24 February 2022. 5 a.m… I woke up to the scary sound of the multiple-launch rocket system called “Grad”. My heart was torn with fear, my body was shaking, and my brain was doing everything not to believe what I had just heard. It was the start of war. War! – terrible, frightening, ruthless, inhuman, tyrannical, and bloody!

I lived almost all my life in Kharkiv, a huge and developed business city in northeastern Ukraine that borders Russia. On that terrifying morning I was in a small town called Vovchansk, just an hour east of Kharkiv, directly bordering the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation. I was visiting one of my best friends, Roman, and his family there.

I quickly started calling my mother and younger brother, who were in Kharkiv at the time. My stepfather was in another small town near Kharkiv. All of my family, relatives, and friends from different parts of Ukraine were shocked by what was happening. We read in the news about the beginning of a full-scale invasion of the Russian army into Ukrainian territory. We were screaming, crying, and thinking about what to do next. The explosions continued. I would call my father at the moment. My father is one of the majors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, serving in the Donbas war.  I knew he would have a better understanding of the situation. He answered that he was being summoned to the headquarters of his battalion, redirected to serve in another city and that yes, it was going to be outright war, and that everybody should not misconstrue the ‘special military operation’ propaganda. He ultimately advised me to flee the country.

My friend’s house is located near the railway, on the outskirts of the town. We began to see many cars full of people, residents of Vovchansk, fleeing. We later found out that public transport lines in the direction of Kharkiv were closed. I told my friend’s parents that we needed to leave the city by car ASAP, too. While we were packing the most necessary things and thinking about where to go, etc., we heard a rumble. Out the window on the second floor of the house, I noticed a very long column of tanks and other military vehicles with Russian flags on them, which had just crossed from the Russian Belgorod and were heading towards Ukrainian Kharkiv.

I couldn’t believe what was happening! Having counted more than 70 tanks, Roman interrupted me, saying that Russian soldiers killed a group of about 20 nearby border guards and also bombed several villages that were nearby to place a garrison of their military vehicles and troops in fields between them. The main source of that information was the numerous calls from people, relatives, friends, all those who lived in this region, who tried to escape and witnessed the events.

At about 7 a.m., the occupiers surrounded and occupied the town without a fight. The Russians immediately set up checkpoints in various places around the town, not allowing residents to flee to Kharkiv or other Ukrainian cities. For the first 10 days since that morning we could not get out of Vovchansk. Even now it is completely occupied by the Russian army.

Around noon of the first day, a Russian flag was raised central square of the city at the police station. We were completely humiliated. We are Ukrainians, we are on our land! How could someone dare to decide that we belong to the Russians, and that I am in Russia now?

For the next days, frightening explosions and battles began on the territory between Vovchansk and Kharkiv. The terrible sounds of Russian tanks’ and other military vehicles’ engines near the house, leaving caterpillar tracks all over Ukrainian soil. Russian military aircraft were passing at very low altitudes, which made our hearts freeze with fear. Many bridges towards Kharkiv were blown up, cutting off the main evacuation roads. We spent the first day of the war in a small basement under the house, with a temperature of ten degrees Celsius inside. In the evening, when we no longer heard any fighting, we returned to the house and decided to sleep in it, because it was too cold in the basement.

Little did I know, that this would be the scariest night of my life.

Around midnight explosions started abruptly. I instantly woke up. I could feel that the ground and the house were trembling. I was on the first floor in my bedroom, while my friend’s family was already on the ground floor. They shouted to quickly come down and run to the basement. The explosions were getting closer and closer. And there, in a second of deep thoughts, I made the wisest decision of my life. A second later, there was an explosion near our yard. I did not run to the basement. I fell to the floor and covered my head with a backpack and my hands. At that moment, a mass of rocket fragments, which are designed to kill, smashed the windows of the house. I heard pieces of glass and fragments of a bomb flying over me. If at that moment I had not been lying on the floor, but trying to run out of the room, I would have been killed by the cruel Russian army and its inhumane government. Lessons from a military camp organized by the “Azov” battalion on a volunteer basis I attended six years ago became the biggest lessons of my life.

My mind and soul overflowed with three things: the fear of death, fear for my loved ones, and anger. My brain burst from the realization that at that moment I could not end it all, somehow influence the situation or save my country. That was a very unpleasant realization; that was a different kind of pain and suffering; suffering for my Ukraine.

