Alina, Kiev/Ivano-Frankivsk

Not so long ago I quit, so I was looking for a new job. I had two interviews scheduled for that day, and then there was an appointment for a massage. It’s so funny now to remember how I thought until the last, maybe nothing will be canceled and the day will still go as planned?

And then the correspondence and phone calls began. News from everywhere. I don’t remember the first day. Then I taped the windows and in the evening hung them with a blanket and a blanket. I didn’t have any normal shelters near my house, so I slept in the shower for two nights (I don’t have a bath). I threw blankets there and slept in a ball. Sirens weren’t screaming in my neighborhood then, but it was still very scary.

This went on for a couple of days, and then a friend took me along with the cats to a village in the Kyiv region, clearly between Bucha and Vasilkov. Every day I woke up, went about my business, and fell asleep to the sounds of explosions and fighter jets flying back and forth. At some point, I started dreaming about them, or did I just hear them through a dream?

After one of the nights when the shelling was particularly intense and it became as bright as day at night, we decided to leave. In the morning I read in the news that rocket fragments fell on a nearby site. It became clear that the security here is imaginary.

Now I am in Ivano-Frankivsk, which is in the west of Ukraine. Everything is calmer here, and the air sirens do not scream every hour, as in Kyiv. We were sheltered by a friend’s relatives. I understand how lucky I am because I have a separate room, hot water, and shops nearby that are full of food. But the first couple of days here I was twitching from any loud sound or a passing car. My mother did not want to leave Kyiv and stayed. Kyiv is being bombed, but everything seems to be calm in her area. Every morning I check what’s going on there and feel ashamed and relieved that I got into some other house.

I was born and lived in Kyiv for all my 29 years. Despite the fact that I feel completely Ukrainian, Russian has always been my main language, I used it to communicate with my loved ones, read books, watched movies. Even when all these events began in the east of my country in 2014, it did not affect my attitude towards the Russian population in any way, there are bad and good people everywhere.

That’s probably changed now. This does not mean that good people in Russia have disappeared, no. But there is this feeling that they have allowed it all. I still don’t hate. But I don’t want to protect anyone anymore