Tag Archives: Vlada Gorbunova

VLADA Gorbunova is a relieved woman at the moment, as her grandmother managed to leave her war-torn home in the east of Ukraine, traverse the country and finally cross the Polish border to safety, writes Owen Ryan. Vlada, who lives in Ennis and first came to Ireland in 1997, was in Krakow when she spoke to the Champion on Wednesday, and was looking forward to getting home. “We’re just trying to sit tight now until our flights on Friday evening.” Her grandmother is about to turn 75, and has been through a traumatic few weeks, as well as having to leave her home behind. It has been a huge ordeal, Vlada says. “She’s tired, anxious, the whole lot. She’s left her life behind so it’s not easy.” At the same time she was lucky to get away from a terrible situation that was still declining. “She’s relieved, things have got a lot worse since she left. She got one of …

WITH her grandmother in a war zone, every day is filled with worry for Vlada Gorbunova, who lives in Ennis, having arrived in Ireland as a six-year-old child in 1997. “You’re constantly worried that you could get that phone call or text message, to say something happened. It could be the worst, or it could be that she lost her home where she’s lived for 40 years or more, that she has nowhere to go and I can’t give her a hand because I can’t get that deep into Ukraine. “It’s constant worry and constant stress and every time my phone rings I’m thinking it’s her ringing to say that something has happened,” she says. Her grandmother is in Luhansk, in the east of the country, and fighting is happening all around her. “I know they were shooting this morning, because when I rang her you could hear the gunfire behind her. She had to hang up very quickly and …