From Bucha to Galway: The journey of Artem Kvashyn

In an office at St. Joseph’s Community Centre, sitting behind a desk, Artem Kvashyn looks calm and unperturbed. Originally from Ukraine, he has lived in Ireland for almost three years. Since arriving with his family, they received nothing but support from Irish people. And as a leader of Ukranians Helping Ukrainians Galway (UHUG), he welcomes his compatriots and helps them integrate into a new society.

In the Ukrainian city of Bucha, Artem worked as an investigative journalist. He was the director of a news agency, leading a team of two journalists, an editor and a cameraman. They did projects on human rights and investigated corruption.

Artem remembers clearly the day of the Russian invasion. He woke up very early, drank his coffee and read about the news on Facebook. His first reaction was of disbelief, he thought it wasn’t real.

Used to driving from Bucha to his office in Kiev, that day was not exception. He had to witness everything with his own eyes. After arriving and seeing a rocket coming, that didn’t exploted and end folded on the ground, it became real. He made sure his children Arina (16 years old), Veniamin (5 years old) and Marfa (3 months old) stay protected. So the next day, they moved alongside with his wife Dasha to a safe place in another region. But Artem returned to Bucha to help the community. Shortly after, some Ukrainian soldiers took him as a prisioner.

“They were looking for some spy, I suppose, or they took me as a spy”, Artem recalls. “Then, after this, when I run away two weeks later, somebody call me and said to watch out because they will kill me, it was local people, because I was a investigator and I investigated their corruption”.

The soldiers put him on the wall and were willing to shoot. But inexplicably, they changed their minds at the last minute. He said it was “just miracle”. The next day, Artem send a short text message to his wife, taking advantage of a brief distraction from the people that were watching. Dasha made a few calls and pulled some strings, so he was rightfully released.

Escaping from war

After that episode, leaving Ukraine wasn’t easy. The first thing he had to do was meet up with his wife and children. On the 10^th of March 2022, he drove away with two families in one car. The line of cars advancing to flee was inmense.

“And I said, we need to stay in the middle of the line”, he remembers. “Because yesterday, the russians were shooting the head of the line and the end of the line, they will just shot the cars, lets stay in the middle. We started at 6 a.m., no eat, you don’t think about eating. You are so stressed, you cannot imagine, because any second you might be killed, who thinks about food”.

They drove through forests and villages. Some roads were destroyed. The temperature was unusually low for that time of the year, around minus 17 degrees. At 1 p.m. they stopped for some food. They were running out of fuel and there wasn’t any in the petrol stations, but one guy had a tank of twenty liters and gave them half, which Artem says was another miracle.

Once Artem reunited with his family, their initial intention was moving to the United Kingdom. Thus began a seven day journey through Slovakia, Austria, Italy and France. And then they moved to Ireland, arriving in Wexford.

Their plan was to get visas for the UK in Dublin. But first they relocated to Galway, thinking it would be temporary. However, the kindness of people made them quickly change their minds. So they settled in Galway.

The origin of UHUG

In Galway, Artem realized his compatriots needed help and decided to step in. He first went to the Westside Community Centre, because at that time some people were sleeping there.

“So I made posts on Facebook, if anybody had something, clothes or whatever, and people started to text me. We can give you this, we can give you that. So I drove on my car, collected all of these”, he mentions.

And then began searching for information, related to bureaucratic issues for migrants, and shared it with others. After a while, somebody from the Association of Ukrainians in Ireland called him with the proposal of opening a charity hub.

With help of the City Council, Artem opened the Palyanytsia charity hub. He explains that “palyanytsia is ukrainian bread, palyanytsia is how we check if you are Ukrainian or Russian, no Russian can say palyanytsia, they say something different, that’s how we have checked for hundreds of years”.

The Palyanystia opened on the 15^th of June 2022. They received a lot of donations and many people offered their help, “at that time I had around a 100 Ukranians volunteers and maybe 20 Irish volunteers”.

And in September of that year, the Government gave them a space at the St. Joseph’s Community Centre. They started giving English classes and workshops. And every Saturday, they reunited for ‘coffee morning’ and answered a lot of questions. By the winter, they registered as Ukrainians Helping Ukrainians Galway (UHUG), a non profit organization. Artem is one of the leaders, and currently not engaged in journalism. He opened a car garage service.

“So my wife Dasha, I pushed her on the frontline”, he says. “She is an organizer. Because I did this a year, I was volunteering a year full time, and then I understood I needed to make money, make a job. And she went on the front position in UHUG”.

The work done by all the people involved in UHUG is commendable. Their main purpose at the moment is to help Ukrainians integrate into a new society, a goal they are fulfilling. A great example of solidarity during difficult times.

The official website of UHUG: https://www.uhug.ie/