'They're bombing us' | Florida native recalls first shots in war, escape from Ukraine

Kathy Gould never expected to leave Ukraine. She had found a home within the ministry. But on Monday, Feb. 14, Gould was driving her Ford Explorer to work when she heard on the news about the escalating tensions caused by more Russian mobilization on the Ukrainian border.

“I pray all the time: What does God want me to do. And He spoke to me, and He brought up to my mind different people in the Bible who had to leave dangerous situation for one reason or another,” Gould explained. “And so literally as I was pulling up to my office that I decided, I gave my staff six months of salary, and told them, ‘You don’t have to come to work. Let’s finish what we’re doing today and make plans. If you want me to help you in some way, if you want to come with me, let me know, and we’ll go together.'”

She left with her translator, Ella, and arrived in an office building in Kyiv. She was confident she would be safe because that's what Ukrainian authorities told her hours before the first shots were fired.

“Even Wednesday night, before all of this started taking place, I was told by people who had heard from the authorities, the government authorities in Kyiv  that [Vladimir] Putin just wants those separatists regions to be named, like, autonomous, and everything will be fine,” Gould said. “That’s what the Ukrainians were believing Wednesday night. And then, Thursday morning, it started.”

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Gould recalled being asleep, having a dream when Ella woke her up.

She said, ‘Kathy, I didn’t want to wake you earlier, but they’re bombing us,’ Gould said. “Then we heard the sirens outside our window.”

With the first shots of Russia’s invasion, Gould and her companions discussed what to do next.

“Someone pointed out it’s made of bricks. They said you don’t want to be in that building if a bomb hits,” Gould said. “And someone else pointed out to me that if Russia did invade, and I was captured, it wouldn’t be good for me, which I don’t really care about, but the Ukrainians around me who are trying to help me, it would be very bad for them. And so I always said if I endanger any Ukrainians, I will leave.”

Gould decided, for the safety of her friends, she would leave Ukraine before it was too late. But first, she made one last charitable donation to the seminary that housed her in the final days before war began - her Ford Explorer.

“They said, ‘We can hide it for you.’ I said, ‘No don’t hide it for me.’ I said, ‘Use it and when I come back, I can get whatever is left of it at that point,’” Gould recalled. "I wasn’t going to drive it into Poland and leave it in Poland. For what?"

Gould, Ella and a driver began to make their way to the Ukrainian border with Poland. While short in distance, it was the beginning of a very long and difficult journey that would take its toll on Gould.

“We were calm, making plans. Ella made me eat. I wasn’t even hungry,” Gould recalled. “They had somebody who I paid to drive me to what we were hoping would be the border control. And he was good. He had been there that morning. And he said, ‘I know right where to drop you off so you can go through the walk-through part of the border.’ I said, ‘Great!’"

However, with about seven miles to go, they ran into the inevitable traffic jam of thousands of people hoping to escape the oncoming Russian army.

“There are lines of cars everywhere now,” she said. “They’re everywhere just leaving from the central and northern parts of Ukraine.”

The vehicle Gould was in moved up the line, inch-by-inch, until it was finally decided that they would walk the rest of the way to the border with their luggage.

“And they tried to get me to stop, and I said, ‘If I stop, it’s hard to start again,’” Gould said. “And my foot was hurting, and I understood I was getting a blister, but that’s okay. We just kept going, and a lot of people passing us on foot as well. And there was no panic, but there was a sense of urgency to get out and to get there, to the border.”

Then, she ran into yet another block, a long line of people hoping to cross the border on foot. Gould recalls some confusion. There were no signs and the border itself was too far away to see. Then, she finally came to the first group of border patrol guards trying to keep order.

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“They had a rough day. And you can tell it. They were not kind in any way, shape or form, or very instructive. Just, ‘Go back!’ or ‘Go back to the line!’ or whatever,” Gould said. “And so, I was trying to call different ones for advice, what to do, I didn’t know if there was a certain thing for foreigners other than Americans.”

So near the border, Ella finally told Gould that she would not be leaving Ukraine.

“Ella said she needed to stay in Ukraine, because I offered for her to come with me and we’d find a way. And she said no, she needed to stay,” Gould said. “And so they needed to get back because it took five hours to walk that, cause I was slow. Ukrainians could have done it in a lot less. But they needed to get back. They had to walk back to the car. They parked the car and walked.”

Gould was at a disadvantage on her own.

According to her, the Ukrainians were prioritizing mothers with children to get out of the country first. However, the husbands and fathers between 18-60, were turned away and told they had to fight.

So, she had to find a woman who had children with her. That is when she met Larissa, who Gould would spend the next several hours with developing a bond while trying to cross the last obstacle to safety. One of the stories Larissa told Gould was of a rare moment of true humanity in war as Larissa fled.

“She said there were some Russian soldiers, when they were in Ukraine and supposed to be shooting Ukrainians, they put down their weapons,” Gould said. “They said, ‘No! We thought this was a drill. We’re not doing this.’”

When they finally reached the front of the line, they were asked to present a document, which Gould pronounced as TALUND.

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They were told without the document, they would not be able to cross the border. She said none of them had heard of that document. Gould called the American embassy to figure out what it is.

“They didn’t know about it. So it was brand new. Nobody knew. And he said, ‘You have to go back.’ There was no leniency in anything, we had to go back to that checkpoint,” Gould recalled. “And so we went back, and she talked to some of the guards and explained the whole situation and all that, he said, ‘You have to go back to the end of the line.’ And you couldn’t see the end of the line. You couldn’t even get to the end of the line by car.”

They even discussed bribing their way into Poland with a $100 bill provided by Gould.

