The year that was: ‘I couldn’t leave my mother to die’
Dr Natalia Peker used a phone and family contacts to get her mother to safety
AusDoc is looking back at the year. Here is the story of Dr Natalia Peker and her fight to ensure her elderly mother could escape Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
A few weeks ago, Dr Natalia Peker left her farm in Goulburn and drove to Sydney Airport, where she was reunited with her mother, Larissa.
It had been seven years since they last saw each other. But times had changed. Larissa arrived holding her suitcase, the only thing she had left because she had just escaped with her life from Ukraine.
Nearly blind, the 84-year-old had been living alone in an apartment in Kherson, one of the first cities to be occupied by the Russian military following the invasion.
