24. 02.2022
Day 1.
The explosions were heard in Kyiv’s Troieshchyna district many times, since 5.00 a.m. To this day, I have never thought that this could happen. We pray… Russia attacked us. The war has begun. I learned a new word: PPO (air defense, missile defense). It turns out that from 5 to 7 a.m. I heard our air defense, which repelled Russian missiles. Thank God, Dad and Grandma won’t hear it… They are in a better world.
25.02.2022
Day 2.
It is the war.
I would have never ever imagined myself saying this, but: I am grateful that my dearest father passed in 2020, and he doesn’t witness how his birth country, Russia, is outrageously attacking the place he called motherland, Ukraine.
I would have never ever imagined myself saying this, but: I am grateful that my beloved granny passed in December 2021. This loss is still so fresh and hurting. But she is in the other, better world now. She survived the Nazi occupation in Kyiv during the WW II, and this war again, may have killed her.
My mother, me, and our cat are in Kyiv. Yesterday which seems already as a week ago, I took my documents, money, few things and photos, and a pen drive with all my work for the last 12 years, and came to my mom’s place. I’ve sent the manuscript of my book to my dear friend in Poland just in case. To preserve it. What if we die…?
Last night my mother, me and a cat we’ve inherited from my granny spent in an underground car parking nearby. We have been frozen there. But safe. Many people were there, with children and pets. At 3 a.m. when the another wave of Russian shelling by missiles got started, we’ve heard it so close. Poznyaky area is not far from us. Poor cat was shaking. The dogs were screaming, and kids crying. But! The men were so brave, keeping themselves and calming women and kids. They were staying near the entrance to the parking, together as a chain, ready to face anything, even without any armament.
We went home at 7 a.m. Tried to sleep, but didn’t succeed. I went to walk nearby, and it was such a contrasting experience to see that blue pre-spring sky, sun there high and almost warm, listening to the birds singing and air alert alarms simultaneously. First green grass. Explosions somewhere in the North direction. Men staying near the district administration, calm and strict, saying that they will protect their home. From Russians. That was the first moment during those mad days when I felt tears in my eyes.
We will survive. I pray and hope for that.
I am overwhelmingly grateful for all those friends and colleagues writing me from all over the world, including those brave friends in Russia, who go out and protest against this war. My heart is melting because of the greatest support ever from Poland and Lithuania. Every person proposes to give us a shelter and host us, with cat. That warms my heart. So good to know that there are you, who care. Perhaps, there will be that time again when we would be able again to talk about books read, and fieldwork conducted.
Now we stay in Kyiv. My mother doesn’t want to leave the city categorically, and I am with her.
Thank you for being for us. For helping us. For your prayers and empathy.
I have always been convinced that Love will save every person, and the world. My life started because of love, I live for love and from love.
Sending my love for you.
27.02.2022
Day 4.
Every night there is a shelling in Kyiv, it is under Russin siege, and we don’t sleep. Today, for the first time since the morning of February 24, I was able to fall asleep for as much as 4 hours. The sounds of air alarm sirens, the sounds of Russian shelling, the sounds of our air defense. We learn to distinguish shades of sounds: far or close. The windows glued with paper sticks and covered with cardboard, blankets and pillows. My grandmother said that they did this during World War II, when Kyiv was attacked by Nazis. Did we think we could use great-grandmother and grandmother’s survival strategies? At home, we have a supply of toilet paper, candles and cereals, which my grandmother has made last fall. Due to the fact that she survived the war as a child, she always saved certain foods just in case, for a black day. And here you go. My mother and I think about her and thank God that he took her in December so that she is not living through the war again. What would my great-grandfather say, who fought together with Russians against Nazis near Stalingrad, now that their tanks are in his city where his granddaughter and great granddaughter live? What a blessing that he died in the late 1990s and he didn’t see that shame.
We check friends and colleagues, we read that Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Odesa are under Russian siege. We pray. Here is my grandmother’s old prayer book, here are prayers written by her hand. I miss her tremendously, I cry. Here is the Psalter. I read Psalm 90 and my voice is shaky. Mom repeats after me “Amen, amen, amen.” At night we don’t turn on the lights. We sit with a candle. Only one window across the street has light. The whole building is black. The cat is afraid of loud noises and is shaking when hearing air sirens or explosions. He is hiding or clinging to us. At night we cuddle together, the three of us are not so much afraid to spend the night, when we sleep in one bed. The cat is sleeping between me and mom, and shaking when hearing the sirens. Why did Russian army come to fight with us, with women and cats? I can’t understand anything: why do they obey him, why do they follow the orders of someone who is sitting in a bunker far away, and who doesn’t care at all about them? Why do they come to us, to a foreign country and kill? Are they really so pumped with propaganda? What can’t they think? What about their parents and families? After all, these are the lives of their relatives, and they lose them in a foreign country, on a foreign land? And for what, for what? Once again I think how good it is that daddy is no longer with us, because for him, an ethnic Russian, it would be a double tragedy … May God give us the chance to survive. Each person is originally a light, a spark of divine love, because life is such a priceless, incredible gift. I am so grateful for the incarnation in the human body and for all that life has given me already. For emotions and feelings, for the beauty of nature that I can contemplate. Even now the birds are singing between the sounds of sirens and shelling. Why does the light in people turn into such an abyss of darkness? Why do monsters of greed, chauvinism, and war possess the mind and soul… And all this continues throughout the history. I love the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian Wars. It seems to me that his thoughts and conclusions are, in a certain sense, quite applicable to today.
Please, God, help us survive this. May God grant us all the will to survive this war, to defend Ukraine, our home. And may God grant us here not to be destroyed by the hatred within. God grant that light will be stronger than darkness in every sense.
28.02.2022
Day 5.
The fifth day of the Russian invasion ended for us a strong explosion. It was the strongest explosion ever we’ve heard during these days. It was so close that my mother and me saw a kind of fireworks in the sky, and then it became red for a second. The glass in the windows was shaken. And what was the most horrifying: I felt like something pushed my body, it’s every part. Both inside and outside. We went quickly to the corridor. Our poor cat was terrified by this sound and it’s effect so much that he disappeared immediately somewhere under the coach. He went out long after that. That was Russian rocket, send from the territory of Belarus. It hit one of Kyiv’s neighborhoods not so far from us. I can only imagine, how it could be felt exactly there.
