WEBVTT - Made with VTT Creator 00:05.546 --> 00:17.356 position:50% align:middle I was born in Sumy. I studied there and graduated from the College of Culture. Then I moved to Kyiv and started dancing in professional groups. I toured a lot. 00:17.356 --> 00:32.221 position:50% align:middle And now I’ve been retired for 7 years and teach children choreography – classical, folk, modern. I teach at the Zmina Art Lyceum in Kyiv, in the Dniprovskyi district. 00:32.221 --> 00:43.323 position:50% align:middle I had a class with young children before that. I finished at about 8 p.m. I came home at 10 p.m., as usual, and went to bed. But at about 5 [in the morning], 00:43.323 --> 00:56.796 position:50% align:middle my family and I heard explosions. Of course, we immediately turned on the news. And for us, of course, it was a shock, because no one believed that this could happen, 00:56.796 --> 01:08.880 position:50% align:middle that in the twenty-first century it could happen at all. I had a little bit of... No, not a little bit, the panic was extreme, because we didn’t know what to do, what to prepare. 01:08.880 --> 01:17.591 position:50% align:middle We were not prepared at all. I have three children and a cat. My husband immediately decided that it would be better to go to Irpin. For some reason, he thought that it was 01:17.591 --> 01:31.066 position:50% align:middle a small town, and it would be quieter there. And there we would decide where we would go. We quickly packed our things. It was about 6 o’clock in the morning, 01:31.066 --> 01:43.962 position:50% align:middle and people were already leaving Kyiv, but we somehow managed to get to Irpin. But when we were on our way there, we saw fighter jets flying towards Hostomel. 01:43.962 --> 02:00.334 position:50% align:middle I said to my husband: “Where are we going? Why are we going?” I already had a premonition. But my husband’s sick mum was in Irpin, and he couldn’t leave her, so we went. 02:00.334 --> 02:12.483 position:50% align:middle In the evening, Hostomel was already captured, and we live not far away, about 3 kilometres away, and it was very audible, there were strong explosions. 02:12.483 --> 02:26.280 position:50% align:middle The children were in shock. In general, I have never experienced such horror in my life. I didn’t think it would happen. It felt like something was exploding 02:26.280 --> 02:41.110 position:50% align:middle and shooting in our garden. Then we decided to move to a place where there was a shelter and moved to my husband’s sister’s house. She lived in a new house, and there was a large, 02:41.110 --> 02:54.783 position:50% align:middle normal basement. We went down there with the children and a mattress, and set up a little bit of a life there. We hardly slept the whole night, of course, because 02:54.783 --> 03:12.234 position:50% align:middle the artillery was firing very loudly at Hostomel. The whole night, most of it... And in the morning we got ready... Fighter jets were already flying almost over the houses, very low. 03:12.234 --> 03:30.162 position:50% align:middle It was such a horror! And in the morning we moved to the shelter, to that basement, and we spent probably 12 days there. We wanted to leave, but a lot of people were 03:30.162 --> 03:45.375 position:50% align:middle coming back because their cars were being smashed, and they just couldn’t leave. In addition, on the second or third day, all the bridges were blown up, and we were a bit trapped. 03:45.375 --> 03:58.784 position:50% align:middle I walked around, to be honest, and did not understand the situation a little bit. I still remember about 3 days, and then everything was like in the dark... Of course, 03:58.784 --> 04:09.049 position:50% align:middle the children tried to sleep a little bit. I hardly slept because there were constant explosions. And they [the russians] were advancing so fast! On the third day, 04:09.049 --> 04:21.350 position:50% align:middle tanks were already driving around the city – in Bucha, in Irpin. It was such a hopeless situation! We didn’t understand... Firstly, my husband’s mum is sick, and secondly, 04:21.350 --> 04:36.231 position:50% align:middle our cat is big, and we can’t leave him. My husband’s mum stayed in her house in Irpin, right next to the frontline, so to speak. There was intense fighting there. 04:36.231 --> 04:44.674 position:50% align:middle They were shooting very hard. And she did not want to leave, no matter how much she was persuaded. And she has a house, so you understand, where the Giraffe is, where... 04:44.674 --> 04:56.461 position:50% align:middle They were just coming in from here, the third house. And by some miracle, it survived. Everything nearby was bombed, but somehow it was not damaged. 04:56.461 --> 05:07.680 position:50% align:middle Of course, the roof was damaged, the windows were damaged. But it didn’t hit there, it hit nearby. We went upstairs to take a quick bath and everything. 05:07.680 --> 05:19.500 position:50% align:middle For example, my husband rarely went down, he was not very afraid. But my daughters and I were afraid, because it was very loud at night, it was scary. 