‘Complete chaos.’ California couple narrowly escapes Ukraine with newborn daughter

A couple from California narrowly escaped Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with their newborn daughter in tow.

Jessie and Jacob Boeckmann arrived in the capital city of Kyiv on Feb. 13, KATV reported. Their international surrogate gave birth to their newborn daughter on Feb. 22, just days before the country descended into chaos.

The little girl was named Vivian and she and her new family were at the hospital when Russia launched their invasion of Ukraine, “bombarding cities, towns and villages” as forces advanced toward Kyiv.

“On Feb. 24 at 6 a.m., I awoke to explosions,” Jessie wrote in a Facebook post. “We left the hospital despite the protests of the nursing staff.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has refused to stand down to Russia, saying on Feb. 26, “We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has argued that his military forces are protecting citizens in eastern Ukraine who want to rejoin Russia, BBC News reported. Zelenskyy and U.S. President Joe Biden have rejected those claims.

As the attack on Ukraine continued, the couple and their baby headed to the temporary U.S. embassy in L’viv, about 350 miles west of Kyiv, but found out a few hours into their journey that the embassy had closed. They would have to go to Poland instead, the post said.

“What started off as a six hour car ride turned into a 27 hour trip,” Jessie wrote. “It took us four hours alone to get out of Kyiv because of the massive exodus of people.”

Jessie added that their driver, Val, who only spoke Russian, agreed to take them where they needed to go.

“We had many angels who helped us during our journey, and our driver was the first one,” Boeckmann wrote. “He stuck with us despite the angry calls from his family and his uncertain return home.”

As the couple and their baby approached the border to Poland, traffic deadlocked. Everyone slept in the car for nine hours until traffic began to move the next morning, Jessie wrote. But traffic hit another standstill soon after, prompting the couple to walk the final 8 miles to the border.

Jessie described the walk as “going through a parking lot or the worst travel jam seven and a half miles long,” the post said.

“We constantly stopped to make sure the baby was breathing and was warm enough,” Jessie wrote. “The smell of gas was overwhelming.”

Once they reached the end of the walk, they discovered that the border had stopped letting cars through, Jessie wrote. “If we had stayed in the car, I think it would have taken us days or weeks to get across,” she said in the post.

But their circumstances became even worse once they arrived, Boeckmann said.

“It was complete chaos,” she wrote. “People were desperate to cross the border. Children were crying, women were screaming.”

After several hours, Jessie and the baby were able to cross through the border, but Jacob was left behind, the post said.

There was an order saying that men between 18 and 60 could not cross the border and had to be mobilized to fight against Russia instead, ABC 7 reported. Border agents accused Jacob of having a fake U.S. passport and wouldn’t let him through, Jessie told the outlet.

“He was going to have to spend the night outside in 0 degree weather,” Jessie wrote in the post. “I frantically called my wonderful mother who had been working on our behalf to get us out of the country.”

Mary Miller, Jessie’s mother, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that she and Jessie feared Jacob could starve and freeze to death, especially because he hadn’t eaten in 36 hours. She began making calls to members of Congress and the U.S. State Department, who intervened to help the couple, the outlet reported.

The couple, who live in Costa Mesa, had previously resided in Arkansas.

Because of that intervention, Jacob was finally allowed to leave the Ukraine and join Jessie and their daughter, the post said.

Miller and a travel agent made arrangements for the couple to stay at a hotel an hour and a half away, the post said. Finally, Jessie wrote, things started to get better.

The couple was met with a “refugee haven” in Poland, where they found food stations set up by the Red Cross and the Polish government, currency exchanges and transportation, the post said. A volunteer driver took the couple to the hotel and refused to accept payment in return. And the couple’s “new friends” — who they met in the crowd of refugees in Ukraine and who helped them navigate it —/ changed their plans to accompany them, the post said.

Despite the joy the couple feels that they’re finally safe — and that their newborn baby is no longer in such life-threatening conditions — they also “feel guilty to be able to walk out,” Miller told the Democrat-Gazette.

“They know how lucky they are to be [U.S.] citizens,” Miller said.

The couple heard from their surrogate, Lilya, soon afterward. She was able to return home, but her husband was leaving to join a volunteer group to fight Russian forces, Miller told the Democrat-Gazette.

Jessie said in the post that her “heart breaks for all the families whose future looks bleak.”

“As an American, I get to go home and watch my children play. These people are living in a nightmare ... and their homes are being destroyed because of a senseless war.”

The Boeckmanns aren’t the only couple who faced such challenging circumstances while starting the next chapter of their lives. A Texas couple found themselves “racing against time” while trying to leave Ukraine and get medical attention for their newly-adopted 4-year-old son, who has cerebral palsy and requires a feeding tube, McClatchy News reported.

This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 2:20 PM with the headline "‘Complete chaos.’ California couple narrowly escapes Ukraine with newborn daughter."