It’s a busy Saturday at Art Corner, an unassuming cafe with baked Ukrainian sweets and Arabic shawarma near the intersection of Gaskins Road and Patterson Avenue.

With an art easel hair clip holding up her flaxen hair, Tania Rudenskykh sings happy birthday as she walks a cake to a teenage customer. Meanwhile, in an adjacent studio space, about half a dozen people participate in an art therapy class.

Thousands of miles from the frontlines of the war they fled in her native Ukraine, Tania, her husband Ibrahim Al Amir and their family have painted an image of community while searching for their own place in America’s shapeshifting tapestry.

After a long career as an internationalist journalist in Moscow and Dubai, and surrendering his Jordanian citizenship to become a Ukrainian citizen a few months before the Russian invasion in 2022, Ibrahim thinks Richmond is where they could find stability.

Their temporary legal status as refugees, however, means uncertainty.

“We’re not young. I’m 55 years old. Where would I go after this? My hope, my dream, is that we will build a life here – if not for us, at least for our kids,” he says. “That’s why we took the risk to open this business.”

Europe refugee crisis largest since World War II

Tania and Ibrahim opened Art Corner last spring, a couple months after arriving in the US with their three kids under a federal humanitarian parole program for Ukrainian refugees. The business draws inspiration from Tania’s love of art, her past experiences as a teacher and dreams of running a cafe and art studio in their twilight years.

Before the war, Tania opened a cafe in Ukraine while her husband continued working in Dubai. Their goal was to raise additional money to also open an art studio and retire. But then the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II took hold as Russian forces advanced.

With missiles flying over Kharkiv, Tania and her kids took shelter in a village outside of the city. They heard warplanes and tanks above them. Huddled in an underground cellar, they could feel the earth shake.

“We were six adults and five kids, two of them newborn twins,” she says. “It was a bad idea. I didn’t sleep for seven days.”

They got in a car and drove west without a destination in mind. After traveling more than 600 miles they arrived in Slovakia. Tania and her kids spent three months there before she connected with a friend who invited them to relocate to Germany, where more than one million Ukrainian refugees have sought safety since the war’s outbreak.

The family found fellowship rebuilding their life with other refugees from all walks of life. Tania led art therapy classes as part of an organization that provided food, clothing and comfort to the displaced. Other parents taught crochet and carpentry at the community space.

“There was this German lady, Maria, she gave us her social cafe,” Tania says. “From there, I got the idea [for Art Corner.] She had something like this.”

Despite the reprieve among her native kin and newfound friends, Tania says her teenage middle son struggled. After years of living abroad and fleeing to two foreign countries, it exerted a toll on his mental health.

Few places felt like home. Often there were bullies who targeted his mixed racial heritage.

Learning a fifth language to find a job or earn a spot at a German university was daunting. The stress was eating him alive. Tania says he shed nearly 20 kilograms (or 44 pounds).

Desperate, he told his mom: “I can’t live like this.”

Tania almost stopped recognizing him after he rapidly lost weight and hope.

“He fell deeply in depression,” she says. “It was actually not my child. He stopped talking. He stopped getting out of his room. He stopped going to school.”

She feared losing him forever.

The road to Richmond

Ukraine, where her two oldest kids learned English at an American school years earlier, still wasn’t safe. Tania doesn’t know what happened to her old cafe. Relatives still there say new tenants have taken over their homes in occupied parts of the country.

The US and other nations are attempting to broker peace, but the war is still ongoing.

Noting her husband’s Palestinian heritage, and the fact that they aren’t able to return to his former home nation of Jordan, Tania says it feels like God, or the universe, has played a cruel joke on them. “It’s so funny, you know?” she says. “We are two homeless people.”

Thinking that the US could be a better fit for her family, Tania started looking up new resettlement programs. The family also connected with one of Ibrahim’s former journalism peers who lived outside of Washington DC.

The capital region, just like Dubai, was too expensive for the family. Just two hours south in Richmond, however, there was a small Ukrainian community and Commonwealth Catholic Charities.

The nonprofit agency helped her husband find a job at a local Amazon warehouse and gave advice on how they could potentially start a business.

Tania says her three boys – now 22,18 and 6 – are finding their footing.

She said her middle son’s spirit has returned after getting a job as a lifeguard and swim instructor. He’s also made friends with kids from diverse backgrounds, bonding over movies and hip-hop.

“Everyday he has school, and then work,” she says. “He has so many friends from Mexico, USA, Russia and Ukraine. He connects with everyone. We’re so proud of him.”

Ibrahim’s sister, Salam Al Amir, is also trying to establish residency in the Richmond area. She says it neatly matches her own family’s nature to support friends and neighbors.

“It’s the entire environment that’s welcomed us. It’s how people were friendly and smiling at you, trying to help you, not just taking an extra step but going a mile to help,” she says. “We’re happy that we have found that here.”

An uncertain future

Ibrahim says they opened Art Corner so that they can support themselves, but they also want to give something back to the community. In addition to art classes and food, Art Corner features a kids’ room with a homemade sandbox and hand-painted murals on the wall. The idea, the family says, is to create an inviting space where parents can relax and let their children play.

The looming question is whether they can stay.

Since the start of 2025, the US has withdrawn humanitarian parole protections for more than half a million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. 

It’s unclear whether the Uniting for Ukraine parole program that’s been frozen since January will continue. Tania and Ibrahim say they have protected status until next summer but are looking for ways they can stay legally beyond then.

No matter what’s to come, Tania and her family say they will continue to bake cakes, hold art classes and host events to contribute to a community their kids might call home one day.