Health hazarded to rescue Mom from Ukraine

Photo: Rene Suurkaev / Postimees

At end of winter Yulia Yanpol, from Tallinn, travelled to Ukraine to save her Mother from the threat of fighting at the cost of own health – three days in intensive care far from home.   

Having flown from Tallinn to Kiev, Mr Yanpol took a bus towards Berdyansk at Sea of Azov, 80 kilometres South-West from Mariupol. Since last summer Mariupol, a city of almost half a million and mere 50 kilometres from Russian border, has hung on the balance between the hostile fronts. In January, 30 townsfolk died due to rockets fired from the area controlled by Russian-minded rebels.

Berdyansk, the size of Tartu, Estonia, lies in the danger zone. It is there that Ms Yanpol (49), a mouth hygienist at Kliinik 32 dental clinic in central Tallinn, went to help her Mother.

The bus ride proved an ordeal. The vehicle was old and tired – so bad was its shape that heat was not working. Outside, it was 6 degrees below zero, Celsius, and the winds were so strong they blew through the cracks in the windows. «Terribly cold – awful! Never felt so cold in my entire life,» recalls, Ms Yanpol, a Mother of two grown-up daughters, in pure Estonian. The lady has dwelt in Tallinn for two and half decades, since the fall of 1989 when Father, staying in Estonia after serving the army and settling to work as engineer, invited his daughter with her own tiny daughter of three to himself, out of Ukraine. Back then, Ms Yanpol was a single mother; by that time, her own Mom and Dad had been divorced as well.

The cold treatment went on for 700 kilometres, totalling 12 hours, until at last she made it to Berdyansk.

Berdyansk, an important harbour and well-known resort, came to Ms Yanpol as a shock. The last time she paid a visit was three years ago; now, though untouched by fighting, the town struck her as strange.

All five factories, the major employers in the town, had closed their doors and stood idle. Almost everywhere, even in kindergartens, the facilities were cold, mostly unheated. The long promenades along sea-shore, where people used to stroll at leisure, were now empty. The city-centre marketplace, always bustling and busy, had few there to trade and fewer yet to buy. The prices, observed, Ms Yanpol, were up an awful lot. The reason was obvious – as compared to when the fighting started, regarding euro the hryvnia had fallen by a half. 

For the rest of the world, Berdyansk would perhaps be of interest as home town to the movie actress and super model Olga Kurylenko, the Bond girl Camille Montes in the 22^nd Bond-movie «007: Quantum of Solace».

Overall fear

From the evening she reached Berdyansk, Ms Yanpol sensed the situation had taken a turn towards the dramatic and tense. «The whole atmosphere is otherwise,» she described. «Bad and nervous. All that the news bring is fear-fear-fear. Everybody is afraid.» She remembers as her mother called her in early fall and said that «now Putin comes». During her visit, she tried to talk about it with many a person, but none was eager to. «If you ask anything, no one wants to talk about that subject – total zero!» she said.

Ms Yanpol’s Mother aged 69 lived in central Berdyansk, in a two room flat of nearly 80 square metres and recently renovated. To the sea, it’s a five-minute walk. For many townsfolk, this was an added summertime income, renting rooms to those on holiday. Mostly, these came from Moscow or Donetsk. Bus as soon as the summer of last year, as the city of Mariupol nearby moved to the forefront in news about Ukraine, the vacationers begun to thin out. «Now, summer is coming – who will come there?» asks Ms Yanpol. And answers: «Nobody.»

Meaning: for the people in Berdyansk, the future is the darker. The pension of Ms Yanpol’s Mother, last year an hundred euros, is now down to €50. «But some foodstuff are more expensive than here, in Estonia,» adds Ms Yanpol. «I cannot understand how one lives on €50.»

One doesn’t. She has been supporting Mother financially, as has her elder daughter Katya (29) who has studies Spanish philology at University of Tartu and is now living in Bulgaria where her husband works at a branch office of the international energy group Alstom. Ms Yanpol’s younger daughter Veronika (20), a gold medal graduate from Tallinn Mustjõe Gymnasium last year, is studying immunology at Greenwich University, England.

