YULIYA Klymenko and her two children, Luka and Tereza, arrived in Adelaide last month with a backpack each.

That was it. Kids being kids, nine-year-old-Luka and Tereza, 6, were more interested in packing toys than clothes.

The family was packing to flee the town of Shotomyn, about 15km from Lviv in western Ukraine, for a three-day trek to safety in Poland.

There was no time, no possibility to take much more than the clothes that they were wearing. Yuliya, 35, found out about the Russian invasion of her country when she was woken at 5am on February 24 by her father who was calling from Poland.

“He said ‘Yuliya, the war starts in Ukraine’,’’ she remembers.

She cries when she talks about the defences against Russian aggression that suddenly appeared in the streets.

Of the shrieking, low-flying jets that flew overhead and not knowing whether they were Ukrainian fighters trying to protect them or Russian pilots coming to bomb them.

“That sound, it damages your heart,’’ she says.

Across Ukraine, people were swapping stories of the latest Russian barbarity. Parents of a friend of Yuliya’s who live in Kyiv were holed up in an apartment when Russian soldiers entered the next door neighbours’ and raped and shot a girl.

“She said ‘My parents were sitting in the room and they were praying because they heard all that’,’’ Yuliya says.

Factories and military bases near Lviv were bombed, and Yuliya’s family sheltered in the basement of their home when the sirens sounded. Another fear was that the Russians were attacking the ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant, about 500km away.

The family decided the safest option was to leave Ukraine. But Yuliya’s husband, Volodmyr, stayed behind.

His profession is logistics and he was helping the war effort.

“I miss my Mum, my husband.

We have left everything back there,’’ she says. Luka didn’t want to leave without his father.

“I said ‘No, if you won’t leave I won’t go. I can’t leave you here and go with the daughter’.’’ The Advertiser Foundation next Tuesday is hosting a Ukraine Refugee Welcome Lunch at the Arkaba Hotel.

Yuliya and her children will be there, along with the ambassadors from Ukraine and Lithuania and Premier Peter Malinauskas. The event’s MC will be Advertiser columnist David Penberthy.

Arkaba owner Peter Hurley says he was “most enthusiastic about finding a small way to help people in this distressing time’’. The lunch will serve chicken Kyiv, charred beef fillet and honey banks cake.

The Australian Hotels’ Association is donating $25,000 to the cause, with SA’s chief executive, Ian Horne, saying the state has a history of welcoming refugees.

“After World War II, with the Italian and Greek communities, in the ’70s with the Vietnamese communities, and more recently with the Afghan communities, and we have people of African descent from various countries,’’ Mr Horne said.

Advertiser Foundation executive director Alex Dimos said one of the organisation’s functions was to “immediately respond to emergency relief events’’.

“The funds donated to this appeal will support the emergency response for displaced children and families arriving in SA from Ukraine to get established with basic needs,’’ Ms Dimos said.

The response from the SA community has been overwhelming.

Ukraine expatriates Pavlo and Natiliya Smoliy helped start a website asking for South Australians to host refugee families. So far, there have been about 120 responses and 20 families placed with hosts.

“I never expected that kind of generosity from the SA community,’’ Mr Smoliy says.

“Well, I knew they were generous, but I just didn’t expect that much to the extent of it.’’ Nicola Irons and Kevin Jamie are hosting Yuliya and her children at their Fullarton home.

The couple has three adult children, two of whom have moved out.

“We just thought there are people out there in dire need and we are sitting here with a big house and empty rooms,’’ Mr Jamie, 60, says.

Ms Irons, 56, said she considers it a “great privilege to be able to help.

“We’re full of admiration for Yuliya and the children and just what they have actually had to do and the journey they have been on.’’ The family is already settling in. Yuliya worked as an interior designer in Ukraine and has found a job at an architectural firm in the CBD.

The children will soon start school. For Yuliya, it has helped reaffirm her faith in humanity.

“You see that there is light in the end of the corridor,’’ she says. “Between this bad pool of people – trying to kill you, trying to take your house and everything – there are good people who try to give you everything they can.’’ Page 16: Editorial