05:19.500 --> 05:31.840 position:50% align:middle You don’t know where it’s going to land and what’s going to happen. We were going upstairs. But there were a lot of people there [in the basement] with us. We all became friends. 05:31.840 --> 05:44.839 position:50% align:middle We even cooked there. There were even people who... For example, a man came. He was fleeing from Bucha. And he, the poor guy, came in completely hungry and without anything. 05:44.839 --> 06:05.443 position:50% align:middle We let him wash, fed him. We let him in. There were a lot of people. When they started flying to Hostomel endlessly, we could hear it, we could see the fires. 06:05.443 --> 06:14.888 position:50% align:middle It was clear that something terrible was happening there. And we still had the Internet, we read everything and understood what was happening around us. 06:14.888 --> 06:25.694 position:50% align:middle We were not in an [information] vacuum. There was a Budmarket store above us, and the owner allowed us to connect to his Internet. And it was very good for us because 06:25.694 --> 06:39.997 position:50% align:middle we could follow all the news, we knew where they [the russians] were going, what was happening. In general, we were lucky, we can say, because it supported us a little bit. 06:39.997 --> 06:50.271 position:50% align:middle There was such mutual assistance. The owner allowed us to connect to the Internet, and we all used the Internet. We collected water in the apartments, we still had some, 06:50.271 --> 07:03.539 position:50% align:middle and we all brought it to the basement. We also cooked quickly in the apartment. Let’s just say... I’ve seen a lot of Mariupol since then, and we still had pretty good conditions. 07:03.539 --> 07:14.887 position:50% align:middle Emotionally, of course, not, but in everyday life, more or less. Everyone was more silent. In fact, everyone was watching the news. 07:14.887 --> 07:35.216 position:50% align:middle Of course, there were some conversations, but there was no crying. Everyone was, you know, kind of alienated. No one understood what to do. There was one man. 07:35.216 --> 07:53.876 position:50% align:middle He is a Chechen and his wife is Tatar, and he was telling... He could calm everyone down a little bit, saying that it was not over yet... Maybe he was doing it so that people would not panic. 07:53.876 --> 08:03.515 position:50% align:middle There were very young children, but I don’t think they understood what was happening at all. They were playing with cars. It even happened that we went out to the playground 08:03.515 --> 08:22.464 position:50% align:middle to play a little near the house. There could be silence for 20 minutes, and then shelling. And we could hear it... That Chechen told us that these were Grads, 08:22.464 --> 08:39.071 position:50% align:middle and these were mortars... The father of the Chechen’s wife was also with us, and he was the set designer of the film Cyborgs, and he also talked about weapons. 08:39.071 --> 09:00.871 position:50% align:middle We talked to him a little bit. He is an older man, and he told us... It landed near our house, on our cellar, let’s say, and completely... But I still had a mother who lived in Irpin. 09:00.871 --> 09:13.661 position:50% align:middle She died before the war, and her house was completely destroyed. This is thanks to the director of our Zmina lyceum, Kateryna Oleksandrivna. When she found out that I was in Irpin, 09:13.661 --> 09:25.229 position:50% align:middle she called me and said: “What are you doing there? Get out of there”. I replied that we couldn’t. And there’s one more thing: on the third day, shrapnel hit my husband’s car, 09:25.229 --> 09:36.123 position:50% align:middle and the engine failed, it was not running. I said: “We cannot leave. I’m afraid to walk, it’s too far.” We had to walk about 7 kilometres to the railway station. 09:36.123 --> 09:48.728 position:50% align:middle She said: “Okay, I’ll find you a volunteer to take you out.” Thanks to Kateryna Oleksandrivna, the girls and I left. Thanks to Kateryna Oleksandrivna, my daughters 09:48.728 --> 10:05.665 position:50% align:middle and I caught the last train. She found us a volunteer car. But my husband and son could not leave. Why? Because only women and children were allowed in, and men were not. 10:05.665 --> 10:13.548 position:50% align:middle And we were only allowed to have a small backpack with us. We could not take any suitcases, any belongings – we could not take anything with us. 10:13.548 --> 10:22.124 position:50% align:middle They stayed in the basement because men were not even allowed on the platform, only women. Kateryna Oleksandrivna told us that, unfortunately, her husband 10:22.124 --> 10:33.591 position:50% align:middle and son had to stay because her son was already an adult at that time, 19 years old. And only minors were allowed in, and men were not allowed in at all. 10:33.591 --> 10:44.561 position:50% align:middle We went out and waited for the car. We were silent. We were just silent. My son stood there, my husband, me and my daughters. We didn’t even know what to say. 10:44.561 --> 10:57.825 position:50% align:middle I was in shock, a big shock. When we were saying goodbye, he hugged me and said: “Take care of the girls”. It was very scary to drive around Irpin in the car. 10:57.825 --> 11:08.936 position:50% align:middle The whole time, the volunteer kept telling us: “Get down and sit like this all the time,” because no one paid attention to the fact that the cross was on the car, that it was the Red Cross. 