Kateryna Pakhomova and her daughter, Maria, escaped Russian terror through the kindness of strangers in Poland and Germany. They managed to flee Ukraine, their invaded homeland, settle in the United States and ended up with a generous family in suburban Maryland.

Their safe landing in 2022 was made possible by a sympathetic, Ukraine-supporting American government that, with the 2024 presidential election, has now turned hard against migrants and aligned its foreign policy with Russia’s.

It’s a strange, uncertain time for mother and daughter Pakhomova, as it is for all of us living in the U.S.

But, before we go there – to the second Trump administration’s hard line on Ukraine and refugees – there’s the backstory of how two women escaped Europe’s largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. A series of generous acts, personal and official, got them away from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the horrors that ensued.

There was, for starters, the man at the crowded train station in Lviv.

“Taking children and women to Poland!” he yelled over the chaos, pointing to an evacuation bus.

Kateryna and Maria got onboard.

“We were taken to a sports hall in Poland that had already been prepared for Ukrainian refugees, complete with cots, hot meals, translators and medical assistance,” Maria recalled.

“They had showers,” Kateryna added through a translator. “There were lots of women with small children there.”

Then, another stranger spoke up – a man offering a bus to Germany. He was organizing a group to make the trip.

Neither mother nor teenage daughter had ever been outside of Ukraine and now, refugees from war, the Pakhomovas had to trust a stranger to be their travel guide.

“It was absolutely terrifying to agree to go off to who-knows-where,” Maria said. “But we went.”

Safe Haven in Bel Air

For this part of their journey they were on a massive bus filled with Ukrainians.

“We didn’t even know which city in Germany we were heading to at first,” she recalled. “Then we were brought to what felt like a private house [in Hanover], where volunteers on the street informed us that we would be dispersed to hotels.”

They ended up in a room in what seemed to be a nursing home or an assisted living campus. Kateryna did not remember the owner’s name, but she remembers him as a pleasant and generous man.

“The food there was delicious,” Kateryna recalled. “The accommodations were so nice. It was not a place for poor people.”

From there, the Pakhomovas went to a refugee center in Kronberg, and from there to temporary housing, an apartment in Berlin.

At each step of their journey, Kateryna said, the German government supported them and the people they met were kind and helpful.

At each step, she moved further away from Ukraine.

At each step of their journey the German government supported them and the people they met were kind and helpful.

Kateryna, a widow who had been employed as a cashier, had left her son, Mykola, to live with a group of other young men who were not allowed to leave Ukraine.

She had left behind her house, damaged badly in the war. Maria had left behind her university education.

The next step, mother and daughter hoped, would be the United States.

Through the Biden administration’s relief efforts, they matched up with a family in Harford County. It was Diane Johnston who applied to sponsor Ukrainian refugees and have them live in the spare rooms of her son’s home in Bel Air.

“They gave us so much”

In the months after Russia invaded Ukraine, more than 5,000 households in Maryland offered to take in refugees from the war. They filed applications with the federal government to sponsor them, partnering with Baltimore-based Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service) to support their transition to life in the U.S.

The Johnston-Pakhomova arrangement started with a meet-up – Bel Air to Berlin – over Zoom.

“The language barrier was the hardest part,” Diane Johnston wrote in an email.

“We used Google Translate a lot,” Johnston recalled. “Kateryna had a more difficult time with the language but Maria, being so young, picked up English quickly.”

The mother and daughter received a small stipend and Medicaid temporarily [from] the Biden administration and both started working as soon as they received their work permits, Johnston said.

Working for IKEA, Starbucks and an interior designer, Maria managed to save some money for a car. She got her Maryland driver’s license within a few months.

She is now in New York City working multiple jobs to support herself. She rents an apartment with another Ukrainian national.

“They gave us so much, most importantly, safety and the feeling of family,” Maria said of her Harford County sponsors. “They are truly amazing people.”

Her mother, in fact, did not want to move to New York and continues to stay with the Johnston family.

“Bel Air is better for me,” Kateryna said.

She works for a cleaning company at the John Carroll School. Sometimes Kateryna walks the three-plus miles to work, though Johnston, her son and her daughter-in-law help with transportation.

“She walks a lot – a very hearty Ukrainian!” wrote Johnston.

Kateryna also attends a women’s Bible study class every week at Mountain Christian Church and likes shopping at Aldi’s and maybe getting a weekend meal at First Watch.

“Since [the Pakhomovas] came here, they have been very appreciative of what the Americans have done for them and Ukraine,” Johnston wrote in her email.

“They’re always talking about how wonderful Americans are. They watched the [2024] election, and were increasingly worried, as we all were. They know what is happening now.”

Help Program Suspended

It’s not known exactly how many Ukrainians ended up in Maryland, and the Baltimore area specifically, but wherever they are, they are likely worried that, with war still raging, President Donald Trump will put an end to the welcoming generosity of Americans.

It’s an understandable worry, given Trump’s focus on deporting immigrants, his suspension of military aid for Ukraine and his apparent alignment with Moscow.

“Under Trump,” Maria said in an email, “it felt like Ukraine’s struggle was not truly valued. His attitude seemed detached, as if our fight for freedom was just another political issue rather than a human tragedy.”

“It hurts me to see that people truly support Trump and believe in Russian propaganda,” she wrote.

“It hurts me to see that people truly support Trump and believe in Russian propaganda”  – Maria Pakhomova.

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump suspended Uniting For Ukraine, the program initiated during the Biden administration to grant what’s known as “humanitarian parole” and settle Ukrainian refugees in the U.S.

Some 240,000 of them found sponsors, more than half of them in five states – New York, Illinois, California, Florida and Washington – according to Global Refuge.

Many, like the Pakhomovas, were granted TPS, or temporary protected status, by the Department of Homeland Security. That program allowed them to stay in the U.S. for a specified period of time because of war, environmental disasters or other extraordinary conditions at home.

TPS authorizes them to work – many of them do, in labor-short industries – and to pay taxes.

There are about 27,000 TPS holders of all nationalities in Maryland, accounting for some $1.3 billion in annual wages and $324 million in local, state and federal taxes.

That’s according to estimates cited by Attorney General Anthony Brown in support of a lawsuit brought by 19 state attorneys general against the Trump administration. The AGs are fighting Trump’s early termination of TPS for hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Trump’s order ended TPS for the estimated 700,000 Venezuelans who fled repression and economic hardship under Nicolás Maduro, the country’s autocratic ruler. Phasing out TPS could also mean deportation for some 260,000 Haitians who fled civil unrest and natural disasters, and thousands of other TPS holders from Cuba and Nicaragua.

Under Trump’s orders, revoking TPS will fast-track many of the refugees from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if they do not self-deport, starting in late April.

Limbo and Fear

In March, Trump said he was considering permanently revoking humanitarian parole for Ukrainians, too.

According to a report from Agence France-Presse, Trump’s suspension of Uniting For Ukraine has left thousands of Ukrainian refugees, like the Pakhomovas, in limbo and in fear of deportation while Russia continues to wage war against their homeland.

So, it’s a strange, uncertain time in a country that, just a year ago, seemed officially hospitable to a relatively small number of the estimated 6.7 million people made refugees by the invasion.

I asked Kateryna Pakhomova if she could see herself returning, sooner or later, to Ukraine.

“Yes,” she nodded, then quickly added, “But home to what? What am I returning to?”