Thankfully, we are fine and safe. I think in their everyday lives, people tend to be so ungrateful for what they have. And we have so much. Until we breathe, are able to see and smell, and listen. We lament and always want more. The growing consumerist culture has made humans so greedy, so wanting to possess. Another person, or more new clothes, or food, or jewelry, or houses and cars, islands, countries. This is endless.
The air alert sirens are so load now. My mother and I are sitting with one candle. We are checking friends, they check us.
In fact, we don’t need so much for happiness or for being grateful. Every war in the history of humanity rated from humans greed and desire to possess. Greek-Persian wars, the Peloponnese wars, the wars Roman empire held, The Crusader’s wars, the Hundred years war, two World Wars… I named just a few. Humans kill the other humans to possess. All these bloody mad days I am reminding myself the John Lennon’s song “Imagine”. My dad, let his memory be blessed, loved it. “No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of men”. So true and so utopić in our world. On the other hand, the common pain and disaster make people united and kind again. We witnessed it during the recent pandemic. But why can’t we be kind in our everyday? To produce live and share love with others. Humans, pets, nature. Utopia, I know. But still…
Another wave of air alert alarms. I remember some stories my grandmother got used to tell me. How she survived a great war being s child. My great grandmother remained in Kyiv with my little granny and her blind stepmother (she was Polish and was afraid to confess her Polishnes even being old and blind, during the war…). My great grandmother also had an elder sister, who remained in Kyiv together with her two kids. Only women with kids. Strong, but still tender and so beautiful. My mother told me that she won’t leave Kyiv anyway: ” Our family has been living here since the end of XIX century, I won’t go anywhere. Our family survived here Nazi occupation, I won’t go anywhere. I will survive this Russian as well”. By the way, my mother is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian of Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian roots. She is also an archaeologist, and very anxious about the fate of archeological sites and collections during this war. She won’t go anywhere. And I am staying with her. And our cat we’ve have inherited from my granny. I don’t know what can force me to leave them in my native Kyiv, and I don’t want to think about it.
Air alert alarms again… Sirens are part of my world now.
We don’t switch on the light since Thursday. We are sitting in the dark, with a candle. Making supper in a candle light, using phone somehow. We knew how to prepare our flat for the possible damage from the air attacks because of my grandmother’s stories about the war period in Kyiv in 1941-1943. We stick up the windows with long paper lines, then put blankets on them. In the room where we sleep, the window is barricaded by pillows, books, clothes, all that. We sleep in the distant corner of the room, closer to the corridor, always ready. The cat always sleeps with us, choosing the safest place between us, under the blanket. He shakes every time we all hear explosions.
Is this the way “Russkiy mir” was supposed to look like?
So many perished, damaged, forced to leave their home, killed… Russia wants to destroy us all.
02.03.2022
Day 7.
The seventh day. It was the first night when I slept 6 hours since 24 February. Strangely, but we sort of “got used” to the sounds of alarm alerts, bombing, airplanes flying so close to the earth. Observing myself and trying to remain an anthropologist even under such unthinkable conditions, I’ve noticed that I am not afraid of all these sounds, as I have been through the first 4-5 days. I start every morning from thanking that we are alive, checking in my friends all over Ukraine, and answering their anxious concerns about how am I and my mother. I end every day praying for my country, my mother and my friends.
Today I was managed to do some yoga for the first time (usually I practice yoga every day, even 20 min), and I couldn’t do the simplest things. My body seemed to be petrified and ached in it’s every muscle and sell. I thought: “What a luxury that I have an opportunity and space to do yoga. What a luxury that my house is preserved. What a gift that I am alive”.
My country is being invaded for the seventh day. Russian army, being outrageously obedient to its bloody generals and a dictator hiding in a bunker, is bombing the whole country. Russian army is shooting and bombing my beautiful Kharkiv, the first capital of Soviet Ukraine (1919-1934), turning it into the ashes. The bombard living areas, kill civilians including children! They are ruining the historical centre of the city. Russian army is fighting the history. They’ve attacked the island of Zmijiny, the famous archeological site where the sanctuary of ancient Greek god Achilles was situated. They burn the fields of Khersonska and Mykolaivska oblasts, where there is a rich cultural layer, and again, many archaeological sites are situated. Yesterday they’ve bombed the TV center in my native Kyiv, and also the Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial, the place where Jews, Roma people, and representatives of Ukrainian underground were exterminated by Nazis during the WW II. Five civilians were perished.
My female friends in Kyiv and Kharkiv, in Kherson and all Kyiv’s suburbs are sitting in the basements, or parkings, or old Soviet bomb shelters with their kids. Some kids are very young. Not every family can go out and run from the war. Those, who managed to run, are becoming refugees and cry for being separated from their families. A friend of mine from Kharkiv is now in Czech Republic, but her sister with a kid is in one of Kharkiv basements, seven days in a row. Her mother and brother are in Zaporizhska oblast, and their little town is suffering because of Russian soldiers who put the fire in the town, and robbed the supermarkets, stealing food and water. “Great” Russian army, seriously? Are they still proud? Of bombing children’s hospital in Kyiv for instance. Children have to be cured in bomb shelters, women are giving birth underground. Russians destroy my country and my people. Will the Western world be still fascinated with “great” Russia?
Yesterday my mom and I have made a trip to the area in Kyiv where I live. Thankfully, it is a left bank. No need to cross the Dnieper river using one of the bridges. So, half way on foot and then suddenly we’ve caught a ghosty bus, almost empty, with a silent driver, who took us to the area close to my place. Troieshchyna is a 550 thousands populated area, it is a huuuge district of Kyiv. And yesterday it met us with silence. My 16-floor house with many sections was silent…No kids in the yard, no old women sitting on the benches and discussing politics and planting flowers. Only long queues to the one opened pharmacy and the grocery.
My flat full of my dad’s books, photos and his archive. That was his place. Should I take Plato, or Aristotle? Or my Teddy bear? Or the earrings my mother gifted me when I’ve graduated from the university? I am taking my laptop. We are collecting all the food I had in the fridge, and all my supplies from the kitchen. I am putting on safe regime the water and electricity. When I will come back? How can I leave home? We were coming back half on foot, half using the same ghost bus with the silent driver. There are checking points on all main roads, and near the administration buildings. Then we’re at home. Now we have food for 10-14 days. We are in better situation then people in Mariupol or Kherson. My heart is bleeding for them.