Thus, Ms Yanpol’s Mother had no options but to leave her native town and homeland. The question being, where: to Estonia to her daughter, or to Bulgaria to her granddaughter?

She chose Bulgaria as over there the prices are half of those in Estonia.

However, in order to start anew in another country, the apartment back home needed to be sold. But how does one sell an apartment which, in a few months, may be destroyed by a stray rocket?

Money makes way

The initial offer for the flat was $30,000. This, thought Ms Yanpol’s Mother, was too little. Before the fighting in Ukraine started, it cost at least $100,000. The hopes for a decent sum of money begun to fade as, all of a sudden, a mother and son emerged from Gorlivka, near Donetsk, willing to pay $50,000.

«Don’t think further, Mother – sell it!» advised Ms Yanpol.

The Mother conceded.

Having the money, all they had to do was leave Berdyansk. The bus, departing from Mariupol to Odessa towards the West was packed. No seats. The situation was complicated by Ms Yanpol’s uncle (75) having just been to the hospital for prostrate growth surgery – he could not ride standing. Reaching into her pocket, Ms Yanpol pulled out her last remaining cash, a €20 bill, handing it to the driver. Money, she meant, would perhaps help.

In Ukraine, if one wants things to advance, one most always pay. Even at the hospital. For her uncle to have a surgery, €500 extra had to be handed to the surgeon, and €200 to the anaesthesiologist. Also, one needs to daily pay the nurses and attendants if you wish them to deal with you. Also, one needs to take one’s own bed-linen to a hospital. Same with an ambulance. «The first thing the ambulance asks is: have you any money?» says Ms Yanpol. «If not, no-one does anything for you – terrible!»

The bus driver did find seats, finally, on the shelves at the back of the bus, for Ms Yanpol’s Mother and Uncle. She herself had to sit on the cold floor, for most of the eight-hour journey.

There are many who wish to flee the encroaching war in Ukraine, but where will they go? Constantly, men are being recruited into Ukrainian army, but most of them are unwilling to ho. How will we shoot at people we used to live side by side, is their rhetorical question. Many say they’d rather go to prison – the penalty for avoidance is said to be five years.

Ms Yanpol admits some of her acquaintances sit home and will not open the door if there is a knock or the door-bell rings. Once, near the marketplace, she happened to see men with automatic weapons arrive at a car parts counter and, without much ado, took three-four men along. Into the Ukrainian army.

Paradise Estonia

From Odessa, Ms Yanpol with Mother and Uncle took a bus to Varna, Bulgaria; there, her daughter met them by car and took them along to her place into the resort town Burgas. On the outskirts of it, in a new house near Black Sea, Mother purchased a two-room flat for $26,000.

The long and heavy travel was hardest on Yulia Yanpol herself. Obviously from the cold in the buses, she developed bilateral pneumonia – so serious that the doctors in Burgas hospital had her in intensive care for three days and nights. Having regained her strength, she spent five more days hospitalised before flying home to Tallinn from the Bulgarian capital Sofia.

The situation in Ukraine, the fear and the decline, have scarred the soul of Ms Yanpol. Meanwhile, her eyes light up at the happiness of living in Estonia. «It is so peaceful here, a paradise,» she says. «I kiss Estonia.» Saying that, tears flood her eyes.

As for Ms Yanpol’s Father, at the end of last decade he returned from Estonia to Berdyansk where he dwells till today. He has an apartment in the city, and a summer home near town. He does not want to leave there. Even so, the Daughter has told him that should it become too dangerous in Berdyansk, she is ready to take him to herself in Estonia. 

Just like the Father, in the times of change for Estonia, took his Daughter from Ukraine into his apartment in Lasnamäe.

Regarding what Daughter promised, the Father said: «So be it, agreed.»