Ukraine War: Sarasota Man To Drive Refugees To Safety During Second Trip Overseas

SARASOTA, FL — A week after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, a recent college graduate in Sarasota was on a plane for Europe.

From the day the bombardment and violence started, Andrew Roman, whose family is from Ukraine, knew he needed to assist the war-torn country in some way. Though he was born in the United States, he has many relatives in Ukraine — at least 100 — and has visited the country three times to visit his family.

“I have cousins my age and when I found out they were going to get drafted in the army, I thought I could do more than share Facebook likes,” he told Patch.

The Florida Southern College MBA student hopped on a plane March 3. Teaming up with a network of churches organized by a church in the Czech Republic, he spent three weeks driving Ukrainian refugees out of the country. He primarily worked out of the Ukraine city of Ternopil.

“That’s a real hub for refugees going to Poland. It’s three hours from the Polish border,” said Roman. “There’s a big train station there. And they (the refugees) would get there and we’d take them to Poland.”

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He also spent some time driving in and out of Lviv, which had recently been bombed, taking less populated country roads to bring refugees to the assistance they needed in Poland.

Both cities, Ternopil and Lviv, were “pretty intact” while he was there, but have since been bombed further, he said.

The refugees Roman picked up at the time had traveled great distances from hard-hit cities, such as Mariupol and Kharkiv, to get to that final leg of the trip to safety in Poland.

Since his family is Ukrainian, he speaks the language enough to communicate with those he was driving out of the country.

“They’d tell me horrible things like, ‘I’m the last person alive in my family’ or ‘My entire house, everything I own is destroyed,’” he said. “I don’t know what to say back, even in English.”

Now, he’s returning to Ukraine May 4 to continue driving refugees to safety. He’s also launched a nonprofit, Ukrainian Peace, with his mother, who lives in Stuart, Florida.

Roman didn’t even tell his mother that he was traveling to Ukraine for his first trip.

“Nobody knew I was in Ukraine. Nobody wanted me to go,” he said. “My mom was really scared I was going to join the army there.”

She found out anyway, though, and by the time he returned she had already started forming their nonprofit organization.

Their organization will focus on two areas — wartime assistance and helping to rebuild the country once the violence and bombings have ended.

“If the war ends today, it will be another, who knows, 10 years of rebuilding to do,” Roman said. “Some of these cities are never going to be rebuilt.”

For now, their focus is on getting refugees out of the country and bringing supplies in for the military and citizens staying behind. Their organization is raising money, through a GoFundMe fundraiser online, a sunflower sale and other means, to purchase several vans for the network of churches he’s driving for. They have enough money for one van, already.

He’s also prepared to put his studies aside and spend as much time is needed in Europe to help with humanitarian efforts. As he prepares for his second trip to the area, Roman expects that he’ll travel deeper into Ukraine, to areas being harder hit by the war, to help refugees escape.

“The first time, I was a lot more cautious. Now, I know so many more people over there; I have so much more support,” he said. “I feel the need to be more courageous. I’ll go wherever they’ll tell me to go, but don’t tell my mom.”