Kichenok fled the country after the war began, and it took her 31 hours to travel from Kyiv to Moldova with her parents. Her twin, Nadia, also part of the Ukrainian team, left Kyiv just before the Russian invasion, traveling to California with her husband.
“It was two days of hell for me until they got to safety,” Nadia told her family. “I had constant panic attacks. I’ve never experienced anything like this, for 40 minutes your body trembles and you don’t know what to do except take a deep breath.
The father of the Kitchenox family, 64, has since returned to Ukraine and tried to volunteer for the army, despite exceeding the age limit.
“They told him, ‘Grandpa, come home,'” Nadia Kichenok said. “We have too many people here. We will call you when we need you. ”
The 21-year-old Yastremska fled Odessa, her hometown, along with her 15-year-old sister Ivanna, to Romania after saying goodbye to her parents on the Ukrainian side of the Danube. The sisters have been touring together for nearly two months, while their parents remain in Odessa, where one of their tasks is to organize aid through the Yastremska Charitable Foundation.
Unable to return home, the Yastremska sisters are left without a fixed training base, but will head to Madrid to prepare for the glue season. The Kichenok twins will travel to Stuttgart, Germany, for a tournament, and Zavatska will return to Cannes, France, where she shares her small apartment with her mother and other relatives who have fled Ukraine.
After a week together and the last night of karaoke with the Americans on Saturday, the Ukrainians will move forward, but in the hope that Asheville and the world will not move forward too quickly.
“I don’t want people to get used to this pain we are experiencing,” said Nadia Kichenok. “We do not want people to feel sorry for us. We want them to stay strong with us, fighting for freedom and humanity. “
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