Russian dictator and his army want to destroy us all here.
But the evil always loose. I have many resemblances with Tolkien’s world now. The evil will be destroyed, I know..But what unbearable price would we pay?….
Lord Have Mercy.
03.03.2022
Day 8.
Today I understood that I’ve got used somehow to the sounds of air alert alarms, explosions, and our air defense systems (PPO). Sometimes it seems to me that I can hear the sound of air alert alarms even when it is silence all around. Evenings with a candle, in darkness, with a cat on mine or mom’s knees.
And my mother saying all day long that I have to leave Kyiv. She started saying me this after Russians bombed Kharkiv. After today’s bombing of Chernihiv, and all the invaders did in Kyiv’s suburbs Irpin and Bucha, my mother has become desperately anxious about me. She won’t go anywhere anyway. She has reasons, her job, she is responsible, I get it. So, she wants me to go to Western Ukraine alone. I protest. Argues all day long.
“Mom, we are two in our family, I don’t want to separate. I love you”
“I love you more, you have to go and save your life”.
Tears from both sides, argues, arguments and contrarguments. Me already feeling guilty and bad. Mom feeling overprotective and telling: “Exactly, we are now two in a family. And you have to safe your life, you are younger, you are the future”. Me already feeling a shame of possible leaving her and a cat.
We went out today, bought some goods. The shops in our area sell everything half-price. The trash bins are empty, and the streets are clean. So the communal services still work, doing their jobs, so essential, in these circumstances. The volunteer spot has been opened in a gym. They organize products supply for the vulnerable groups among them are retired people. They’ve ask people to bring any clothes they have – for the IDP-s from Kharkiv and Kherson, who are temporarily in Kyiv. Many escaped without anything. My mother decides to bring there my grandmother’s coats and some other warm clothes. We are coming back and bring clothes to the volunteers. My granny passed recently, just in December 2021. She would have been happy if her clothes would warm someone. Again, I feel grateful she is in the better world now.
Letters from friends and colleagues literally from all over the world. Support and support again. Me being grateful and touched. Some translations done for the other volunteers who translate the news from Ukraine.
Air alarms alerts, than explosions. For a long time.
Argues with my mother: she wants me to leave alone, I protest. The cat sleeps on my belly.
Let this night be quiet and mercy for all of us.
05.03.2022
Day 9. Part I. Exodus enforced
The night before Friday there were strong explosions, several air alarming alerts. Then we’ve read the news that the Russian army shoot and damaged the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Enerhodar. It is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and among the ten largest in the world. Its explosion would be far worse than the one that occurred in Chornobyl in 1986. This is one of the most traumatic memories for my mother. I was born on 1 June 1985, so at the moment of the Chornobyl disaster, I even didn’t have a full year. My family didn’t know about the disaster for a week, then the information from American Radio station (The Voice of America) was spread among Kyivans. My dad and granny took enormous efforts (three sleepless days in queues) to take tickets on the plane to Mykolaiv, Southern Ukraine, where we went already on 6 May. Mykolaiv now suffers from Russian bombing and tanks. My dad, and my mom with 11-month me on her hands took this trip together. Then my dad had to come back to Kyiv because of a job. But he came back to Mykolaiv in June, and then the whole summer and autumn we spent in archaeological expeditions my dad worked in. We lived in a tent, and then in one village, then in the other. Then my mom lived with me in a village in Southern Ukraine till December 1985. I started making my first steps at the archeological site in Sothern Ukraine. Our family has the experience of being forced to relocate from our native Kyiv. And exactly that experience triggered my mother this time. She was horrified that if the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Enerhodar will explode because of Russian attacks on it, then it must be the end of everything. On Friday morning we quarreled because I wanted us to go together or stay together. But my mother was relentless. She literally pushed me out of home.
My mother’s colleague took me to the right bank of Kyiv, which was a big quest already. There are many bridges across the Dnieper, but only one, the Northern bridge was opened yesterday morning. Checkpoints with the territorial defense unit (Terytorialna oborona, TRO further) organized from a grassroots were everywhere: all main crossroads, near tram lines, near the bridge, on the bridge. Cars are checked, but we weren’t. A traffic jam. We cross the Dnieper. I see the golden domes of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra on the horizon…
The closest underground metro station is Pochayna (former Petrivka), where the huge books trade market is located. The checkpoint again, and the member of TRO asks me, where I am going. Only one metro entrance works. I go down, and I am checked again, my documents are checked. The underground station is full of people. Many have arranged here their temporal housing: mattresses, yoga mats, blankets, pillows, food supply. Mostly women and children. Some people come and wait for the metro train to get to the other areas of Kyiv. We wait for 1,5 hour. The train doesn’t stop at central stations – they are closed and used only as a bomb shelter. Finally, I go out at the station “Olimpijska”, near the large stadium where the Euro-2012 was held. Seems like in the very past life, where I was not even present. The long column of adults with kids, some with dogs, all with the minimum of luggage, head to the railway station. I join them. I feel heartbroken.
Part II. The Central Railway Station
It takes me 20 minutes to get to the Central Railway Station. The square behind it is overcrowded, there is a lot of police there. The soldiers guard the building of the station outside and inside, trying to organize the people’s sea, desperate and anxious… There are a lot of volunteers inside, offering water and some dry ration supplies, also trying to help people orient themselves somehow. There is a schedule of evacuation trains. No other trains, only those who evacuate people. I am overwhelmed by the cacophony of sounds. I am an introvert, and I feel very bad. But the worst was ahead of me. The trains come slower than in the schedule. They are overcrowded and therefore go very slowly. The evacuation train Kyiv-Lviv is announced. And it is impossible to get there. People have been staying since sunset on the platform, and near the entrance to the platform, just to get there. I even don’t try, because people are literally fighting, pushing each other. There are a lot of Roma people, poor, with many little kids. People scream that they may steal what little they have. The elder Roma woman tries to calm the situation, screaming: “We just want to save our kids! We are from Khersonska oblast. We are Gypsies, but we are also Ukrainians” (“My tsygany, ale my tezh Ukraintsi”). Finally, the crowds let them go to the train. I even don’t try. I call my mother and say: “I am not going anywhere, I am coming back home. I can cross the bridge on foot”. She starts crying. And that brokes me because my mother never cries. She is someone stonemade. First time in my life I saw her crying when my Granny passed in December 2021. That was the second time. The train to Kamjanets-Podilskyi is announced. It will arrive West in two hours. I go to the platform and see queues for every coach on this train. People are standing since sunset. But at least I was able to go out to the platform. It was impossible even to reach the platform when going about the train to Lviv. People go abroad, people fled to Poland and Slovakia. Without any hope, I stay in one of the smallest queues. At the end of the second-hour waiting, I am shaking of cold and the stories I’ve heard in this queue. There are women with kids and pregnant women from Northern, Eastern, Southern, and Central Ukraine.
