The Ukraine government had posted a selfie-style photo of released soldiers on a bus and two rows back was a man who Valeria’s sister said looked like their son Roman.
They didn’t believe it at first. Valeria and the father Roman remained convinced the blurry, pixelated photo of a man’s face on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s website was not their son. On the Ukrainian government website, they also saw Roman’s status change from “in captivity” to “released.” That still wasn’t enough to convince them.
“We decided it was 99.99999% that it was no; we need proof,” said the father Roman.
Then Valeria’s phone rang.
It was Roman, using a borrowed phone. He tried to reassure his mother that he was OK now and not to cry anymore. She remembers sobbing as she and her son talked over each other.
The call lasted only five minutes and Valeria was the only one in the U.S. able to speak to him before he had to return the phone. While his wife spoke to her son, Roman Sr. was planning how they’d be able to see their son with their own eyes.
Roman said they knew that no matter what they needed to visit him in person, but there were barriers to the reunion.
Humanitarian parole
The Biletskiys, who live in Bonney Lake, are only a few of the 25,000 Ukrainians who landed in Washington from January 2022 to April 2024, according to the state Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance.
Under the Biden administration, Ukrainians who fled the war with Russia were granted a different visa status than other migrants – Ukrainian humanitarian parole. Under this status, Ukrainians can come to the United States temporarily while they pursue asylum, refugee status or other immigration avenues to stay. This program was created under the Biden administration in February 2022 to allow Ukrainian refugees fleeing from the war to stay for two years.
The Biletskiy family’s humanitarian parole was extended until April 2026, but they've applied for Temporary Protected Status to remain in the U.S. They’re waiting to hear back about their application status. Under the new Trump administration, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (UCIS) has frozen the review of new applications, leaving some families in limbo without a proper visa to remain in the states.
The Trump administration also ended the humanitarian parole program for Ukrainians, Venezuelans and others, and said it is considering whether to revoke the legal status for around 240,000 Ukrainians in the U.S. who fled the conflict with Russia, according to a Reuters report.
This move is only one part of a broad effort by the administration to strip the legal status of 1.8 million migrants in the U.S. here under the Biden administration’s temporary humanitarian parole programs.
The journey back to Ukraine
Normally, refugees or migrants cannot travel outside of the U.S. without an emergency. They need a travel authorization document – emergency advance parole in the case of the Biletskiy family – which can take months for people to receive and is reserved for emergency situations.
With the help of a translator, the Biletskiys contacted UCIS and immigration lawyers in case they’d encounter trouble coming back to the U.S. The family decided to send only Valeria to meet Roman in Ukraine, since the journey would be expensive for both parents and six children.
“There was a risk of her going there but coming back and not being allowed back into the U.S.,” Roman Sr. said.
Valeria Biletska (left) and Roman Biletskiy are the parents of Roman Biletskiy, one of the survivors of a massacre in a Russian prison, who was recently released from Russian custody. The parents fled Ukraine with their younger children in 2022 and now live in Bonney Lake, Washington. (David Ryder for Cascade PBS)
The Biletskiys reached out to U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA10), who wrote an endorsement letter for Valeria. The mother was able to get an appointment with USCIS and get the travel authorization document. Now she needed to retrace her steps back to her son with the same route she took to flee from Ukraine.
They turned to their community to get financial support for Valeria’s travel. Some donated money and others gave airline points. A commercial airline pilot originally from Ukraine donated his employee benefits so Valeria could fly to Europe on standby – that is, take an unoccupied seat on a commercial flight – which is how Valeria found herself at SeaTac Airport on January 9.
Unfortunately, she was unable to board the plane to Paris that day since the flight was completely full.
“I was so frustrated, I was ready to get on and fly the plane myself even though I don’t know how to,” Valeria said through a translator. She waited in the airport until the next day when she was finally able to board a flight.
From Paris she took another flight to Warsaw, then rode eight hours on a train east toward Lviv, a Ukrainian city bordering Poland. The total travel time was three days, but Valeria still had to wait several more days to see her son in person.
“He looked like a 14-year-old boy, even though he’s 25,” Valeria said. Her son was pale, thin and weak and his bones were visible. He tried to hide his condition from his mother by wearing a big, baggy hoodie, but she knew from looking at him that what had happened to her son was horrible.
