor has worked as a forklift driver, worked in retail and worked at the seaport. After his family left for America, he helped his friend in Ukraine run a store selling clothing for military servicemen. The uniforms, he explained, are often not good enough quality to last long, and their socks are always wet, so they need to be changed out several times a day. For this reason, the Martyniuks try to help by sending clothing and food into Ukraine from time to time.
Viktor’s grandparents operated a small farm in the Romania-Ukraine region, driving a tractor and working the fields, Viktor said. When the Soviet Union had control of the area, they worked on what is called “collective farms,” essentially working the land for the country.
His mother worked in a clinic and his father was something of an engineer, building industrial plants, working at hydropower facilities and repairing nuclear stations. In fact, he was among those who renovated the “bougie” Odesa National Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, and built a sarcophagus (a shelter) that contains radioactive material at Chernobyl, Daniia said.
Now looking to enjoy their retirement years, his parents chose to remain in Ukraine despite the disruption of war. Daniia’s mother (a widow) and one of her sisters left for Canada, but her mother recently returned to Ukraine where Daniia’s younger sister still lives.
The Martyniuks don’t expect to return, themselves, because it’s too expensive and too difficult to make the trip, Viktor said.
Now, both Daniia and Viktor’s parents are getting used to the war, Daniia said. Just the other day, her father-in-law told her he saw two missiles in the air, but he returned to his work in the garden when he saw they were not headed in his direction.
“Ukrainians, they are kind of happy nation in one way,” Daniia said. “They learned how to be happy today.”
Explaining further, what she meant was they have learned that tomorrow may not come for them, so they find their happiness in the present moment.