(Project conducted between April and August 2022)
Krystyna – Kyiv
“I spent the first two nights of the invasion sleeping in a metro station in Kyiv with my friend, her husband, her mother-in-law and their pet hedgehog. It was freezing so we all huddled together trying to keep warm, but whenever the train passed – it continued running till 1:30am every day- the wind would chill us to our bones. Then people would get off and have to step over us as we lay there.
I remember the feeling of that floor. It was so uncomfortable and so so so cold. And then there was the fact that you had no idea what time it was. Day? Night? You’d doze off and think that a few hours had gone by and then you’d realize it had only been 15 or 20 minutes. And you’d try not to use your phone as you wanted to preserve your battery in order to get in touch with your loved ones.
At some point, my half-brother, who is 10 years old, called me crying. It was really hard to hear him sobbing and telling me how scared he was…
The person I speak to the most is my boyfriend though. He is ok and writes to me every day. But it’s stressful. They recently went to battle and he warned that he might not be able to contact me for 5 days, so I tried to stay calm until that time was over. It wasn’t easy. After 4 and a half days he wrote to me and said that he was safe but that it had been like hell on earth and that he often thought that he wouldn’t make it. His best friend’s boyfriend, who fought alongside him, had died and he really didn’t know how to break the news to her.
Inside the metro, the atmosphere was surreal. We tried to speak to people, but so many of them were crying. Others took it differently; neither happy nor sad – just empty, with no idea what tomorrow would bring.
On the third day we went to stay with friends, as their house had an actual bunker from the Second World War and we thought we’d be safe there. Every few hours, whenever the sirens went off, we’d pick up our pre-packed things and rush underground. In between, we would go upstairs, get some food, have a shower, try take a nap if possible and then go back down again.
There were about ten of us there – sometimes more, sometimes less. There was enough space for all of us, but it was cold and wet and humid so after you slept there, you would often wake up sick.
One night, we heard that a rocket had fallen nearby so we made the decision to leave for Lviv the next day. After a week in the metro and the bunker though, we were exhausted and decided to all sleep together in the house to get some proper rest before our journey.
It had been a strange day as we had heard many sirens but no explosions, so when we eventually heard the signal again, we put it down as just another false alarm. Or maybe we were just too tired…
The last thing I remember is a huge noise and a really bright light outside the window. It startled us and we all sprinted to the bunker. As we sat underground, petrified and crying, I remember genuinely thinking that I was going to die…”
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Natalia – Kharkiv
“My father was born on the same day the Nazis entered Kharkiv during World War II. He was a really positive, funny man who was always joking around and making people laugh. Recently, he had been experiencing some trouble with his hearing, but even this he managed to take positively. He joked that having this problem was actually a plus as he couldn’t hear the sirens or explosions going on overground.
I spent the first 10 days of the invasion with my father, my husband and the rest of my family sitting in the basement of a school in Kharkiv. We spent most of the time underground, only venturing outside for the basics and to help our soldiers with anything that was needed. After those 10 days, Russian military planes started to fly above the city far more frequently and this frightened us a lot so we decided to leave.
We planned on taking two cars and driving our loved ones away from the city, to a safer place. But at the last moment, my parents and my in-laws decided that they couldn’t abandon their home town and chose to stay in Kharkiv.
My husband therefore drove me, my son and some other relatives across the country to Lviv. There we embraced goodbye, before he loaded the car full of groceries and drove back to our city alone to donate them to the military and help with the struggle. He is still there now. He owns a locomotive factory and works there and sleeps in his office.
As for us…well, we headed to Berlin as my oldest son Dima and his wife live there so we knew we would have a place to stay. It was wonderful to see them, but shortly after we arrived, Dima broke the news to me that my father had died of a heart attack in Kharkiv.
This situation is so difficult. It leaves you with no options. Not even the most essential ones like being able to say goodbye to your loved ones.
My youngest son, Yuri, will turn 8 in May and is already planning how he is going to celebrate his birthday in Kharkiv. He is talking about where to have his party and who to invite. It’s difficult to explain to him that this will not happen.”
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Anna – Outskirts of Kyiv
“When food started running out, things started to get desperate. There were no shops open nearby and we had to use the last remaining potatoes and a few other basics to make some soup. Some people were not eating at all because of the stress, others were eating too much and this started to cause arguments. We therefore began rationing out everything very strictly.
I was with my friend Marietta and her family. I had wanted to be with my own family because I figured that if I was going to die, I wanted to do so around my parents. But they were too far away and the geography and dangers meant that this wasn’t possible.
The house where we were staying was in a reserve and right next to it was a forest. We had prepared for the Russians’ arrival by having a drill three times a day in case any bombs started falling. All 25 of us would run into the forest nearby and dig holes, trying to create a kind of self-made bunker so that if we were out in the open, we would at least have some kind of protection. Some people disagreed about whether it would be safer inside the house or out in the forest, but the house was old and as it didn’t have a basement it never felt quite right there.