11:08.936 --> 11:24.639 position:50% align:middle Many people were shot during the evacuation. There were cases when people were shot. The feeling was this: I wish we could get there sooner. 11:24.639 --> 11:40.607 position:50% align:middle You know, every minute felt like an hour, even though it was only about 7 minutes away, not far, but it was a journey like half a lifetime – it seemed very long. 11:40.607 --> 11:55.202 position:50% align:middle When we got to the station, there was a huge crowd on the platform. You cannot imagine! We were standing there and couldn’t even move. Planes were flying all the time, 11:55.202 --> 12:06.520 position:50% align:middle and I had a feeling... I thought: “Oh, my God, we’re standing on an open platform, and no one is stopping them from dropping a bomb right on us”. There was no shelter, nothing. 12:06.520 --> 12:17.158 position:50% align:middle We stood there for about five hours like that. I don’t know what the reasons were, our military probably had their own reasons. I think they were checking the tracks 12:17.158 --> 12:27.245 position:50% align:middle tracks to see if they were mined or not. And we stood like that for 5 hours. For me, the worst thing was standing on the platform for 5 hours and realising that something could 12:27.245 --> 12:39.951 position:50% align:middle hit us at any moment – and we couldn’t run for cover, we couldn’t do anything... There were a lot of people. Thank God that didn’t happen. But then I was standing 12:39.951 --> 12:58.581 position:50% align:middle and praying constantly, I didn’t feel cold, I didn’t feel anything. I was very scared. When the train came, you can’t imagine! People were trying to let small children through, 12:58.581 --> 13:10.406 position:50% align:middle very young children, babies, but still – it was such a crush, such a panic! By some miracle, we got on this train, but we could have not even gotten on at all. 13:10.406 --> 13:24.191 position:50% align:middle And I had a feeling when we arrived... It’s not a long journey, it took us about 20 minutes to get there from Irpin. And when we got off the train, Kateryna Oleksandrivna 13:24.191 --> 13:37.264 position:50% align:middle offered to help us get to Kyiv. But I had a desire... I wanted to leave altogether. So my children and I got on the train, not even knowing where we were going. 13:37.264 --> 13:51.157 position:50% align:middle I didn’t care where we were going, I just wanted to leave. We didn’t ask what kind of train it was. Evacuation trains were leaving Kyiv. The three of us climbed the stairs 13:51.157 --> 14:04.878 position:50% align:middle and we were almost in the vestibule... It took 12 hours to get to Lviv. That’s how we left. When we got on, we asked where the train was going. We were told that it was going to Lviv. 14:04.878 --> 14:24.350 position:50% align:middle I thought: “Oh, to Lviv, good.” And when it left, I felt a sense of relief. I could even feel the stress coming out of me, so to speak. I didn’t care that we were standing in a vestibule, 14:24.350 --> 14:31.717 position:50% align:middle that we had been on our feet for 12 hours. I would have fallen asleep even standing up, to be honest. We hardly slept there. We stayed in Lviv for 9 days, 14:31.717 --> 14:43.486 position:50% align:middle and then we managed to buy bus tickets and went to Krakow, Poland. We had just left and literally the next day the power went out. I was still on the phone with my husband, 14:43.486 --> 14:54.114 position:50% align:middle asking how they were doing, and then they were living without electricity, then without the Internet. When we were already living in Lviv, we had no contact with them for 3 days 14:54.114 --> 15:05.569 position:50% align:middle – neither with my son nor with my husband. And when the electricity was switched off, when almost all the women had left, and a few men remained, my husband realised 15:05.569 --> 15:22.415 position:50% align:middle that they had to leave anyway. They said there was an evacuation, the main thing was to cross the destroyed Irpin bridge. And they had no choice. “I see the goal, I see no obstacles.” 15:22.415 --> 15:37.673 position:50% align:middle So they went to his mother’s house, which was not far away, put her in a wheelbarrow and then left under fire. They went just like that. We were very worried afterwards. 