Ukrainian teen picks up Offaly county medal one year after Russian invasion
A YEAR to the day after much of his home city was reduced to rubble by Russian bombing, 16-year-old Ukrainian Vlad Biriuk was being handed a medal for being part of the Tullamore panel which won the 2022 Offaly minor football championship.
Vlad arrived in Tullamore last April with his sister Viktoria and their mother Inna, having fled Okhtyrka in north eastern Ukraine's Sumy region when it was hit by the first wave of the Russian invasion.
Less than 60km from the Russian border and about 111km west of Kharkiv, Okhtyrka was a strategic target for the attackers in their bid to encircle Ukraine's second largest city while at the same time, open a path to Kyiv.
The Russians failed to occupy either city, but not before pulverising Okhtyrka and surrounding areas. Okhtyrka had a pre-war population of about 48,000 and thousands of families like the Biriuks were forced to flee.
“It was a lovely place before,” said Vlad on Saturday night in the Bridge House Hotel, where Tullamore GAA Club gathered for a gala medal presentation dinner.
On Sunday a special ceremony was held in Okhtyrka to mark the first anniversary of the battle in a city described by the news channel France 24 as the one “that said no to occupation”.
Vlad said: “It was in the first days [of the invasion]. It was pretty much bad because it was so fast... Everything is destroyed.”
His father Illya is still in Ukraine and has been telling his Tullamore-based family of war crimes, how people are attacked “like dogs” and how the Ukrainian dead are sometimes buried in places where “no one would find [them] ever, after the war even”.
Inna shared a news report from Ukraine public media about her husband's niece Anya, a soldier in Okhtyrka. Anya was knocked unconscious when a bomb was dropped on her barracks.
“I was taken out from under the rubble. Someone was pushed back by the blast wave, someone was covered... the only thing I remember during the explosion is a very short whistle. And you just had time to think in your head: that's it,” she told the channel Suspilne.
“I come to, I can't see anything at all, everything is white... These were terrible consequences.”
Vlad said the impact of Russian bombing on civilian targets, including schools, was most frightening.
“They are just doing something very immoral... and no one can stop them truly.”
Translating for his mother, he added: “You cannot just register it in your mind that it happened, you know that you can be next if you just don't leave the country.”
“They're launching [rockets] and if they still launching of the rockets... if there is no launching of rockets she will go with my young sister to Ukraine.”
A renewed Russian assault is an ongoing fear but there are practical difficulties too – an unreliable electricity supply and possible food shortages.
Inna said the education of her children can continue in Ireland and she is now studying customer relations herself through the Laois and Offaly Education and Training Board.
“Big problem, my language,” Inna remarked, saying she cannot work at present because her English is not good enough.
In Okhtyrka she worked as an accountant at a logistics company run by herself and her husband.
Vlad said he was delighted last year to be allowed train with the Tullamore Under 17 footballers and having made a few appearances for the team, plus the school GAA side, he is hoping to improve his skills in a game he never played before.
He spoke of his delight at being able to be part of Tullamore's celebration. “It's pretty much wonderful,” he said.
“I just want to thank everyone who's helping me, Mervyn [Griffin], John [Keane], all the coaches that are helping me... they saw that I could do more than now... they still believe in it, I think I reach much more bigger heights than now.”
Inna echoed those words of thanks: “Irish people, they are cool, number one. Friendly, they help us to live in such a hard moment. Big thanks to our landlord Emmet [Lynch], [he is] the best man.”