"Overnight, 136 soldiers with sub-machine guns and grenade launchers passed by our house"

Yana Lebiedieva, track and field athlete, silver medallist of the Paralympics in Tokyo, three-time winner of the European Championship, head of the civil society organization the Initiative for the Protection of the Rights of People with Disabilities spent 42 days in occupied Kherson. Her husband, Mykhailo Lebiediev, is a multiple prize-winner in the Ukrainian table tennis championships. Both spouses move on wheelchairs. They remained virtually defenceless in the occupied city. Therefore, they took a risk and left Kherson.

In Kherson, I am the head of a civil society organization that was and still is engaged in the protection of the rights of people with disabilities, and I am also a practicing sportswoman, an active track and field athlete of the National Team of Ukraine. On 24 February, my husband and I woke up to the sounds of some loud explosions at 5 o’clock in the morning, went outside and saw that there was a big cloud of black smoke coming from the side of Chornobayivka airfield. Well, something was on fire; there was a fire caused by incoming missile attacks. Well... we checked our phones, the news feeds, and found out that similar explosions took place in many regions of Ukraine and that a full-scale invasion began. It was creepy. We did not expect it to happen. Let us say, we did not expect it at all...

A week before 24 February, we had the Ukrainian Athletics Championship in Bakhmut, Donetsk region. Before that, we hesitated a little deciding whether to go or not to go to that championship.

However, we still attended the Championship of Ukraine and came back. Everything went well. It was scary on 24 February. We did not know what to do, we did not know how to act in such a situation, especially given the fact that a few days before 24 February, my husband handed in his passport to the passport office.

And there comes 24 February, and he does not have his Ukrainian passport. So the first thing we did was going to the passport office early in the morning. They told us there, “The office is not working, everything is closed.” I said, “No, get your wheelchair ready, go there and knock. What shall we do if you don’t have a passport? We don’t know where we might have to go, where to flee, and what to do.” Thank God, the knocking was heard. More people came up and on 24 February, he still managed to receive a passport with a new photo. On the way back, we stopped by a food store. People were queueing up there. People were buying everything and there were queues near ATMs too. Despite the fact that air warning sirens sounded somewhere and explosions were heard somewhere outside, people were stocking up. There were queues at the fuel stations and it was impossible to re-fuel a car. We collected his passport, bought some food and went back home.

We did not think of going either anywhere abroad or to the non-occupied part of Ukraine. We did not want to. My husband and I attended and joined some peaceful protests. We could not go to the main square in Kherson because it was too far for us to go on wheelchairs, while it was also scary to go there by car. Because anything could happen and we could be left without any support, and it was scary. Every day, my husband and I went out to peaceful protests near our yard, holding the Ukrainian flag. There were still many cars and when people drove by, they honked their car horns. The volunteer movement began to be active under the occupation. Some volunteers helped people with disabilities, others baked some bread... Some people stopped and gave us a loaf of bread, or gave some hot lunches. Well, it was very touching and pleasant, but at the same time, it was scary to think that such situation was possible in 2022, and you really need this – you need this little minimal support.

We were not afraid until a certain moment, when many of our people had already left the city and when russian patrol vehicles began to drive around. They passed through our street transporting some equipment. In the evening, they drove along the street with a large searchlight and shone it into the windows. If somebody had some lights on seen in the windows of their homes, they would direct the searchlight there signalling that lights should be switched off.

Kherson was occupied from 26 February, but it was occupied... well, life still continued in some way, and there were still many people in the city. Let’s say, there were more “our” [pro-Ukrainian] people. We... We have surveillance cameras on our house that are directed onto the street, and on 1 March, more than 130-136 russian soldiers passed by our house. They walked by with sub-machine guns, grenade launchers, and machine guns. They stopped for some time and then went on. From the first day, we prepared an evacuation backpack (a grab bag). There were only our documents inside it. We did not take anything else with us. The turning point where we decided to leave was when...