Part III. The Evacuation Train
Finally, the woman in uniform, a conductor (providnytsia) opens the door of the coach. The queue starts worrying. Obviously, we all won’t get there. There are men, accompanying their wives, children, and mothers. They start saying goodbye already. Women cry. There are two female conductors who organize the boarding to the coach. They are very kind, but strict. So, first, they let in pregnant women. The ascent to the coach is rather high, one should take stairs. For those women, who are already on later terms of pregnancy, it is very hard. So, the conductors organize men to take those women in their hands to the coach. After, the breastfeeding women with their babies are let in. Then women with toddlers. One little girl is sitting in her father’s arms, she embraces her dad’s neck and doesn’t want to leave him. When he transfers the child to the conductor, the girl burst into tears, screaming: “Daddy, da-a-a-addy, I won’t go without you”. The man stays firm, but his voice is trembling. He calms his daughter, saying that he will go and protect her and her mother, he has to. He says that bad guys came to Ukraine and are destroying us. He has to go and defend his home. His wife cries. The women in the queue start crying too. “Russians will pay for it. I cursed them all”, says Russian-speaking woman from Sumy. Russian missiles destroyed her house in a suburb of Sumy. Here is the turn of women with teenage kids (before 18). Then elder people – men and women. There is an old man after a stroke in a wheelchair. The entrance to the couch is too narrow, the wheelchair should be folded. There is a woman with dementia. Then, at the last turn, the conductors allow single women without kids and elder relatives to enter. I am among them. It is impossible to get many things on the evacuation train. Only a small backpack. No clothes will fit there. No books. No memorable things from home. All sitting places on the train are occupied. We all stay. Literally, stay in the aisle between the seats. For 8,5 hours. We go from Kyiv under the sounds of explosions. Russians bombed the area of Kyiv, visible from the railway station, Sofiivska Borshchagivka. There is no light allowed on the train, the windows are shadowed. People are mortified. Children cry, women try to calm them. A few men were allowed to enter the train, those who were accompanying women with several kids. There is a beautiful Azeri woman from Mariupol. She is with six (six!) kids, all aged from 2 to 10. The eldest son (10) is holding the youngest sister (2). This woman’s house was ruined by Russian bombing. She is sitting near the place where I’ve got a chance to stay. She is crying, and her brother, who was allowed to accompany her, tries to calm her. Both are nearly my age. They were born in Ukraine, they are Azeri Ukrainians. Their parents came to Ukraine after the First Karabakh War in 1991, and settled there, hoping that the life of their children will be different. Peaceful. “Russians ruined everything”, – says the Azeri man, holding his sister, the mother of six children. After 3 hours of constant staying by back hurts, there is darkness in my eyes, and I feel almost fainting. There is no air in the coach at all. There is a cacophony of all possible sounds. I ask a woman sitting nearby with a teenage girl if she can let me sit for a while. She agrees. The woman is from Donetsk, and she is forced to become an IDP again. In 2014 she left her native Donetsk, and in 2022 she leaves Kyiv, her new home, with her daughter, again. She hates Russians and Russia, saying in Russian that they have destroyed everything. I can hear this phrase many times. I stand up again. Women start offering their places to sit for the other women. Female solidarity grows, and I see how women are exchanging babies food and supplies, warm encouragement, advice on how to organize breastfeeding in these unbearable circumstances, how to calm children, how to explain to them why Russia invaded Ukraine and ruined their everyday life. One woman with a toddler says loudly: “I am a psychologist, I can offer help now. Please, don’t be shy”. Some people come to her, although it is impossible to go through the aisle among other people. The old man falls down. There is a scream: “Is there any doctor here?” One woman runs to the other coach and finds a gynecologist, but yet she is a doctor indeed. She comes to our coach and does what she can, with the restricted medicine she has. She says that the old man should go out to the nearest station because he is close to the heart attack. The nearest station is Vinnytsia. Our train comes to Vinnytsia following the sounds of air alerts. People in our coach are panicking. Then there is an explosion somewhere. Some of the people go out in Vinnytsia. There are already medicians on the platform waiting for the old man with the stretchers. Some people sit in Vinnytsia. They are from Kharkiv, desperate and stressed. Speaking in Russian, they curse Russia and its army for the atrocities they did in Kharkiv. There is also a woman with a little girl from Sums’ka oblast’. They were getting to Vinnytsia for two days, had a small rest at the railway station, and now are going to Chernivtsi. The little girl is called Nadya (means “Hope” in Ukrainian). She is not crying, but she is very angry. She asks everyone: “Why did they do that? Why did they bomb my toys? Why did Russians bomb our house? I want them to give my house back and my toys back!” She pets the big German shepherd dog, lying among people’s legs on the floor in the aisle. The poor dog is from Chernihiv, as his family is. The apartment building they lived in was ruined by Russian missiles. They’ve survived because of hiding in a basement. I also pet the dog. His name is Oskar, and his eyes are full of pain. One of his paws is wounded, and there are spots of blood on a bandage. He is thirsty, but his family has not had any drinking containers with them. The whole coach starts looking for a container. One grandmother gives a little children’s bowl to Oskar, and says: “Please, have it. Hope, at least this may help you”. The dog loudly drinks the water. There are a lot of cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, parrots in boxes, bags; some held cats under their coat, closer to the chest. Cats are frightened to death. A little boy from Bucha, Kyiv’s suburb, cries that he had to leave his fish in an aquarium at home. We were traveling to Chmelnitski for 8,5 hours, although usually, it takes 4,5 hours via train…
Part IV. Khmelnytskyi
Here is the station, dark but full of people. IDP-s. I am an IDP now as well. Who could have thought ever? There are volunteers who meet people, help them to go out, give them food and water, hot drinks, help to get into the station building and find accommodation for a night or two. This grassroots organization is incredibly powerful! My friends are waiting for me. They are the parents of my beloved university friend, who died when we were only 23 years old. I have been in touch with his parent for all these years, coming to see them once or twice per year. They treat me as if I were their own daughter. And now they host me. The night is so silent, that I can’t sleep. I’ve got used to the sounds of explosions, bombing, our air defence systems (PPO), air alert alarms. This new silence is so fearsome. Like there is something to happen. Finally, I fall asleep. My heart is broken. My mother is in Kyiv with a cat, I am in Khmelnytsky. We are separated. I did it because I love her, and I couldn’t stand her crying. There is a war. So many people suffer. Unbearable.
