When Olena Gnes started her YouTube channel three years ago, she created videos to showcase the beauty of Ukraine. She lived in Kyiv with her husband and two children and worked as a tour guide at the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Now, her videos document the Russian invasion and her family’s subsequent journey to the U.S. — one that recently landed them on the Vineyard for a three-week stay.
Ms. Gnes’s YouTube channel, titled What is Ukraine, caught the attention of thousands of Americans, including Edgartown residents Dawn Greene and Lawler Kang. Ms. Greene contacted Ms. Gnes last summer after watching an interview with her by CNN broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper, and invited the family to visit the Vineyard and stay in their home.
“She posted a video on her channel last summer of taking her children down to the Dnipro river by her house, but the children could not go in the water because of munitions that might be upstream or downstream,” Ms. Greene said in a recent interview with the Gazette. “I reached out and said ‘if you ever come to the U.S. I would like to offer our place for them to actually go to the beach, get in the water and recharge.”
At the time, Ms. Gnes had no intention of leaving Ukraine. She had recently given birth to her third child and her husband Serhii Haranakyi had just returned home after fighting in the Ukrainian army.
But when a family in Atlanta, Ga. reached out to tell her about a State Department program that would allow the family to stay with them, Ms. Gnes was on a plane with her family less than a month later, arriving in Atlanta in November 2022.
“The day we were approved [for the program] I bought the airplane tickets, though we first had to take a train to Krakow in Poland and that was the most scary night of my life,” said Ms. Gnes. “It was scary when we were in a basement and Russians were around Kyiv because I had accepted that we were all done... but when we were taking the train I decided that I want to survive and that gave me more fear.”
Five months later and still in touch with Ms. Greene, the family drove up the coast to finally meet the couple and spend time on the Vineyard.
“I Googled Martha’s Vineyard and I saw beautiful photographs of this beautiful place and I was dreaming about it,” said Ms. Gnes. “I didn’t really believe it would ever be possible, but when we arrived to America I asked her ‘can we still come?’ and she said ‘yes, yes please come.”
The family of five arrived on April 16 and found the house already stocked with some of their favorite foods. While on a trip to Cronig’s Market a few days later, they were recognized by a grocer who had seen Ms. Gnes’s YouTube videos. The woman embraced her and paid for the groceries.
“She was saying ‘I prayed for you so much’ and ‘I can’t believe you’re here and you’re safe,’” said Ms. Gnes. “That was so unexpected. On the other side of the planet there was this woman in Martha’s Vineyard who was thinking about us and Ukrainian people.”
Ms. Gnes was also surprised and comforted to see so many Ukrainian flags around the Island. Counting nearly 20 since her arrival, she said that it is the highest concentration of flags that she has seen anywhere in the country.
She hopes that the family’s stay on the Vineyard and their time in the U.S. will be especially rejuvenating for her eight-year-old daughter Katya, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and has been particularly impacted by the stress of the war.
“In September, my daughter almost stopped talking, she almost stopped eating and I found gray hairs in her head,” she said.
Ms. Gnes plans to enroll her daughter and six-year-old son Taras in a school outside of Atlanta in the fall. They have been attending Ukrainian school remotely, and Ms. Gnes said they are anxious about interacting with other students in an English-speaking school. But Katya said that she is hoping to overcome her nerves of meeting new classmates.
“My way of communication is through listening to what other children are talking about with one another,” Katya said.
In May, the family will celebrate Katya’s ninth birthday, joined by both their Vineyard and Georgia host families.
With Ukrainians finding refuge in so many countries, Ms. Gnes said she hopes that when the children return to Ukraine they will be filled with knowledge and languages from around the world.
Ms. Gnes said she talks regularly with family and friends back home in Ukraine.
“[The war] still goes on in Ukraine and I am still there and I am still following the news,” she said. “Our heart is left in Ukraine.”
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