‘Please evacuate, just go’: Maple Grove woman shares fears for family still in Kyiv

The villages around Kyiv are now scarred battlefields with destroyed homes and burnt-out vehicles everywhere.

“To me, it feels like if my city is bombed, it’s like part of my childhood is being destroyed,” Olga Frayman said. “The first few days, we just kind of sat here in shock and disbelief — and how surreal all of this is.”

Frayman lives in Maple Grove and has been watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine closely. She shared numerous photos of family members in Kyiv with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, including her 93-year old grandmother, Yelena.

“Ever since this, she hasn’t been able to leave, so the whole family can’t leave, they can’t evacuate, they can’t go anywhere,” Frayman says.

The mother of three girls moved with her family to Minnesota in 1992 when she was 14.

“I think the big reason for my parents wanting to move here was because of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986,” Frayman recalls. “They wanted us to live in an area with better environmental conditions.”

Right now, though, she says her relatives in Kyiv are living a new normal after more than five weeks of war.

“My aunt was telling me about how difficult it is to move around,” Frayman notes. “How you have to be really purposeful when you are traveling around town.”

There are fears about Russian snipers and soldiers dressed as civilians. Food and medicine are hard to come by, Frayman says.

“My aunt has actually been staying for a while in a neighborhood bar that is turned into a bomb shelter,” she explains. “They were running a mutual aid network out of that bar. So they were cooking food for soldiers that were guarding the city.”

Frayman’s concerns come as Ukrainian troops are cautiously retaking territory north of Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is warning that Russian troops may have left behind mines as potential booby-traps in the area, making it dangerous for civilians.

Frayman says her family members in Kyiv are in a relatively safe area in the center of the city. Most people, she explains, try to stay off the street as much as possible.

Frayman says amid the refugee crisis, her family in Ukraine is torn about leaving.

“We continue asking them, ‘Please evacuate, just go,’” Frayman said “As of right now, there are no plans to go anywhere. Nobody can leave my grandma behind. My aunt’s family is there, her parents are there as well.”

She says one of the hardest things is being so far away.

But Frayman says her family in Minnesota keeps in close touch, and even before the Russian invasion, her father would call his mother every Sunday — a family tradition.

Meanwhile, she says her family here takes an active role in Ukrainian community events, raising money for emergency aid and medical supplies.

Frayman hopes her family — and other families in Ukraine itself — will be safe.

“All of us, whether you were born in Ukraine or your family left Ukraine two generations ago, we all feel like Ukraine is our family,” she says. “We’re all walking toward the common goal of victory for Ukraine and peace for Ukraine.”