But deep in my heart, I know that this will come to an end. There is already a huge void of blood between us and Russia, between Ukrainians and Russians. I doubt it would ever be cured. I don’t know how I personally will go through it, and when I will recover. But I will do what I can to save my country.
Today my legs are still swollen from hours of standing. I can barely go from a room to a kitchen, so I mostly lie in a bed. But tomorrow I hope to join women in a local school who weave camouflage nets to the front.
Thank you for all your great support and love.
8.03.2022
Day 12
Today there are two years since my dad died. I miss him so much.
Today is my third day in Khmelnytskyi, which is approximately 350 km from Kyiv. I couldn’t sleep my first night here because of the silence: no air alerts, no sounds of bombing, flying airplanes, air defense systems (PPO). I was listening to that silence, and I had a sense that there are air alerts, but nobody hears them, only me. On Saturday morning my host family sliced a piece of bread for breakfast. They even had three types of bread. And I felt tears in my eyes. There was no bread in our area of Kyiv since 24 February. I don’t eat bread in my casual life because of the attempts of keeping fit. But in terms of war all my ancestors’ experiences who went through WW I, Stalin repressions of the 1930-s, Famine, WW II, and its aftermaths became alive in me. I would never expect this from myself, but the absence of bread in the shops and in our kitchen made me feel anxious. So, when I saw three types of bread for a breakfast, I wanted to taste them all, my eyes turned wet, and was so unbearably thankful.
During the last three days, there were a number of air raid alerts in Khmelnytskyi. There were the attempts of Russians to bomb Starokostiantyniv airport which is a military airbase 47 kilometers from Khmelnytskyi. My host family is very much afraid of them. They hide in a bathroom every time and take me with them. Today we’ve even had dinner in a bathroom. I don’t hide when I am alone at home. My mother and I were not hiding in Kyiv as well. We’ve got used to the air alerts and to the explosions to that extent, that it has become the everyday, the casualty. Yesterday Russians bombed the airport in Vinnytsia, nearly 100 kilometers from Khmelnytskyi. The air alert alarms were heard almost all day long. We were outside with one of my friends when the air alerts started to wail. She was terrified and pushed me to go to the nearest basement under a Soviet apartment building. There were people already, one woman with a little dachshund dog, the other with a newborn baby. We were sitting there almost for an hour. One man, who shared the space with us, turned out to be from Kyiv, also from the left bank, as my mom and me. He was taking his family to the relatives in Khmelnytskyi on 28 February, and this journey took them almost 30 hours because of checkpoints everywhere. He had to free their parrot and let him fly in the window. They couldn’t take the bird with them. He tells me this, and I see tears in his eyes. “I am a man, I shouldn’t cry because of a parrot, it’s ridiculous”, he says. “But I wonder if our Yasha will be okay. It is still winter. Will he adjust? I hate this war…” After an hour of sitting in a basement without any fresh air, with many anxious, terrified, and angry people, I felt nausea and went out outside. No way I will go to any basement under any circumstances. For me, all these air alerts in Khmelnytskyi mean almost silence, almost quietness. Life here is also different. More shops are opened mostly groceries. More pharmacies are opened, and there are no long queues for them. Here I was able to buy a hormonal cure for my thyroid gland, which I have to consume daily. It was absent in Kyiv’s pharmacies in our neighborhood.
We’ve been reading the news anxiously. The Russian army is murdering civilians in Ukraine. Women were raped by Russian soldiers in Hostomel. Russian soldiers are doing now the same crimes that the Red Army did in Western Pomerania, Poland, and in Germany at the end of WW II. Volunteers were killed in Hostomel and the other volunteers were shot on the road to Irpin, destroyed by Russians. The XIX century Orthodox church in village Vjazivka in Zhytomyrska oblast was destroyed by Russians. The other church in village Bobryk, near Brovary in Kyivska oblast, was ruined. One more Orthodox church in Malyn, Zhytomyrska oblast was destroyed as well. The Russian navy is bombarding Odesa from the sea. Russian artillery is shooting Mykolaiv, damaging intentionally the living areas. In Zaporizhska oblast Russian soldiers shoot the automobile with two workers of Ukrposhta, who were trying to transfer letters and pensions to people. Russians shoot Kyiv children’s hospital again and again, and children with cancer have to be cured in the underground. Russians bombed a large-scale bakery in Makariv, Kyivska oblast and by this killed 13 civilians. More than 1000 have already been perished. There are nearly 400 children among them.