It turned out that fragments from rockets and mines damaged our fence, tore apart the gas pipe that provided the house with heating, broke the electricity cables, smashed the windows, and injured the dog. But fortunately, we all survived and lived in the cold basement over the next days. There was no electricity for about five days and therefore no water supply and heating. We managed to repair the gas pipe with our combined efforts. We had to remain in a small kitchen with the gas stove on to stay warm. Staying almost all the time in the cold basement was almost unbearable, but it was a matter of life and death. The absence of electricity made it impossible to get in touch with family and other people very close to me. All those days I lived in great fear that my mother and 11-year old brother would not get out of Kharkiv, which was experiencing massive air raids, bombardments from the sky and artillery shelling. And I could not even call them because of my completely empty phone and no signal! It was a terrible feeling – to sit and wait, either for my death or rescue; thinking about what would be happening to or my house and family; how it could all be destroyed. Just pure helplessness, eternal suffering and increasing anger.

Eventually, we got a hold of some information. The main route from our town to Kharkiv had become the main arena of battle, so all the ways to get out were blocked, and people who did not listen to the Russians at the checkpoints and wanted to leave Vovchansk, finding other roads, were simply shot. In general, everyone who tried to escape the town experienced violence or death in the end. I realized that the only thing I could do was just wait obediently for the two sides to agree on the evacuation of the civilian population. Every day was full of bombings, the terrifying sound of warplanes, from which the house and all of us were constantly shaking.

For the first two days, people completely bought up all the goods in the small supermarkets of the town. Since Vovchansk is completely isolated from the world, no economy exists in it. The Ukrainian side isn’t able to supply food and medicine there, as there are simply no roads. The roads are blocked, destroyed, and Russian soldiers would disallow any delivery regardless. Everyone just had to fend for themselves. Some farmers from nearby villages began to deliver and sell milk, eggs, and meat to the city square. That was the only food that was available and until now, only local farmers are helping people not to die of hunger.

Still it isn’t possible to pay by card, only cash, which is a tight constraint given. ATMs are unavailable and banks are closed. Imagine the queue at the only working pharmacy in the town! The medicines were completely bought up in the first few days. Essentially, everything stopped working. All factories, offices, banks, EVERYTHING was closed.

Russian soldiers traveled and walked around the town with firearms and controlled any civilian movement. They repeatedly arranged visits to factories and fairly rich people to take away vehicles, necessary products and money. Particularly affected were those who owned trucks and jeeps. I preferred to just stay in the house or the basement because being outside was very dangerous. There was constant news about the beatings of civilians, the shooting of those who left the town, and the beginning of the mass rape of girls and women by the Russian army/separatists.

After some time, we got electricity and some mobile towers were got repaired. I was glad to know that my family was alive, although my mother and brother were either in the bomb shelter in Kharkiv or at home under the terrible sound of explosions and shaking windows. They hardly slept. It was difficult for them to even eat. My 11-year-old brother was crying all the time and was afraid of doing anything. They soon managed to evacuate.

Nothing has changed in the city today. Some people began to starve, because the Russian soldiers do not provide any food, and refuse to open any humanitarian corridors for adequate evacuation or the provision of food by the Ukrainian side. There is also a huge problem in the sphere of health care. Many people were injured from the explosions, and the small local hospital cannot cope with these kinds of injuries. And of course, the Russian occupiers do not allow these hospitals to take the wounded civilians to the big cities, where they can be provided with the necessary medical care. People are suffering. Since the town and surrounding areas made up a deployment area of Russian military vehicles, equipment, and troops – along the eastern front, the inhabitants of the town are like hostages for them. We were also the main source of information for the Ukrainian army about their military garrison. This explains part of their logic to not let anyone go in or out of Vovchansk. My friend and his family are still there today. Unfortunately, they often lose electricity and mobile data, so literally every five to six days I just get a message that they are alive, but the situation does not change. Everything has remained the same.

Thus passed my first ten days of the war. We began to see columns of Russian military vehicles which drove to the Russian border, carrying a bunch of scrap metal leftover from their combat, as well as trucks that carried the corpses of Russian soldiers. They don’t even care about their dead soldiers, dumping them on a pile like some piece of garbage! It was a very pitiful sight, but I did not have any sympathy.