“He said, ‘I’ve been offered a thousand and refused it!’ So we were thinking he wanted more,” Gould said. “So we went and was able to get, not all the way back, because there was no way we were going to be able to drive through there, but partially and then got in line again.”

Back in line, the process crawled on with only one car passing through the checkpoint every 15 to 20 minutes.

“And I understand there was probably trying to control the number of cars so there wasn’t congested right there at the border. And so I’m sure there was some rational thinking behind it, it just didn’t work well,” Gould said. “And so they were letting them go very slow, so it was taking forever. We probably had 30 cars in front of us. But we weren’t going anywhere. Then they took a break, two-hour break, I think they went and slept somewhere and came back.”

They returned to the same checkpoint and encountered the same guard who demanded the documentation earlier.

“He was so angry. He says, ‘You didn’t go back to, in the line.’ And I said, ‘Yeah. We did. They let us in.’ And he was just refusing,” Gould said. “And so, not long after that, he left. They all left. It was empty. There was none of them there. And we waited another two hours for the next shift. He says, ‘The next shift will come and they will decide.’ And so we were waiting and praying a lot.”

Finally, the next shift started. It was now 7:20 in the morning, and the war had been going on for more than 24 hours. For Gould, who had been waiting at the border, it was the moment of truth.

“They came, and we were second in line. And he came, and they wrote our number down,” she said. “Thank you Lord!”

Her last step was to cross the line into Poland. The experience on that side was much different.

“They were very professional, there wasn’t delays or anything,” Gould said. “That all went really well. They were all kind and, I have to tell you, the Polish people have been very kind to the Ukrainians.”

Though the hardest part of her journey back to the United States was behind her, she still had a long way to go before she was officially on American soil. First, she met with a contact who had been assisting people leaving Ukraine.

Because of the delays at the border, she had to reschedule her flight home. Her friend back in Jacksonville, Janet, helped her to rebook her flight. Her flight would be on Saturday.

Gould boarded a train to Krakow in Poland, where she would catch her flight to Amsterdam then to Atlanta and finally to Jacksonville.

“And I hadn’t eaten or slept since that whole time since lunch on Thursday. So, but we got on the train, there were people who came by and, they said, ‘Are you from Ukraine?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m not Ukrainian, but I just came from Ukraine,' and they gave donuts and water. It was just so kind,” Gould said.

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Once in Krakow, she had to meet with a group who would assist her in getting to her flight back to the US. Yet, after another twist where she was dropped off at the wrong address and had to find the correct building, Gould finally made it to where she could relax for the first time in almost two days.

“So, spent the night, actually got some sleep, got a shower, the next morning, got to the airport. And, I had heard we didn’t have to have the PCR test to get to here. You do. Not PCR, not PCR. The antigen. You have to have the antigen test,” Gould said. “I said I can’t. I just walked, you know, eleven kilometers, you know. I can’t do it cause I was now by myself, you know, there. And the lady was so kind, she kept my suitcase for me so I could get the test.”

Now she was just one final step away from the end of her journey. However, Gould saw an elderly lady who was having her own troubles. Gould made it this far thanks to a number of people, Ella, her driver, Larissa, Janet in Jacksonville and the people from the U.S. Consulate. So, perhaps as a tribute to them, Gould decided offer help.

“She only knew Russian. She didn’t know any English or Polish. And the people there didn’t know Russian. And she, then she was saying, ‘Do I buy a ticket there?’ And they didn’t understand so I started interpreting, trying to help her, and I had 30 minutes before my flight. But then got delayed, it was delayed 15 minutes or 20 minutes. So I was trying to help her, but her kids were calling the shots, but I showed her where to get the test, they got it printed,” Gould said.  I paid for her test. She didn’t want me to do, and I was, ‘I have to. I can’t play this way anymore. I have to go. And so we got there, I had a good schedule for her, it was about $400.”

Ultimately, the woman’s children wanted her to stay until Monday.

“I’ve never seen Ukraine so united. They’re fighting for their lives and their country. And they are peace-loving people. This was not their choosing,” Gould said. “So I feel I’m here for a purpose, and I’m going to do whatever I can to help in that purpose.”

Kathy Gould is back on American soil while the war rages on to an uncertain end. Her mission in Ukraine appears to be over for the foreseeable future. Yet, she has a new mission. She wants to remind America that the people of Ukraine are suffering due to actions of a man she says needs to be stopped. She says her homeland has a responsibility to stop it.

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“Putin has to be stopped. America needs to live up to its commitment,” Gould said, citing the 1994 Budapest Agreement between the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. “Why Jacksonville should care what happens in Ukraine: It’s because we made a commitment to them. And if we do not fulfill that commitment with more than just sanctions, that’s not enough. That will not stop him. If we don’t do more, then we have lost our believability in the world. No one is going to believe we are going to do anything we say we were going to do.”

She says America must act quickly, believing the occupation of Ukraine is not the endgame of the war.

“And if we do not stand up to Putin, and he takes over Ukraine, he will not stop there. He will not. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, then Poland. He will not stop. Any nation that he is after, he will go after and bully,” she said. “If we don’t stop him now, we’re going to face him later. It’s not going to stop.”

As political and military leaders continue to debate the future of the war in Ukraine, Gould’s heart remains with those she left behind. She prays for them, knowing the danger they face.

“They’re in fear. It’s a terrifying thing. A friend of mine said, there are tanks coming for us, coming at us. And I asked, ‘Are you safe?’ And she said, ‘No,’” Gould said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again in this life. I have hope that if something does happen, that I know I will see them again in Heaven. This isn’t how you want it to end, for anybody that you love.”