After fleeing Ukraine one month ago, Nataly Stetsenko arrived in Ireland and took her 14-year-old son on a Paddywagon bus tour to "show him a bit about Ireland and the beauty of the country".
It was on this outing that she heard about the company’s plans to charter an aircraft to fly Ukrainian refugees from the Polish border with Ukraine to Ireland.
Stetsenko told the drivers she would help in any way she could, and soon found herself joining tour guides Frank Buckley and John Furlong on a flight from Rzeszow to Dublin with 125 Ukrainian refugees.
It was one of the largest numbers of Ukrainians arriving on a single flight to Ireland since the beginning of the refugee crisis.
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“I can’t stand aside, if I have a small chance to rescue people, my people, I will,” Stetsenko told The Irish Times on her arrival in Dublin Airport on Thursday afternoon.
“My mom is still in Ukraine. She is a doctor and she said ‘I would never leave, treating people is all I know’. So I am here helping Ukrainians in her place.”
Waiting in the terminal one arrivals hall for a mother and children from eastern Ukraine, Waterford woman Anne Doyle explained that she and her husband had offered to house the family for some weeks until they found more permanent accommodation.
She had heard of their situation through her Ukrainian neighbour, who has been living in Ireland for 20 years, and is hosting a family who fled the war.
“It’s just what you do,” she said.
‘Very quiet and safe’
Olga Demukhina was among those who travelled to Ireland on Thursday. After three trains to Poland from Kharkiv with her sons Dymtro (two months old), Tymofij (eight), teenage daughter Mariya, and her mother Liudmila Panajotova, she heard about the flight to Ireland. Most men aged 18-60 are banned from leaving the country but there is an exemption for fathers with three or more children, which meant her husband, Denis, was able to come to Ireland.
The past few weeks in Kharkiv had been “very bad” with “continuous missile attacks and hiding in our basement,” Panajotova said.
“It’s very quiet and safe here. It’s nice to be safe again.”
The family hoped to send the three children to school and remain in Ireland “until the end of the war”.
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Yulia Koznova, who arrived with her eight-year-old son, Sviatoslav, said she came to Ireland because she knew “this is a beautiful green country with a bit of cold weather and good people”.
Koznova’s husband was unable to join her, and her parents do not want to leave Ukraine. “I have a kid, so I had to,” she said.
“I feel lost,” she added, though she was grateful to have met a family in Dublin online who have offered to house her and her son.
‘So happy’
It is the second refugee transport operation arranged by Paddywagon. Three weeks ago drivers from the company travelled 2,300km to Piaseczno in east-central Poland to deliver five busloads of aid. The drivers picked up 83 Ukrainians and drove them across the continent to take refuge in Ireland. Those refugees are now housed in hotels in Killarney and Kinsale.
“The last trip was a bit more chaotic, so we had a bit more experience this time,” Buckley said.
He credits Stetsenko as the brains behind the operation. “Three days ago, we had no people. Two days ago we had 10 and today we came back with 125. It was all due to that lady, we couldn’t have done it without her.”
Ryanair provided the aircraft for "less than a third" of the usual cost to Paddywagon, which had raised money from public donations.
Both journeys had been “unbelievably rewarding” Furlong added.
“The joy when we took off from the airport…Everybody started clapping, you don’t get that anymore but everyone was so happy after all the bad stuff they’ve been through.”