Khmelnytskyi has become a transit spot for thousands of IDP-s from Northern, Southern, and Eastern Ukraine. Khmelnytskyi is in between Kyiv and Central regions, and Western Ukraine. The latest night 32 evacuation trains came to Khmelnytskyi and went further to L’viv, Ternopil’, Kamjanets’-Podil’skyi. Some people decided to stay here for a short rest or wait for relatives and friends who can host them for a while, or just jumped from an evacuation coach into the unknown, hoping for Lords’ mercy and the other people’s kindness. I have been visiting Khmelnytskyi once or twice per year since 2008 when my university friend died because of an accident. We were very close friends, and his parents, my current host family, became very dear to me. I know Khmelnytskyi quite well, and its railway station has always been nice, small, and almost empty unlike the huge Central railway station in Kyiv. Today I witnessed there hundreds of people sitting, staying, lying, trying to have a short nap in between trains. Dozens of volunteers came in and out, helping the IDP-s, bringing food and water supplies, clothes, blankets, heaters, toys for children. Dozens of people who want to host IDP-s, offering their accommodation. Several doctors are monitoring people at the station, offering their help. Dozens of local women are helping their female sisters to overcome what they are going through because of war. Ukrainian women also fight in this war in their own way: not only being in the army, not only cursing Russian soldiers, or giving them sunflower seeds to grow through their dead bodies on Ukrainian soil. I think that the most important fight we, as women, are holding here, is HEALING. We have the power to heal wounds: we support, we hug, we cook, we cradle our sisters’ children saying the banalest but so important phrases: “I am here for you. You can cry, it’s okay. It will end. Everything will be okay”. My friend’s mother and I baked little pies with mushrooms and potatoes and brought them to a railway station. A train from Kharkiv is expected soon. Perhaps, some Kharkiv’s residents may taste them. I have put a lot of love into my baking.
I didn’t cry in Kyiv. No single day. My body was so petrified, that I couldn’t cry, despite what I wanted. Here I cry a little bit. Every day. First, when I saw three types of bread on a kitchen table. Second, when I saw an opened café where people in the middle of the day were sitting and just drinking coffee. This is something that hasn’t been seen in Kyiv since 24 February. Third, when I came today to the railway station with my pies and saw all these incredible women hugging, encouraging, and helping the other women, who were forced to leave their home nest, saving their children. We will go through the war. Despite this unbearable trauma in its three dimensions: collective, communal, and individual.
My mother seems to feel better without me in Kyiv. No more tears from her, no more anxiety. She is concerned about her institution and its preservation. Our cat is also fine, thank you for asking. I miss them both tremendously. But I am glad that my mother is having relief, knowing that for now, I am relatively far from bombing and shooting.
12.03.2002
Day 17.
This war has grown through me so deeply, that the pain it causes will never leave me. The war is not “it”, it is “she”, because she is so much alive with all her cruelty and morbid.
When we lose someone we truly and deeply love, the grief after their loss is always with us. It becomes softer and perhaps not so sharp as in the first months after the loss. However, it aches far deeply inside of us. I’ve had many losses. Especially in the last two years. Dad and Granny. I survived through it, but I will always lack my beloved people in my life. The only thing that consoles me now is my faith, and my belief that they all are in a world full of light and divine love now. And if I am still here, then I am needed here. So, I just do what I can in these circumstances. For now, I am baking cookies and bread. And trying to write.
The war reveals the best and the worst in every person: the deepest love, empathy, and compassion, and the deepest evil with hatred. We are becoming capable to think, to do, and to feel everything we have never imagined we would be able to experience. We are getting used to the circumstances and sounds which were unimaginable for us before. The sounds of bombing, shelling, explosions, air defense (PPO), and air alert alarms will always be a part of my experience. As all range of feelings I went through in these already 17 days. As all the cruelty I’ve experienced with my country from the Russian invaders. As all kindness and love I witnessed, felt, and was able to share with others those cold days.
My host family is very much engaged in helping IDP-s, who are coming constantly to Khmelnytskyi. With my host mother we bake bread, cookies and pies (everyday different) and bring them to the railway station, where IPD-s, mainly women and children wait until they will be transferred further. Every night Khmelnytskyi accepts from 30 to 40 trains with Ukrainian citizens, running from Northern, Eastern, Southern parts of the country. Some go further, some stay. There are so many volunteers here, mainly female, who take care about supplies. There is always food and water, warm blankets and pillows, toys for kids, even carriages for babies. Yesterday the humanitarian aid from Poland and Bulgaria has arrived. Volunteers give us Polish flour and Bulgarian butter, and ask to bake more sweet cookies, mostly for kids. My host mother takes also some flour to her friend Tetyana, who is constantly baking pies for those who stay temporarily at the railway station. Tetyana has two sons. One of them is already 18, being very young, patriotic, and willing to defend his country. Tetyana cries when she talks about him. In the nearest school many women gather every day and weave camouflage nets to the front. There is no place for us already, no free hands are needed. Women pray, cry and work, work, pray and cry. They are so beautiful.
Mariupol tragedy is widely discussed here, between neighbors, in the all queues I’ve stayed, everywhere. People cry or curse. Or pray, even saying the words of “Otche nash” (the Lord’s Prayer) in the queue in a pharmacy. Nearly 1600 peaceful Mariupol residents were killed by Russian occupation military troops during the 12-day blockade of the city. The maternity and children’s hospital was bombed till ruins. A 6-year old girl died of dehydration. People are afraid that “satana” (devil) may come to their peaceful town. Every day there are air alert alarms. We are sitting in the bathroom or corridor mostly. My host family is afraid, but mostly because of me. They treat me as if I were their own daughter. I don’t want to hide anymore, I am tired of it.
We all had hopes, that the war will “end soon”, that it “won’t last long, but it lasts. Our army is great, our volunteers are incredible, our people are brave, and our women are marvelous. The female solidarity I have witnessed during these two weeks can save us all. Despite the lack of sleep, anxiety and exhaustion. But now I can explicitly understand that Russian government and Russian army desire to destroy all of us here. They all want to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians to ashes. As they ALWAYS wanted. They have the support of the obedient and silent majority (yes, people protest in Russia, but they are so few in comparison to all the dozens of millions who are loyal, or obedient, or indifferent to the tyranny). Trying to reflect on the ongoing war, historians see many parallels with the WW II and the Western European policy of the appeasement of the aggressor. They were silent when Hitler was making friendship with the Soviet Union (The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), when he performed Anschluss of Austria, and UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain greeted Hitler at the beginning of the Bad Godesberg meeting on 24 September 1938, where Hitler demanded annexation of Czech border areas. Then Sudety in Czechoslovakia, then Poland. And the West gave it to Hitler. And then Hitler came to Paris, voilà. And then everyone woke up: „How this could have ever happened?” I can’t but agree with these historical parallels, but what comes to my mind more often, is the Slaughter of Baturyn.