Since his release, he’s been in rehabilitation after being tortured and starved. Roman’s organs had shrunk because of starvation, making it difficult for his body to receive the nutrition he needs. He has to eat in small portions.
“But his voice was still strong,” Valeria said. “When I heard him talk for the first time, she thought, ‘Oh, he didn’t lose himself while in captivity.”
She remembered how his voice remained confident, just as it was before the war, and he kept his calm and determined personality.
“They never broke his character, his spirit in captivity,” Valeria said.
Roman didn’t want to answer his mother’s questions about what happened in the Russian prison since he didn’t want her to worry about what he’d gone through. Although he endured nearly three years of torture at the hands of Russian soldiers, he said if he were to meet a Russian soldier right now, he wouldn’t torture or starve them like they did to him.
As his mother, Valeria was impressed that he kept his humanity.
“What’s important is I am free and I managed to save the humanity in myself and remain obedient and patriotic to my country, my people,” Roman told his mother that day.
Valeria was able to stay in Ukraine for a month, spending every single day with her son. They stayed mostly in Vinnytsia in west-central Ukraine, but visited Odesa and Kyiv together, the second time she’d ever been to the capitol.
“I was so happy to take my son, hold his arm and walk with him,” Valeria said, smiling. In captivity Roman hadn’t gotten to choose what he wore, so now that he was free Valeria took him to clothing stores where he modeled clothes for her.
In Odesa they were out and about when a rocket hit the building next to them. Valeria was in awe of how her fellow Ukrainians now live every day like it would be their last, she said.
When a rocket is launched, an alarm sounds and everyone has to stop what they’re doing – businesses, classes, everything – to retreat into their bunker until the blaring alarms finally turn off. After that, they go to the surface to assess the damage and help if people are injured.
“It’s a vicious cycle Ukrainians need to live in,” Valeria said.
While Roman Jr. has expressed his desire to come to the U.S. to vacation and see the rest of his family, he told his mother that he wants to stay in Ukraine. Valeria’s son told his mother that he “gave too much to Ukraine for now to give up.”
Roman is living in Odesa with a salary provided by the Ukraine government for his time served at the Russian prison, working to rebuild his life. His health no longer allows him to do most of the things he used to, so he has retired from the military but wants to help train soldiers, raise money and invest all his efforts into his country.
“It only seemed to me that he was a child again when I first saw him, but he’s OK and I trust his judgement to make his own decisions,” Valeria said.
He has gained weight since his release and wants to head back into the gym to build some muscles. However, his mother is urging him to continue his routine hospital visits and gain doctor’s approval first.
On her way back to the U.S. in February, Valeria found out she was granted Temporary Protected Status, and did not have trouble going through immigration and customs. Now she talks with Roman on the phone every single day through video chat.
“I say good night to him and he wishes me a good day, we talk every day although it can feel like there’s nothing to talk about,” Valeria said, laughing. She dotes on her son, asking if he’s eaten or if he’s watched any shows or movies, and proposes watching them together.
Her other children are also relieved to hear of their brother’s release and that their mother is smiling again. While Valeria received Temporary Protected Status, the rest of the family’s individual visa statuses are in limbo. The parents have looked at options for the future, but the children currently in the United States have expressed no desire to return to their motherland.
“We need to understand that they escaped occupied territory, our home is a zero line right now. There’s combat and ongoing battles … so there is no chance for them to go back,” Valeria said. Their hometown is still embroiled in conflict, so going back to Ukraine would uproot the children’s lives once again.
Valeria hopes their family can be reunited, and that the American people will stand with Ukraine and advocate for refugee families here in the U.S., especially under the current political climate.
“We are not recognized as refugees, we have humanitarian parole, protection statuses, we are called everything but refugees and this gives us no certainty because we can be kicked out of any country anytime.” Valeria said.
Her husband Roman believes that America is greater than the rhetoric politicians spew because he sees the support he receives from his community in Orting and hopes the American people won’t allow democracy and freedom to be destroyed.
As for right now, the family continues to sell paintings and honey in their shop in Orting. In the summer, if their son can visit, they want to rent an RV to drive down the West Coast to California.
They also hope for the war to finally end. “We are a brave nation with brave soldiers like my son who will never allow Russia to win,” Valeria said.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the Biletskiy family had seven children instead of eight.