Moreover, our friends and acquaintances left, some other people with disabilities left, and many volunteers left too. Those who were there in the first weeks, first month, and helped people with disabilities with food and hygiene products, as this matter also became a problem. Everything ran out quickly, prices surged up, and no one made any new deliveries because no humanitarian cargoes were ever allowed into Kherson region. Prices went up. I would not say they doubled but some food items and goods just disappeared. There were long queues of people. Well, if there was some store and something was delivered there. No one yet knew what would be delivered there but people still queued up at the store. One person could get one kilogram or a pack of something. We rarely left our house while staying under the occupation. We asked some of our neighbours to buy us something.

However, as I said, it was quite challenging for them because the queues were hours long and one person could buy only a limited amount of food or non-food items. So... we hoped that volunteers would help us. Well, thank God, we were not starving. There was enough food. Well, it still seemed that no armed hostilities were going on nearby. They were somewhere out there. Yes, there were some incoming attacks on Chornobayivka [airfield]. Yet, there were no incoming artillery attacks on Kherson itself, on the city streets. There was some shellfire in the region, in the suburbs of the city, but not in Kherson itself.

We decided to leave on the 42nd day. We had been under the occupation for 42 days. We did not succeed from the first attempt. After the first try, we returned home because we were… We had to sit in the car under the burning sun for many hours, to wait in a queue, and no one knew if they would pass through because you could spend the night in the field. But... Well, it is very difficult for us to sit in a car all day and all night long, so the first time we got there and stood in the queue for six hours and returned to Kherson then. We made the next attempt to leave a few days later and were able to leave pretty quickly because there were some favourable conditions for that. At that time, the city of Odesa was under a long curfew and those people who wanted to leave in one day did not go, while we went off. We spent the night in Mykolaiv and reached Odesa the next day.

It was scary, for sure, because there were no official “green corridors” as such and there is none to this day. People left based on some information they gathered through some social channels. In Telegram [messenger], people create their own groups and share some information there: how, where, what? And how to act.

When we made our first attempt to leave, they checked our personal belongings. During the second attempt, we were stopped just outside Kherson. They took my husband’s passport, took it somewhere, wrote down some official information from his passport and brought it back. The man was standing next to our car and asked, “Where are you going? And why are you leaving? Is not it good in Kherson? It is better to go to the Crimea, as there is food there.” Well, we did not reply anything, we listened silently. We did not enter into any discussion. Well, he stood there for some time, crumpled the passport in his hand a little and handed it back over. Well, I would not say it was a really scary moment when we had some kind of [interaction] with them... They impose their own opinion, some kind of propaganda, this information of theirs. Further on, they only checked our personal belongings. At some checkpoints, they just waved their hands signalling us to drive through. I took this sports uniform with Ukrainian symbols with me, as well as two Ukrainian flags.

One was clean and the other one was a flag with some signatures on it – the one that travels with me to all international competitions. We packed everything carefully in some dark-coloured plastic bags and put to the bottom of the bag. Thus, they did not look that deep into the bag to find the uniform. Everything remained intact. I myself come from Sumy region, from Okhtyrskyi district. There, from the first days, Okhtyrka town was heavily bombed. My relatives went to the Military Commissariat in order to join the armed forces, and so they have been defending us to this day.

Now I worry about the people who remained in the occupied territories, as it is very difficult for people with disabilities there, especially for those who need some personal hygiene items. Nothing is delivered there and prices for all these items have quadrupled, so we are now looking for some programs, some options, how we could help people either with money or something... in order to support them there in some way. As some people make a decision to leave, while some do not have the money for it. Someone does not have a private car, and someone says,

Many people asked us, “Why have not you gone abroad? Why haven’t you left Ukraine?" We did not want to leave even Kherson from the first days. Those who wanted to go abroad, left in the early days. We did not have such plans, and now we see that our people are like aliens, strangers abroad, in other countries. While here you can be even more needed for your people and can help with something. We feel safer here. It is calm and quiet here. Well, the air alarm sounds from time to time, but we are already used to it, I would say. Although it is wrong to say this, but we’re used to it. Well, barriers. Barriers are a nuisance to an extent because the entrance to the apartment we are renting is not completely adapted. We can neither go out nor enter the entrance door and entrance hall on our own, without external assistance.

For sure, I believe in the victory of Ukraine. I really want to go back home, to our house, to our friends, and to our neighbours. I believe that our Armed Forces will overcome. We would like to have some more efficient support from international organizations, from our international partners, in order for this to happen sooner.