Ukrainian escape: How Irish woman rescued surrogate with help of Scottish gardeners

Cathy Wheatley, centre, with her twins Ted and Elsie, 2, who were born by surrogacy in Ukraine to Ivana Holub, pictured, with her three children Oleg 5, right, Sergii ,7 and baby Ludmilla, 6 months at the Wheatley home in Co Wicklow. Photograph Moya Nolan

A Kilkenny woman has told how she was able to rescue the family of her Ukrainian surrogate from the war-torn country thanks to the help of two landscape gardeners from Scotland.

After Cathy Wheatley heard Joe McCarthy and Gary Taylor had rescued Carlow medical student Racheal Diyaolu from the city of Sumy, she got in touch with them on March 7.

At first, the men — who run Ready2Rock landscaping in Falkirk — didn’t respond.

However, Mr McCarthy called her out of the blue on March 10 and said he would help.

Ms Wheatley had told him she wanted to rescue Ivanna Holub, and her three children, Sergii, 7, Oleg, 5, and five-month-old Luda, from their home in Myrhorod, near the central Ukraine city of Poltava.

Close friends

The two women have been close friends since Ms Holub agreed in 2019 to be a surrogate mother for Ms Wheatley and her husband Keith and to carry and then give birth to the couple’s now two-year-old twins, Ted and Elsie.

“Joe rang and said he would get Ivanna and the kids out and when I explained that Sergii was five hours away with his grandmother, he just said ‘no problem’,” said Ms Wheatley, a spokesperson for the Irish Families Through Surrogacy advocacy group.

“I couldn’t believe it. 

"He was so calm and unfazed, bearing in mind what having to drive to Mariupol might entail, never mind having to cross the country over five hours."

Cathy Wheatley and Ivana Holub from Ukraine, who was a surrogate for Ms Wheatley's family. Picture: Moya Nolan

The next time she heard from the two gardeners was when they said they had reached Ms Holub and were ready to hit the road again to get Sergii.

When they picked up Sergii, the men — who also had wheelchair Paralympian Yuri and his elderly mother called Vera, who has stage four cancer, in their now-battered landscaping van — got in touch to say they were on their way to the Romanian border.

The plan was to meet them on or near the south-eastern Romanian town of Galati.

“I flew into Bucharest with my brother-in-law and we hired a driver who took us to Galati,” Ms Wheatley said.

"At the last minute, Joe rang and said fighting had broken out in Odessa and they would not be able to make it

“Instead, he said they were going to get out via Siret, more than 370km away. So, we drove through the night to get there but sadly, when we got to Suceava, which is about 42km from Siret, the driver we had hired had to leave.”

Refugee camp

Ms Wheatley then went to a hotel in Suceava and persuaded someone to drive her in a minivan to the border.

“When they got there, Joe rang to say they had to leave everybody in a refugee camp in Ukraine 20km from the Romanian border,” she said.

“Sadly, the driver who got us there refused to go into Ukraine. By pure luck, a man my brother knew agreed to drive us in and happened to be at Siret.”

When they got to the border, they faced a five-hour queue to get in, until the head of a diplomatic humanitarian convoy tried to cut across them.

Ms Wheatley agreed to let him go in front of her if he agreed to help her. She was then able to follow his convoy at speed through the border.

Cathy Wheatley (centre) with her twins, Ted and Elsie, 2, who were born by surrogacy in Ukraine to Ivana Holub, pictured, with two of her three children Oleg, 5, left and Sergii ,7, at the Wheatley home in Co Wicklow. Picture: Moya Nolan

“I couldn’t find Ivanna at first and was going round shouting out her name,” Ms Wheatley said. "But then after a while I could hear her shouting my name.

“Then I ran towards this tent, and she ran out and we fell into each other's arms, crying and laughing and holding each other.”

Within an hour, they were all out of the country and Ms Wheatley helped Yuri and Vera reach Portugal. Ms Holub and her family are now living under the same roof as the Wheatleys.