My name is Olesya, I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine. Sixty-eight days ago I was a movie and TV producer and now I’m a refugee. One of 5.5 million Ukrainians, forced to go abroad. 

 

I’m very lucky to be here. And by here I do not mean Berlin, Germany or Europe. Here means planet Earth. I am lucky to be alive, with my kids and husband, lucky that my brother and his family are alive, and my parents are still in Kyiv and alive. I was in the warzone for only one week where I stayed under the gates of hell while millions of Ukrainians are now inside the hell of the Russian anti-human fascist war. Seven days in Ukraine under bombing, under the invasion of the Russian army. A week without sleep at night and almost without food - I physically couldn’t eat because of the primeval fear that I felt all that terrible week. Because when your normal happy life is interrupted by war - it is really scary. 

 

How did it start for me?

 

When the war began my family was separated. The school vacations had begun, and my husband (he is a Canadian Ukrainian) and our 5-year-old son went to Canada to visit his father. Sophia and I stayed home because we had a lot to do. I mentioned that I’m a movie producer, and we were preparing our new movie, a romantic comedy, to premiere at the cinema on March 1st. And also, as was typical for the last 17 years, I was working on our weekly TV show that is broadcast every Sunday on the biggest TV channel in Ukraine.

 

So on the evening of February 23rd, I was working. Then, Sophia and I were invited to a party for a movie premiere being held by my colleagues. We were at the movie theatre with lots of people, and then at an afterparty having fun. We came home after midnight. At 5:00 in the morning my husband, who at the time was in Canada my son,  woke me up with a phone call and said that the war had started.

 

Right away, like most Ukrainians, we decided to leave the city and we went to my brother’s cottage house in a little village 40km away from Kyiv, It’s close to and similar to Bucha, Irpin, and many other small villages that you’ve now heard of. We thought this would be a safer solution because, at the time, the most terrifying part of the war we could think of was bombs falling on our apartment. But with the recent news and pictures you all must have seen coming from out of Bucha, you see why we were all wrong. 

The family and I only stayed 1 full week in that house, but it was enough for us to have a feel of what hell is like. For the first 3 days, the war still felt unreal, since it hadn’t reached our own household. We spent every minute watching TV and reading the news, terrified of what was happening, unable to accept all of the violence. We were sure, that at any minute now, it would all end, Putin would be declared dead and we could just go back to our normal lives. But on the third day, we found out that Makariv, a village right next to us, had been occupied by the Russians. 

And this is when constant sounds of bombings, and planes flying just above our heads, destroyed our sense of security. For a while, we didn’t have electricity, water or the Internet, meaning we couldn’t even find out what was going on around us. We had some food, but only a limited supply that would last us maybe 2 weeks at most. So, my daughter Sophia and I, along with my brother and his family, just spent the time sitting on the couch in the living room, a place we thought would be safest if a bomb were to land on the house since there was no bomb shelter. My brother has two kids, who are too young to understand the meaning of war but could feel the fear in all of us. Every night, the local authorities would turn off the electricity and internet in the house, and we didn’t know whether it would come back in the morning. And during the night, we couldn’t even sleep, because of the sounds of constant bombing, and our minds wondering whether the next one will land on us. One morning, my brother’s nephew who was also with us, went on the second-floor balcony for a quick smoke, which is when he noticed 3 armed men coming out of the forest right in front of us. We didn’t know whether those were our soldiers or Russians and had no way to find out.

 

But the next nights we started noticing flashlights shining into our windows, which is when the entire situation became even more terrifying. And we realized that life like this was going to be short. We were closed in, incapable of leaving because we didn’t know what was going on outside of the village, we only knew that the one car of people that left to go to the west of Ukraine, was shot up. And this is when I realized, that, actually, food is pretty overrated, and water is very overrated, because literally you don’t need to eat every day, so I didn’t for 4-5 days. I just couldn’t, I was too worried, and it was fine, I didn’t even feel hungry. And I didn’t sleep for a couple of days, because I was constantly worried that a Russian soldier would enter our house, or that a bomb would land on us. We were actually very lucky that no soldiers entered any of the houses in our village during the week as they did in Bucha and Irpin. So, I realized that eating, sleeping and drinking weren’t that important, the most important is to have your loved ones with you and be safe. I also realized that dying isn’t the worst thing that could happen. So we weren’t really scared that a bomb would explode in our building with us inside because that would be instant death. What we were scared of was the violence that the Russian army has been bringing to our homeland. Like the rapes, the tortures, the completely stupid situations with children. I don’t even need to explain what I mean by that because, by now, you all know the stories.