When two predawn blasts jolted Julia Gurelya awake at her home in Zhytomyr last week — an attack on a nearby Ukrainian airfield — she knew it was time to leave.
She grabbed a prepacked bag, gathered her husband, 17-year-old daughter, 76-year-old mother, and her cat, Kovalsky, then stepped from her apartment. She headed west to the city of Ternopil and, she hoped, out of the line of fire.
Gurelya’s fast morning departure a week ago Thursday not only sought to protect her family but to enable her to continue coordinating a high-risk, city-to-city, house-to-house relocation of about 100 colleagues, all Ukrainian employees of a Philadelphia e-commerce firm, Stuzo.