A few days later it finally happened. First we heard the siren and then some bombs started to fall really close by. I remember someone in the house yelling “run!” and we all got out, jumped through the fence and sprinted towards the forest. There was a little girl who stumbled and hurt her leg and couldn’t make it on her own so a couple of us tried to help her. We were begging her to hurry, to run, but she couldn’t so we did our best to carry her. As we tried to get her off the ground, I looked back and saw that the whole house was literally shaking. Gunfire could be heard just metres away too.
A few hours later, the territorial army came in and started to evacuate everyone to a safer place. Miraculously, everyone was alive. The man who helped get our group out of there took us to his own home, where we met his two daughters. After he dropped us off, he headed straight back out to bring more people back. But that was the last we saw of him.
To think that at the very same time his daughters were making us tea and calming us down, their own father was sacrificing his life to save others…
That was just one of the atrocities that happened during those days. Marietta’s 9-year-old brother for example, had his dogs murdered by the Russian soldiers. He ended up burying them in the very holes he had dug for his own protection.
In another place where we stopped, we were told about how the Russians had entered and began stealing and destroying anything they could get their hands on. They mocked people, stole their clothes, their food, everything…
There was a disabled man in that village who was in a wheelchair. The soldiers shot all his windows, destroyed his home and left him with no food. Then they took his wheel chair. He had to be carried around in a trash can after that…
The most disturbing thing I was told, was by a man who recalled how he had been captured. He was injured so the soldiers decided that he was of no use to them. They made him dig his own grave, all the time asking him: “Is this big enough for you? Is there enough room for you?”
The only reason why he was still there telling the story was that a tank arrived in that very moment and everyone had to flee suddenly.
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Olga – Bucha
“It was when the electricity got cut off that we decided that enough was enough. We had already been in that bunker for a fortnight, getting just minimal glimpses of sunlight and of the world outside. But having to be in that dark basement under candlelight made it impossible to live. We couldn’t cook, couldn’t do anything like normal people.
We decided to leave on foot. After two weeks underground, it was scary to be out in the open again. There had been a lot of explosions nearby and in order to get to where we needed to go, we had to cross through an area where heavy gunfire often took place. It felt bizarre to be going towards the shooting rather then moving away from it. Almost like defying your own common sense…
The streets were littered with crashed artillery. And then there were the dead bodies. That was an unreal picture. Just a different reality to take in altogether. During the walk I was so afraid for my son. I kept thinking what the best way to protect him would be. Should I stand in front of him? Behind him? To the side? But in the end, you know that the bombs could fall from anywhere. Luckily, we had God – if he exists – on our side and we made it out of Bucha safely.
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I don’t like telling people I’m from Bucha. The horrors that happened there carry a stigma and I don’t enjoy the pity in their eyes. Many people tell us how lucky we are that we managed to get out on time. Others tell us stories about how hard it was to get across the border. But I became a refugee during the invasion of Luhansk in 2014. And now I’m a refugee again. So yeah, one of the “lucky” ones!
When we had to leave our homes in 2014, it was horrible. But at least we could go to other parts of the country. But now, the whole of Ukraine is an absolute mess. Now we have to be in a different culture. With a different language. It’s so hard to get used to and it hurts a lot. All I want is to be back in my house in Bucha. I liked it there. I was happy. But I try not to delve too deep into these thoughts. I believe that this is all temporary. For two years. Maybe three. We will see what happens with Ukraine…”
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Anastasiia – Nikopol
“We had no plans to leave Ukraine at first. In fact, we had been volunteering our house as a resting place for refugees who were fleeing other bombed cities. We had several families stay with us during those first 10 days of the invasion.
I remember there was a moment though, a decisive moment for me, that helped make my mind up. We had a family staying with us – 2 parents, 2 kids – and when they arrived, I tried to take their 13-year-old daughter to the bathroom. But she was just so emotionally and mentally broken that she couldn’t. She couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t speak. It was like watching a shell of a person. After I saw what war had done to this child, I realized that I owed it to my own children to not let them go through the same thing.
I never wanted to abandon my country. Never wanted to leave my husband. But he wanted us safe and was adamant that we left. Despite having the option to join us, as fathers of multi-child families sometimes do, he chose to stay behind and fight.
The moment we got to the station was difficult. The children couldn’t really process the fact that their father wasn’t coming with us. I remember them hugging him and not wanting to let go. It was like something out of a movie. Ukrainian military had to step in to lift the children from their father’s arms onto the train. I couldn’t calm them down for over an hour after that.
Eventually, the train started moving, but a few hours into the journey, when we were somewhere to the south of Kyiv, we started to hear explosions going off nearby. It was terrifying. The train slowed down and we got given instructions to turn off our phones, switch off the lights and stay quiet inside the carriages. The explosions kept coming again and again. It’s difficult to explain just how that feels…
Once the bombing stopped, after what felt like a full hour, the train shifted back into top speed and we accelerated away towards Lviv. At that moment, I knew we had made the right decision to leave.”