And although I was very morally depressed, I was so glad to find out about how I could potentially escape from there. After the second round of Ukrainian-Russian negotiations, it was decided that a Ukrainian checkpoint would be opened at the entrance to the city of Kharkiv. People would be let in and out, but only along some routes towards the Russian border. Battles in that zone had relatively stopped. The evacuation was announced only for three days, March 4^th to March 6^th, from 6 a.m. to noon, but there was one huge problem. Of course, the Russian checkpoints still didn’t let people drive out and they didn’t care about the evacuation agreement at all. On Friday, March 4^th, seven cars managed to get out. We kept in touch with those people who decided to leave. They would inform us about possible routes, how to bypass Russian checkpoints and not be caught by Russian forces.

On the morning of March 5^th, I made the second most important decision of my life, but the most courageous one.

My friend and his parents were trying to persuade me not to leave because such an attempt to escape was very dangerous. We could easily be caught by Russian soldiers somewhere in a field, near a forest, between villages, or on the border with Russia, and then be brutally raped, tortured and killed. There was also the possibility of running into a land full of mines, since after the battles took place the Russian army laid them down as they retreated. But I made my decision.

Since my friend and his family decided not to leave the city, I got into the car of one of Roman’s friends, who was driving to Kharkiv. In total, three cars managed to evacuate that morning. All the cars kept a close distance from each other to be able to react in time to some changes in our “escape” operation. We went around the zones where Russian checkpoints might be located, and also old combat areas. These were the most dangerous paths because they were not only covered with mines, but also broken Russian military equipment and occupiers could still be there. I spent my entire journey in prayer.

The drive took about four hours. We met a lot of shelled cars of civilians who had also tried to leave the town earlier. There were a lot of columns of broken Russian tanks, military trucks, and the corpses of Russian soldiers that were lying on the ground, pieces of their bodies were hanging directly from the doors of the burnt trucks. I also did not feel any sympathy for them, because they understood well where they were heading and with what intentions. Seeing that, it only meant one thing, that the operation of Putin and his Russian army to “occupy Kharkiv and other cities in 48 hours” had completely failed. I had extremely strange feelings, which I had not experienced before. Russians came to our land with cruel intentions but are getting this cruelty back, just remaining a miserable bloody leftover and a good fertilizer for Ukrainian soil. Actually this interpretation became a very popular joke among Ukrainians and it made me smile, too.

I was filled with emotions seeing Ukrainian soldiers on the entry road to Kharkiv. They were real heroes to me. I was just crying and thanking them when they were checking our ID cards and cars. We explained to them about the places of all the enemy’s military garrisons, told them where there were Russian checkpoints, and in particular, which Russian soldiers were the harshest towards civilians.

In Kharkiv, I quickly got to my family’s apartment. When I arrived, it was empty. My family had already evacuated. I luckily had mobile signal and stable internet connection. I quickly started calling everyone I knew, trying to find out where they were and if they were safe. I was very worried about my father because I had not heard from him for a very long time. He answered only a couple of days later and explained that he was very busy, had slept very little and directed all his forces so that the operations of his battalion in South Ukraine could be completed successfully, and the enemy destroyed mercilessly. On March 23, my father received an enemy bullet in the leg. Even being in a difficult physical condition, he still continues to conduct military service. I also called my stepfather and found out that he decided to help the Ukrainian army in the maintenance of military equipment. Such volunteering is very dangerous because he works at military points, which are one of the main targets of Russian aviation. Both my fathers are risking every second of their lives so that no Russian flag hangs in Ukrainian cities.

That day wasn’t peaceful in Kharkiv. One residential district in the northern part of the city experienced massive bombing attacks. And although our apartment was in a more or less quiet area, our windows still shook and the terrible sound of explosions can be heard throughout the city. I stayed at home for only two hours, only packing necessities and decided to go to the railway station to evacuate the city. Since public transport was completely shut down, and taxi services were in great shortage and very expensive, I called one of the volunteer taxis. They agreed to take me to the railway station, but before that, I had to ride with them for three hours in the most dangerous district of Kharkiv, where they helped old people and large families with evacuation. So, when we were helping a very old and sick woman get into a taxi, suddenly explosions began in a neighboring yard, where there were many multi-story buildings with apartments inside. It was about five air raids. We abruptly jumped into the car and tried to leave that yard. There were a couple of more explosions. In front of my eyes, a multi-story residential building collapsed, the floors with apartments and their balconies simply fell down on each other. Screams… People were burning along with their houses. Whole families were dying in terrible agony…

We managed quickly to get out of the area. It was very painful for me to watch the broken, burnt buildings of my city. Schools, universities, residential buildings, military buildings. There is no justification for this level of disregard for civilian life.