15:37.673 --> 15:50.521 position:50% align:middle We used to call each other, and when the power went out, the connection was lost, no news for 3 days... I had such thoughts... I didn’t know what to think, 15:50.521 --> 16:00.164 position:50% align:middle I didn’t understand what was happening. And when someone from the basement got in touch, I had contact with the person. He said: “They are alive, everything is fine.” 16:00.164 --> 16:14.004 position:50% align:middle As my husband told me, his mother walked very poorly, she was almost unable to walk. And he just – maybe this is bad – broke the glass in the Budmarket 16:14.004 --> 16:23.739 position:50% align:middle store and took a wheelbarrow from there. And they went across the bridge like that – our son with the cat and mother in the wheelbarrow. That’s when all the people... 16:23.739 --> 16:36.591 position:50% align:middle There are photos like that. And even later we saw it on television. Mother was immediately put in an ambulance and taken to our apartment in Kyiv. 16:36.591 --> 16:50.173 position:50% align:middle When we returned to Kyiv three months later... First of all, when we got off the train and stood on the platform, we realised that we were home, and it was incomparable. 16:50.173 --> 17:07.762 position:50% align:middle I have never felt such happiness in my life. You feel like you’re flying with happiness. As they say, butterflies in the tummy. My husband, our son, cat, and our own apartment at last. 17:07.762 --> 17:20.198 position:50% align:middle Intact, thank God. It’s an incredible feeling. There is nothing to compare it with. Three months have passed, but it was still dangerous. These sirens... 17:20.198 --> 17:34.604 position:50% align:middle Firstly, every time the door slammed, I was like this... And the constant sirens – it was terrible. Now we’ve got used to it, but back then I was in a panic. 17:34.604 --> 17:45.233 position:50% align:middle And when something explodes somewhere, you don’t understand what’s happening at all. My husband told me: “Go. You and the children shouldn’t stay here.” 17:45.233 --> 17:56.443 position:50% align:middle Especially since we were given a special visa, they don’t give them to everyone, and we had help getting it. We stayed at home for about a month and then went to Scotland. 17:56.443 --> 18:08.980 position:50% align:middle Again, with the girls, and the boys stayed at home. We arrived and immediately went to the centre where we were distributed. We went to Glasgow on purpose. 18:08.980 --> 18:23.084 position:50% align:middle We were allowed on the train for free. We arrived. Then we got off at the station and were immediately put up in a hotel in the centre. It was beautiful. But you know, 18:23.084 --> 18:32.776 position:50% align:middle there was a feeling that you were not living. As if you had a life on hold. Everything seems to be great, there is some kind of financial assistance, and they fed us, 18:32.776 --> 18:46.763 position:50% align:middle you are in the centre of Glasgow – go, admire, do nothing, sorry. But it’s like you’re suspended between heaven and earth, and you don’t live. In fact, you don’t live. 18:46.763 --> 19:00.045 position:50% align:middle I felt very bad. Maybe if there was a husband and son... There were many families nearby, full, together, and you looked at it all and thought: “I don’t want to, I don’t want to...” 19:00.045 --> 19:12.465 position:50% align:middle I realised that I just couldn’t live there, I just couldn’t. So I decided to come back. Kateryna Oleksandrivna, our director, said: “Why are you sitting there? We have a lot of children. 19:12.465 --> 19:26.242 position:50% align:middle Come back, we need your help. Our lyceum is developing.” And it’s been about a year and a half since I came back, maybe two. We returned to Kyiv, 19:26.242 --> 19:40.749 position:50% align:middle and almost immediately I returned to my job – teaching choreography to children at the Zmina Art Lyceum, where I still work today. My job at the moment is something incredible. 19:40.749 --> 19:50.995 position:50% align:middle First of all, it’s distracting, you don’t think... Of course, there is a war going on, but you are completely immersed in your work. Children don’t let you get discouraged, 19:50.995 --> 20:00.919 position:50% align:middle they give you so many positive emotions! Moreover, we work with quite young children: first, second, third graders. My kids are no older than 9 years old. 20:00.919 --> 20:16.335 position:50% align:middle I won’t say it’s easy, because there are a lot of children, they are very noisy, very lively, very smart. But they inspire me. And somehow time passes. You know, when I was in Scotland, 20:16.335 --> 20:27.836 position:50% align:middle I had a whole day... I was so bored! You sit there and the day drags on and on, and you don’t understand why you have to wake up. You don’t have a job. 20:27.836 --> 20:41.622 position:50% align:middle We lived in a hotel where you don’t even clean, you have no responsibilities at all. A vegetable, in a word. And here you get up, blink, and the day is over. Despite these nights. 20:41.622 --> 20:53.740 position:50% align:middle Everyone in Kyiv, and the whole of Ukraine, understands how we live. But we live in hope. We hope. I cannot say that I believe without hope. 20:53.740 --> 21:06.075 position:50% align:middle We believe very strongly and hope that everything will be fine, that we will survive, that we are strong. Our children are the best. And Ukraine will win.