The Slaughter of Baturyn or the Rape of Baturyn (Zakhoplennia Baturyna, Znyshchennia Baturyna) was a part of “punishing” military actions conducted by the Russian Imperial Army against the Ukrainian Hetman Ivan Mazepa and Cossack state. In November 1708, the Russian army headed by Alexander Menshikov, entered the town of Baturyn, defeated the garrison of the citadel, slaughtered the entire civilian population, and burned the city to the ground. Menschikov was merciless. He gave the orders to kill even babies. Russian army murdered between 6,000 and 7,500 civilian inhabitants. Many residents tried to hide in churches, and they were burned by Menshikov’s troops. According to a 2006-2009 archeological excavations in Baturyn, the highest number of civilian casualties was recorded in the Church of the Life Giving Trinity, where the women with children were hiding. Russian army did pretty much the same in Mariupol. I feel heartbroken, devastated and helpless. But I can’t stop asking myself: how, on the whole Earth, they can live with this? How it is possible to have such a burden on their souls?
I don’t know why exactly my people have to go through these forty ordeals, and why my country was chosen to go through this. I am so tired that I even don’t hate Russians anymore. This state doesn’t exist for me anymore. Hatred breeds war. Now we need love, light, mutual understanding, mercy and compassion to stop this war. But how can we develop all these when they continue to murder and destroy? They don’t negotiate, they don’t need any negotiations, and they just kill and kill us. Perhaps, I am a bad Christian, and this is a huge trial for me, and everything I believe in.
I know that the war will be over. I know that we will be the state, even stronger then we were before. I know that Love always wins in the end. And also I know that God works in mysterious ways, which we can’t understand. I still try to believe in the victory of good over evil, and do what I can to make it come closer.
13.03.2022
Day 18.
My host mother and I went to the railway station and brought there our freshly baked cookies. At the station, volunteers were waiting for a separate train of children from orphanages. I am not asking where are they from. I saw a guy about my age, maybe a little older, who coordinated the volunteers and said that we still need to bring sweets and toys for children. Later, at home, I saw his video and realized that he was the mayor of Khmelnytskyi. I was glad that the major is such a young man, being at the station, without security, cameras and PR is engaged in volunteering. At the exit from the station, there were standing a mother and a daughter. The girl said: “Mom, when will we go back to Kharkiv …?” The woman hugged her wearily, saying: “I do not know, but we will return home”. Then the girl asked: “Mom, and when will dad come to us?” The woman simply hugged her kid, and it was clear that she did not have the strength to answer. The girl had a toy in her hands, a plush hippopotamus. She hugged him and said to the toy, chanting, “We’ll be home soon.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. It seems that volunteers approached them and asked something. I also miss Kyiv. And I think that the last thing I did before the war was walk along the banks of the Desenka River, listening to the river’s sounds, embracing how the river was preparing for spring. I was standing under a big willow tree and squinting in the sun, soaking up my whole small and boundless world: the meadow, the cries of seagulls over the river, the first shoots of the first green grass, small stones and river shells … Then I went to the bazaar and bought my first spring flowers, pink tulips. I really like tulips. On the evening of February 23, I sat in my kitchen drinking tea made from thyme collected last summer in the same river meadow, and looking at the delicate tulip petals in a vase. This was the last photo I took before the war that woke me up the next morning. I know it will end. This has already happened in the history of mankind. The wars are over. And I will return home. A girl with a hippopotamus and her mother will return to their father and husband in Kharkiv. We will probably lose something. Hopefully, we won’t lose people. We will be different. But we definitely will be. We will rebuild our common Home, because we carry it in our hearts. Always. Just as I carry a small stone from the bank of the Desenka River near Troieshchyna in Kyiv.
18.03.2022
Day 23.
So many families that have lost everything, including each other, are already all over my country. I only see women and children passing through Khmelnytskyi. Yesterday the city accepted more than 40 trains with internally displaced persons… More than 40 trains per day. And so the railways station does almost every day. Many kids have tags on their chests with full names and phone numbers so they don’t get lost. I remember in C. S. Lewis’s book, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, when the Pevensie kids were leaving London for the evacuation, they had tags on their chests. But Lewis wrote this book from the experience of the Second World War. And I proceed from the experience of the third, which is unfolding in my home. I can’t write anymore, I’ve run out of words in every language I know. I would like to tell everyone: take care of yourself, try to hug each other, if possible. Say more often that you love those you love. So that you don’t regret later that you didn’t have time to say. Ask “How are you…?” more often.
Day 26. 21.03.2022 – Day 29. 24.03.2022
(In transition)
I would have never imagined that the war will start. That was my thought going back to spring 2014. I would have never imagined that the war will be prolonged, and that my native city of Kyiv will be bombed. We all, in Ukraine, would have never imagined all the atrocities and the dimension of slaughter Russians will perform on us.
I am injured. I am injured deeply by every death, every scream of a woman giving birth in a bomb shelter, every orphaned child, every tear of every Ukrainian child. I am wounded by every checkpoint I saw, by every anti-tank hedgehog I met on my way, by every house demolished to ruins, by every homeless and focibly displaced my co-citizen. My heart is bleeding for all those who became trapped, killed, lost and forced to die because of hunger and dehydration in Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Okhtyrka, and Mariupol, the cities I visited, the cities that were beautiful and full of life so recently.
When the war has started I would have never think that it will last long. I was waiting for every new day to hear the news that the war is coming to an end. For now I am speechless and have no words, no tears, no energy for anything. Russia’s “strategy” in war is all for nothing, only destruction, deaths, slaughter. No value for human life. How long will my country suffer these atrocities, only because a maniac with his army decided to restore the Soviet Union, which is impossible and mad?