At the main railway station in Kharkiv, I spent the whole day trying to get on an evacuation train to Western Ukraine. There were huge crowds of people. Trains at full capacity. Everyone frightened. Children constantly crying. Women with pain in their eyes parting with their men, as they were forbidden to evacuate because of their military age. Everyone was sobbing in fear, understanding that they had to leave their homes behind.

A day and a half later, I arrived in Lviv, a large beautiful city that borders Poland. On the train I did not sleep, so after one day of rest in the wonderful Ukrainian city, I began to look for opportunities to leave Ukraine. I was with my two friends from Lviv, one of them is a scholarship holder of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and studies in Germany, too. So began our new escape plan. It was -10 degrees Celsius outside and it was snowing. We had been waiting in line for eight hours outside to get into the main train station. We were very cold, as well as other people who were waiting in the line, but I was so grateful for volunteers who brought us food and hot drinks and consoled us while we were there. The Ukrainians proved to me that in trouble, we are very united and ready to help in any way we can and we are able to equally feel the pain and feelings of each other. War has shown us that we have only ourselves as the main help and support.

Having finally got into the station, another huge long queue awaited us, where we spent about ten hours. Evacuation trains to Poland did not go on schedule, so people had to simply wait for the information on the digital board about the next train in the needed directions.

I got acquainted with many people, given the time in the queues. There were a lot of women with small children, babies and pets. I felt so sorry for them all. Having about one or two small bags in hands, two to three children around, and never-drying tears in their eyes, overwhelmed and exhausted. I tried to understand their pain. The pain of having your house smashed, loosing someone, and now trying to escape with your survived children and family members from your home country in an uncertain direction for an indefinite future. You are forced to leave your husband, constantly wondering if he is still alive. Thinking about the fate of such families, women with children in those lines, again reminded me of terrible fear. I would call it the fear of helplessness. After all, those mothers were standing in that line. They were standing not for the reason of their own desire to run away. No. They stood to protect their innocent children. In such situations, the entire responsibility for their children is only on them. How painful it is to watch when these mothers do not know what to say to their little, always crying kids who are tired of standing in these evacuation lines, who are cold, who do not eat normally, do not sleep enough, who are slightly or severely injured after the explosions, who want to go home, which no longer exists and, maybe, one of their family members too. So much responsibility and pain in the hearts of these poor mothers.

My heart and mind were torn and still are! But we kept the mental strength to stay strong and sensible; to continue to fight for our life and the lives of our loved ones.

I am very grateful to the Polish people, who still are especially helpful to Ukrainian refugees. Polish soldiers even help babysit the babies while their mothers complete the necessary paperwork after entering the country. It’s so sweet and humane that I want to bow to such people separately many times.

To go from Poland to Bonn, where I’m currently doing my master’s in Economics, I had to spend about two days without sleep, again standing in huge lines and standing on trains. Despite the exhaustion, I was grateful that I had somewhere to go, while many people are going to face huge uncertainty and pain for their kids’ broken childhood.

Getting on the train to Poland was the third most important decision of my life.  And it was the most painful one. After all, I did not leave the country out of my own free will, but I was forced to because some Russian tyrant decided that I should not live peacefully in my own country.

And again I tried to find some answers. It is so unpleasant to realize that this tyrant is supported by about 71% of the Russian population (the data is provided by The All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre). At a time when Ukrainian rescuers were pulling the bodies of dead children out of ruined buildings, bombed by the Russian army, 200,000 Russians were celebrating the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea at the huge Luzhniki Stadium in Russia. While thousands of Ukrainians are being buried in a mass grave in Mariupol every day, Russians are complaining about sanctions and McDonald’s closing. Such support and reaction of the majority of the Russian population indicates that it is not only Putin’s war, but Russians also share the responsibility for all the cruelties that are happening in Ukraine right now. Such a huge Putin’s propaganda made Russian society be not different from him!

At first, it was hard to believe that it would take so long. In the early days, many Ukrainians believed that both Ukrainian and Russian sides, together with world leaders would quickly make the right decisions and this war would end in a couple of days. The Russian army would then leave the territory of our motherland Ukraine and a huge number of people would not die and suffer. But this did not happen of course. It makes no sense to believe that tyrants would resolve these issues through diplomacy. They don’t have values of democracy or human life, being only concerned about their imperial aims. Only one side has made the right decision for the time being and that is the continual fight of the Ukrainian nation as a reply to the unwarranted invasion. This is the reply of the brave and strong Ukrainian army to defend their homeland, this is the reply of strong-willed Ukrainians not to flee, not to surrender, but to help the army and civilians who are being violated by the actions of the occupier in the most dangerous war zones. Everyone is fighting and everyone is on our side. A very powerful network of volunteering has been formed in Ukraine thanks to close relations with neighboring European countries, such as Poland, Slovenia, the Baltic countries, etc. 

