“I never thought that I would see war with my own eyes”

Mykolaiv – Odesa – Lviv. This is the itinerary 43-year-old Nadiya had to cover together with five children in order to be in a safer place. During their forced trip, they saw everything, Grad MLRSs, cluster bombs, rockets, and the sky red from the flashes...

I was employed. I have five children. We are a big family. I worked as a cook in a kindergarten. On 23 February, a kind of an information storm broke out. Everyone started to talk about the possible invasion. Well, yet no one believed it.

And on 24 February, when the bombing started in the morning, my sister phoned me and said, “Nadiya, get the children ready and leave quickly.” I asked, “But how? Where shall we go?” I did not really understand anything then. When I turned on the TV, I started to understand what it was. And we started to pack up quickly.

Well, we left only on the third day though because we could not find a taxi. There was nothing. There was a huge hustle in the city and on the third day, when we came to our district, there was even a car accident almost before our eyes.

Some people were also leaving. There were some roadblocks there, such big stones, well, and the interval between them was not very wide, so their car ran into a roadblock. There was their whole family in that car, with children and pets. Well, we hardly made our way.

We came to our village, where my parents live, and spent two months there under shelling, under Grad MLRS strikes, and rockets – the children saw it all. At one o’clock in the morning, at three o’clock, at five in the morning, we woke up and ran to the basement. We got up and fled into the basement. Mykolaiv, Halytsynivka village.

The children and our documents. We took only some spare clothes with us to be able to change, and fled. Well, it was simply impossible to take everything with us. And that’s all, we stayed for two months there.

Then, a military man helped us get out of there, helped us leave [through] the Red Cross. It was on Easter. We were able to leave Mykolaiv on Easter.

Well, psychologically, my child... woke up in the middle of the night, “Mum, let’s leave because I don’t want to die here.” Well, the kid is four years old and understands everything. It was certainly terrible that the children saw those scary rockets that flew over the houses.

Those two months we a real horror for us there. Rockets, which I saw with my own eyes. So the village was hit really hard. Everything was destroyed there. There were some cluster bombs too. On Saturday and Sunday – it was like New Year’s fireworks. It was just a real horror.

We stayed in the basements all the time. The children were just kept indoors, isolated from everything, from outer world.

In the last days, when there was an explosion at night… We lived near a military unit and there was a shelling attack on the military unit… There was a shelling attack at night, and a house on the next street was hit. The sky was red... Our windows just… The windows in our neighbour’s house were blown out. We all got up and clearly realized that we needed to quickly call and ask to help us escape from there because it was impossible to stay on there.

There was no evacuation. There was no evacuation from Mykolaiv for some reason. People were leaving on their own. Some of them left on their cars, some people were picked up by someone who came from outside, and some people hired a car. People were leaving, only my children were left in the village. There were no children there, except for my children, who had been staying there for two months. Everyone was taken out. There was not any evacuation organized for those villages, neither for Lupareve, nor for Lymany, nor for Prybuzke. Nobody evacuated anyone from there.

How did we get out? We went to Balabanivka on our bus from Halytsynivka, to a man, Uncle Mykola. He worked as a minibus driver on the 17th bus route. He put us up for the night, as we were told that on Saturday a bus would be leaving, a Red Cross bus. One bus would go to Odesa, and another one would go in the other direction. We spent the night there and at five o’clock in the morning, we got up and walked to Furshet [food store] to get on that bus and leave.

We came to Odesa, and in Odesa, we were met by volunteers and fed. That’s it. We were at the station for some time, while they were writing down all my children’s details from our documents.

Then, literally…, well, I don’t know how many minutes passed, a strong explosion thundered. I thought that the station would be just down... There was such a strong fear that all the people just got up and started running away, running somewhere.

Then an air raid warning siren wailed. It turned out that at the moment when we just sat down on those chairs, a multi-storey building was hit and an explosion followed. A three-month-old baby girl died there. Her father went out to buy some groceries and his entire family was killed in that house.

Then we were sheltered in a monastery in Odesa. We spent the night there and our free of charge train was on the next day, at nine o’clock in the evening. So we spent the night there and at three o’clock in the morning, there was a siren again. Well, we did not run anywhere. We stayed in a room on the fourth floor.

Then, the next day, we spent some more time in the monastery until the evening. After that, we all went to the train station. We boarded the train and departed. That was it.

At three o’clock in the morning, the train shook and bounced badly. It was going so fast. I woke up trying to understand if there was a shooting or something else. That was it. It never happened before to me. Then, at eight o’clock in the morning, we all woke up. We were approaching Lviv. It was between eight and nine o’clock. The train passed by that car tire repair shop, which was then struck by a missile.

We passed by it with a fire-minute difference [before the strike]. If we had stopped at the station, probably... Well, we passed by and three missiles hit behind us. There was a huge explosion and a huge pillar of smoke.

Our train car attendant was very nervous then. He said that if we had been there five minutes later, if we had stopped there, nothing would have been left of the train then. Everything would have been smashed and torn to pieces.

And so we came here. We were met by people who brought us to the administration, registered us and gave us some lodging in lyceum no. 66. My children and I lived there for two weeks. Well, two or maybe a bit more. Up to three weeks or so, until the question of moving here, to the modular houses, was settled.

My mother and father remained at home. My father does not want to leave. It is very difficult to get him out of his house, very difficult. He said, “I am not going anywhere.” If there is a shellfire attack on here, well, what will be, will be, but he will not go.

My mother would go, but she cannot leave my father alone. He has some health problems and she has them too, but she will not go anywhere without my dad, “I cannot leave him. How can I leave him and go myself? And what if, God forbid, a rocket hits?” she said. When cluster bombs and Grad MLRS rockets were flying, the sky was just red-coloured, and the village was red. That was very scary.

I never even imagined that one day I would see this with my own eyes, a real war. This is just creepy. Honestly, I know we will win, but there will still be a lot of bloodshed. Our people will be fighting to the last, but we will win.

Our guys still have a lot to overcome. I hope that Ukraine will prosper, God willing. I hope everyone will be at their homes. I wish we could return, but there is simply nowhere to return. So I would just build my life here, get my children to school, the younger ones to kindergarten, and would find a job. I would live on, just live!