I could never imagine myself making this unbearably hard choice to leave my country and become a refugee. But I had to make this choice. I am a refugee now. There were a lot of reasons for leaving. A way more to stay. Anyway, being in Khmelnytsky I was not at Home anymore. Yes, I was in Ukraine, and I was helpful doing baking with my host mother, and taking it to the railway station, to bring some warmth and food to internally displaced women and children. But Home is in Kyiv, near the Dnieper river, on the green islands, where I got used to take long walks alone or with friends. And my friends are also dispersed now… Some of them have lost their places of living. What is Home now for all of us? Something we remember? Indeed, WE ARE WHAT WE REMEMBER: events, words, touches, smells, colors, features of landscape. Something we got used to do in terms of our everyday routine? And what if our routine was smashed and ruined… Now I think, that I am is my Home. All I have from the material things is my father’s wrist-watch clock, my grandmother’s khustka, scarf, my mother’s coat and her blessing, a few family pictures I’ve managed to take… That’s all. All books, letters, albums with photos, cloths, hobbies, everything is at my place. And my mother with the cat are in Kyiv. So, I am the embodiment of my Home now.
My host family and I had our last (before the war’s end!) breakfast, my host mother borrowed me some of her clothes, and we went to the railway station. Together with other people-in-transition we were waiting to the closest train heading the West. The was no stable schedule since the war has started. Only evacuation trains were announced, and new railway routes appeared. I was hoping to sit in some train from Eastern, Southern Ukraine or Kyiv to the Western Ukraine. And here comes the train Zaporizhzhia – Lviv. It is overloaded. The conductors allow to come in only few women with children, and some single women, like me. There are people from Mariupol in my coach. There are many children with their terrified mothers. Some women are crying, the others are pale and petrified in their pain. I hear the fragments of broken sentences, told in broken female voices: “…aunt was buried near our house”, “…we let the dog go, we couldn’t feed him anymore”, “…we melted snow and made a fire to cook something”, “…we were sitting in a basement with kids for two weeks”, “…my son had no food for ten days, he is in pain”, “…Russians shoot all cars with people inside…”, “…there was written “children” (“deti”), and still the shoot all of them”. I was going through the train, listening, crying inside of my soul, feeling helpless to change anything…
… All these women are sisters for me. Their pain is my pain too…
Finally, I found a place to sit near the family from Huliajpole, Zaporizhzhs’ka oblast’: an old couple in their mid 70-s, their 40-year old daughter, and her 6-year old son. Their house was destroyed during bombing. They’ve managed to save their lives, hiding in the basement. The old lady is disabled, she can’t move without anybody’s help. Her husband says, that they are married for 50 years already, hiding tears in his eyes. The old lady doesn’t understand on the whole scale what is going on, but she is scared till death. Her husband holds her hand and says softly: “I will never leave you, my little bird. We will always be together”. Their daughter goes to the train’s corridor and cries near the window. Her husband and brother are defending the country now. Her heart is bleeding for them, but also for the beloved dog Fantik, they had to leave near their destroyed house… She prays for all them to survive.
Children of Mariupol are crying in the train. They are suffering stomach pain after all days of hunger and dehydration. And fear. Some of them are vomiting. We are arriving to Lviv, and there are already medical doctors on the platform, waiting for these children. Lviv’s railway station resembles a huge anthill, full of disoriented people, volunteers who are helping, policemen, medical doctors… There is a huge queue for the platforms, where trains depart to Poland. There are three directions: Przemyśl, Chełm, Kraków. I am standing there for almost 4 hours. After I am able to get in to the train to Chełm. This is the third evacuation train during the last time, overloaded by women with children. A woman near me is a mother of three from Marganets, Dnipropetrovs’ka oblast, not far from Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhska oblast, where the nuclear power plant is endangered because of Russian shelling. She wants to come back. Her children left their aquarium with fishes and are anxious how the fishes will survive.
Seven hours north-west, and here we are on the Polish side of border, as refugees. I have been in Poland many times. I have conducted my fieldwork in Eastern Poland. I lived in Warsaw for almost two years. And I would have never thought that history will make me come back to my beautiful sisterland Poland as a refugee. I returned to Warsaw, my cozy and quiet city, where I left once a piece of my heart, as a displaced person. I still hear the air alert sirens here, in all this quietness… They are so deeply in me.
I am not a hero, I am just a woman. I can’t save lives as doctors do, I can’t fight as men do. I even have burnt out because of baking and volunteering. My final step in decision to go was the need to see the doctor and have pills for my thyroid. There is lack of this cure in Ukraine, almost impossible to get. I need to consume it daily. But still, I feel guilty that I left. As perhaps many of us do. No “easy” or “good” choices in these circumstances.
I believe that this war will come to an end one day. We will take all our broken pieces together and come home to those whom we love. We will try to restore our lives and come back to everything we loved. But I know forever that we will never be the same.
We are our Homes now. This is something new to learn.
P.S.
Jeżeli porcelana to wyłącznie taka
Której nie żal pod butem tragarza lub gąsienicą czołgu,
Jeżeli fotel, to niezbyt wygodny, tak aby
Nie było przykro podnieść się i odejść;
Jeżeli odzież, to tyle, ile można unieść w walizce,
Jeżeli książki, to te, które można unieść w pamięci,
Jeżeli plany, to takie, by można o nich zapomnieć
gdy nadejdzie czas następnej przeprowadzki
na inna ulicę, kontynent, etap dziejowy
lub świat
Kto ci powiedział, że wolno się przyzwyczajać?
Kto ci powiedział, że cokolwiek jest na zawsze?
Czy nikt ci nie powiedział, że nie będziesz nigdy
w świecie
czuł się jak u siebie w domu?
Stanisław Barańczak
24.03.2022. The month of war.
I do lack words. There has been a month of war.
“Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, He abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.” Romans 1:28
I have been always thinking that Life is In everything. It is just is. And it’s enough for us just to be meaningfully alive, rejoicing at such a gift with which the Lord has blessed us… Is it enough now?
Prepared for the website “Ukraina Moderna“. Published for the first time. Any reproduction of the text (in whole or in part) is possible only with the consent of the Author and the editors of the “Ukraine Moderna” website. The publication uses illustrations provided by the Author.
Julia Buyskykh – Ph.D., historian and socio-cultural anthropologist affiliated with the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and an NGO the Centre for Applied Anthropology in Kyiv. She had a post-doc at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw (2015 – 2016). She spent the academic year of 2019-2020 at Pennsylvania State University as a Fulbright scholar. Her research interests include lived religion (Christianity) in post-communist Ukraine and Poland, inter-confessional relationships, memory and border studies, Polish-Ukrainian shared history, ethics and empathy in qualitative research.