At the same time, world leaders and international organizations such as NATO, for example, are also pursuing peace for Ukraine, trying to solve the problem in a more diplomatic way. All European countries, Great Britain and the USA are all worried about the security of their citizens and general wellbeing. But whether they see it or not, right now it is the work of the Ukrainian government, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and brave Ukrainian civilians that are fighting 24/7 for victory and peace.

But while we are fighting for Ukrainian peace and peace of the whole world, many Ukrainian cities are still being bombed and Ukrainian civilians are still being killed. And if we Europeans, representatives of many other countries and Russians, who are not afraid of taking a stand, are united in opposing the war against impudent and inhumane activities of the Russian government and carefree Russians, we will all take care that you won’t have to experience war! What it is for a shell to explode, what it is to lose your loved one, to lose your house, to live in poor conditions (no electricity, water supply, heating, internet, mobile data, water, food, fast medical care). But this is nothing compared to the loss of life, the innocent life of a person who could and wanted to do a lot of good in this world!

Don’t be neutral on this issue, please! Ukrainian people ask for your support, they need your help! In the meantime, when you are thinking and slowing to take quick and courageous measures in response to Russian aggression, the war in Ukraine is going on and people are dying! Go out on demonstrations, donate, become a volunteer in refugee camps, be active on social media, discuss this issue! Please, be with us, show you solidarity, show that we are all against the Russian invasion! Be open, brave and persistent! Only when we are all together, when we are all united, only then we are the most powerful weapon against any intentional evil!

Look around! Putin and his Russian fans have already lost the war! And they lost it from the moment they began to think that Ukrainians can be broken, that our spirit can be undermined.

We are a united and strong nation, as a society of men who, from the very first day of the war, voluntarily filled all national defense points; as a society of citizens who stand in front of tanks and try to stop them with their bare hands and who throw various improvised combustibles at the Russian soldiers and their military vehicles; as a society of women who, nursing crying children, cook food for soldiers or join the army themselves; as a society of high schools and university students who make homemade anti-tank equipment (i.e. ‘hedgehogs’ that can stop the movement of tanks) and other things during workshops classes; as a society of the Ukrainian diaspora in different countries of the world that help Ukrainian refugees or volunteers!

They decided to intimidate us with explosions, thousands of deaths of innocent people, in particular children, the destruction of our economy and institutions. But how delusional is their confidence that we will give up! It seems they have forgotten the Revolution of Dignity when by hundreds of deaths we showed our choice of the democratic future we want to have. It seems they have forgotten that after the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea and supporting the war in Donbas, they encouraged Ukrainians to be much stronger patriots, they made us be more united, persistent, brave, and unbreakable in understanding our national self-identification as Ukrainian, and, moreover, as Ukrainian nationalist!

And now with every bomb that blows up apartment buildings or schools, with every death of an innocent child, with every tear and pain of a woman who loses a soldier husband, daughter or son, with every raped and tortured woman, girl or small child, with every cry of people standing in queues for evacuation trains in an uncertain direction to an uncertain future, we are becoming angrier and stronger! At the same time, we are showing and declaring to the whole world how powerful our country, its army, and citizens are, how powerfully we protect Europeans from a potential THIRD WORLD WAR and Russian imperial intentions, and how much we deserve to be a highly developed European country with EU and NATO membership!

And we will fight till our glorious victory, because we are motivated by the highest values, such as respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and solidarity! They can kill or humiliate us, but they will never break the spirit and dignity of the Ukrainian nation and take power over it.

We feel such great pain, physical and moral, that our souls are torn to shreds! But our courage and the unbreakable spirit of our nation will never let us give up and we will never let thousands of Ukrainian innocent deaths be in vain! We are not cowards, we are fighting with dignity! And our greatest value in this fight is strong independent Ukraine with a successful and prosperous future, which every Ukrainian, made from iron and freedom, deserves to create!

No war! Yes, our glorious victory!

Glory to Ukraine!

Glory to the heroes!

Glory to our nation!

Death to the enemies!

And who are you?!