A young Ukrainian refugee has seen her dream come true after being able to travel to Italy to take part in a winter sports tournament.

Fifteen-year-old junior champion speed skater Alexandra Cherkasova is taking part in the European Youth Olympic Festival at Friuli Venezia Giulia, in northern Italy, as part of the Ukrainian team.

The festival took place between January 21 and 28 and is billed as an event for young European athletes to be able to challenge themselves and develop.

Alexandra was granted a special temporary visa to allow her to travel from Melbourne to Italy.

“It is a great opportunity and I’m grateful to be able to have this experience and compete,” she said.

Alexandra was part of Ukraine’s junior speed skating team before having to flee her home.

She and her sister Yevheniia, 25, arrived in Australia in April last year after the Russian invasion of their homeland. 

The two found refuge in Australia after braving bombs and snipers in a desperate journey to safety.

The sister fled besieged Kharkiv as Russian tanks attempted to encircle the city, in February, 2002.

After surviving bombing and missile strikes, the sisters were put aboard a train by their parents in the precarious hope they would reach safety.

“Our parents put us in the car and drove us to the railway station. They put us on a train to Lviv in the west of Ukraine and then we made it into Poland,” Yevheniia said.

As the Russian attack on Kharkiv began in February 2022, the sisters’ immediate emotion was disbelief.

At home with her family in their comfortable apartment close to the centre of the city, she struggled to process the idea that her world was about to be turned upside down – nor that she was headed for the other side of the world.

“I thought maybe it was fireworks but far away. But then they started to bomb the city centre and we knew what it was. It was the Russians attacking us,” Yevheniia said.

“At 5am in the morning and we all woke up. We heard loud noises from the street. There were explosions not far from us – maybe 10 kilometres away.

“At first we didn’t think it was war but then there was a factory explosion and when we read the news and we realised it was war,” she said.

Yevheniia and Alexandra’s parents sent her and her sister away on March 13 after a missile hit houses across the street from their apartment.

“Our parents put us in the car and drove us to the railway station. They put us on a train to Lviv in the west of Ukraine and then we made it into Poland,” she said.

Yevheniia says it was eerie and frightening travelling across the recently peaceful but now devastated countryside.

“It was scary looking out of the train travelling across the country. We went through Kiev and other places that had been bombarded,” she said.

“We could see bombed buildings and wrecked cars. Ordinary people had obviously been killed by the Russians.”

It took the sisters two days to reach the Polish border. They were lucky in being able to cross the border in just a few hours. Other refugees spent 16 hours or more getting though border posts.

They arrived in the Polish town of Bialystok, where Alexandra’s skating team had been based for training.

“We were able to stay with the team for a while but it was hard in Poland. It was difficult to find a job and we had no money or extra clothes,” Yevheniia said.

“We were faced with having to pay for accommodation and food in Poland with no job and little money,” she said.

It was then that Maxim, a family friend who has lived in Australia for a decade, reached out the sisters.

“Our friend told us about the Australian program to offer tourist visas to Ukrainians and we and we applied.

“After we got our visas we flew 27 hours through Warsaw and Istanbul to Melbourne.

“Melbourne is a beautiful city and very peaceful. We were very scared and so we are happy and grateful to be here,” Yevheniia said.

She said other family members had found refuge in other parts of Europe but her parents were still in Ukraine.