PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — No translation is needed as a grandmother from Ukraine plays with her 10-month-old grandchild.
One Ukrainian family hopes that heartwarming sight will soon come to the United States.
A few months ago, they lived a middle-class life in Kherson, in southern Ukraine. Today, they are refugees on the run; first, they made a perilous trip to Moldova, and then they traveled to Poland. That’s where Portsmouth resident Tania Skorokhod hopes to reunite with her loved ones: a sister with a 10-month-old and a 7-year-old, the sister’s husband, and Tania’s mother.
She drove from Portsmouth to Philadelphia overnight in her efforts to secure an emergency passport. The Portsmouth-based logistics professional just received her naturalization papers a few weeks ago.
“Hopefully, I can pick up my passport today. They told me to come over to the passport center and hopefully, I can go Friday and see my family. I’m gonna cry like crazy when I see them,” said Skorokhod in a Zoom interview from a hotel room in Philadelphia.
In an update Tuesday night, Skorokhod said he was able to get her passport.
“So happy,” she wrote in a text. “I am going to see my family soon. Can’t believe.”
Last Friday, the president announced Uniting for Ukraine, a new policy to streamline the process of welcoming 100,000 refugees to the U.S.
“I was so happy so he announced it on Friday and they said they will provide more details on Monday,” she said.
Those details include an online portal where families can upload documents that are needed for visas and other credentials.
There’s hope for her immediate family but there’s little she can do for the great-grandparents left behind in a region now occupied by Russian soldiers.
“My grandmother call her [Tania’s mother] in the morning and told her Russian soldiers were driving on the streets and they were like trying to check people’s houses. Now we don’t have police in the town, we don’t have groceries to buy, we don’t have medical supplies,” said Skorokhod.
Now that Skorokhod secured a passport, and if her loved ones are able to secure visas or other credentials, the immediate family members could be in Portsmouth in early May.
“I’m just praying every day so they can get their visas so they can come here with me and stay with us,” said Skorokhod.
