Victoria was born and lived in Kharkiv all her life. The full-scale war caught her with her small child on the eastern outskirts of the city, which came under attack in the first hours of the invasion. Victoria’s father believed that the fighting would not affect civilians. After two weeks of living in the basement of a deserted Kharkiv, they went to the train station to evacuate to Lviv.
The first days
We lived in an apartment with my parents. On February 24, my husband woke me up: “Get up, the war has started”. I went to the window, and everything was burning outside, everything was red and red. It was Saltivka burning, it was about five in the morning. It seemed that the whole town was on fire, but in fact, only the eastern outskirts were burning. Our house is strong, with one-meter walls, so I did not hear the first explosions. But then it got louder and louder.
We looked out the window, all the cars were moving out of Kharkiv towards the Kyiv highway. They were going one way, no one was coming back. My husband said that we should get ready too. But my father thought otherwise: “No, you are imagining things. Where should we go? No one will hit the city.” We wanted to leave, but my dad said we were staying. And we stayed. My father is still of the Soviet era, he is 76 years old and the head of the family. He decided so, and everyone obeyed him.
“I thought that my father knew more, that the Russians would not really hit civilians, would not destroy our homes. We believed him, but he was wrong.”
We have a car, but in winter the ground near the garage froze, and we could not open the gate. So we could not use our car. For several days in a row I was looking for volunteers: it turned out that there were a lot of people who could take us out. However, we stayed.
IN THE BASEMENT
The first few days we spent the night in the apartment. But soon we started going down to the basement and spending whole days there. We lived in an old house, and the basement was designed as a bomb shelter. There were exits to all the entrances, so we could get out in several ways. Our basement seemed quite safe. There was no light, only candles. As night fell, it became very cold, there were drafts everywhere. We brought carpets and tried to make ourselves warm. That’s how we lived.
My parents cooked in the apartment. They went down to the basement only once during the whole time. During the day, we had to go outside all the time.
“When we walked, we could often get under fire. I don’t know whether it was departures or arrivals, but we had to run over the buildings.”
I would leave my baby with my mother, and I would run around looking for food, standing in lines at the stores. Flour quickly disappeared, bread became scarce. To buy something, you had to run around many stores. But it was good that the stores were still open during this period.
Once I had to go to the city center to visit my uncle. That was probably the first time I went to the center and saw the ruins. Because our part of the neighborhood was miraculously unharmed. Then I went with a friend in a car to the Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant area, where I saw burnt cars and destroyed buildings.
In the basement, we talked and thought about what to do next. We started talking to our neighbors a lot, because before we were limited to greetings. We had the Internet, we were always online, watching the shelling. Telegram channels were constantly writing about it. The moods were different. Our neighbor said that he was a shaman and knew that it would end soon. But we no longer doubted that it would be for a long time.
WE HAD TO LEAVE
A little time passed, and my father finally admitted that he was wrong. At that time, my father was not feeling well, he was sick. He said he would not go anywhere. But in the end, my mom persuaded him. It was also hard for my son to endure the basement life, because you can’t explain to a child why we are sitting there in the dark and damp. So we started thinking about how to get out. At first we wanted to go by train, but everyone told us that we would have to ride standing up, so it was not an option. Finally, on March 11, one of our friends drove us to the train station. My parents went first.
“The city was already empty, and there were no crowds at the station. The city had somehow died out, all the people were hiding somewhere or had already left.”
We were all very lucky, because the train was late and stayed in Kharkiv. When my parents were already on the train, we were still packing. But we made it in time. My parents traveled to Lviv for 20 hours in the seats, and we, as a family with a child, were given a separate seat. The train was not full, there were plenty of empty seats. We were going to Lviv to absolutely nowhere. In Lviv, we stayed in a hostel, then with a volunteer who took in IDPs for free.
Author: Ivan Stanislavskyi https://khpg.org/1608812763