Julianna Rozek had always been passionate about helping people.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Rozek left behind her comfortable life in Melbourne’s trendy inner north to help the war-torn country, working in a soup kitchen and rebuilding bombed-out homes.
Now the Brunswick charity worker is dead, killed in a house fire that is the subject of a criminal investigation, a senior police investigator has confirmed.
Rozek, 34, died alongside her partner, Irish national Darren Martyn, when a fire swept through a cottage in the village of Litochky, an hour from Kyiv, in the early hours of September 6.
Both Rozek and Martyn were volunteers for Repair Together, a volunteer organisation that repairs and cleans up war-ravaged villages recently liberated from Russian occupation.
The pair had rented the Airbnb property for a short weekend trip and were likely asleep when the house caught fire after 4am.
According to an early investigation, the most likely cause of their deaths was carbon monoxide poisoning.
Emergency responders identified a wood-burning stove as one of the possible causes of the blaze, according the head of investigations for the national police in Ukraine’s Kyiv region, Serhii Bolvinov.
He confirmed that police were investigating a potential breach of fire safety regulations at the Airbnb.
“This building had not been commissioned or formally put into operation,” Bolvinov told this masthead.
“Therefore, it’s quite hard to say that fire safety regulations in that building were approved by any law enforcement and any government in our country, and we are investigating this fact during our investigation.”
Police said they interviewed the owner of the property, who was identified as New York documentary filmmaker Chad Gracia.
According to a 2024 interview with travel publication Escape Artist, Gracia turned a plot of land he had bought for $12,000 in Kyiv Oblast into a successful Airbnb “side business”, which he planned to continue after the war.
This masthead attempted to reach Gracia for comment. There is no suggestion that he is responsible, only that there is an investigation into an Airbnb property registered under his name.
To those who knew her, Rozek was described as a lively and passionate person who was devoted to the cause of supporting Ukraine and would do anything she could to help people in need.
She was born in Lviv and spent most of her life in Melbourne’s inner north.
Before permanently relocating overseas in 2024, she started a PhD at RMIT University looking at how people used waterways in Moonee Ponds Creek.
“She didn’t follow a typical career path, she was very passionate and whatever she was interested in and fixated on she became an expert on it,” friend Sasha Sheko said.
“She had a big group of friends, she was someone who made friends easily, she was very intelligent, very passionate, and I think quite principled.”
Jessica O’Riley first met Rozek in 2017 through a mutual friend, and the pair reconnected during the pandemic.
She fondly recalled the two driving around the city together and talking on Rozek’s couch in her Brunswick share house until dark.
“She was super fun, super warm, and after the invasion, especially, she was really keen on sharing her culture with everyone,” O’Riley said.
“She was always raising money for Ukraine. She’d have cooking lessons to teach us how to make traditional dumplings. Her 30th birthday was a fundraiser [...] and she made this massive papier-mache pinata of Putin’s face, and you’d pay a donation to hit it.”
After Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Rozek flew home to Ukraine where she began working at a food kitchen in Lviv.
After discovering Repair Together through word of mouth, she and close friend Jeremy Pryslak took an overnight train north to help rebuilding efforts in rural villages wrecked by Russian tanks and missile strikes.
“Neither of us had much labouring experience,” Pryslak remembers.
“I remember her coming back one day – she was just beaming, she’d had the best day moving on bricks into a pile to another.”
By 2026, Rozek had quit her studies and council job in Australia and had become a “go-to” person within the organisation, overseeing a large group of foreign and Ukrainian volunteers while working various jobs to support herself.
“She could have taken any path, but what she decided to do was intentional and genuinely a sacrifice,” Pryslak said.
“For J, there was nothing more important than being in Ukraine and supporting people here in any way conceivable.”
In October, friends held a memorial service at one of Rozek’s favourite pubs in Collingwood. The event was live-streamed to friends and family in Ukraine.
A DFAT spokesperson confirmed the agency has been in contact with local authorities in Ukraine regarding the death of an Australian citizen.
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