- Sarah Rainford
- BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent
Remains of a shoe factory in Dnipro
There is no bombing in the city where I am writing this article. Russian missiles do not fall on houses, air raid sirens do not sound. I wish Ukrainians could say the same. After a month of news from Ukraine, I have come to leave behind a country under appalling attacks that will never end.
I didn’t know what Russian President Vladimir Putin could do.
For years I also worked as a journalist in Russia, observing the poisoning and murder of dissidents, the war in Chechnya and Georgia, the disastrous school raid in the city of Beslan, until I was deported last summer for posing a “security threat”.
However, when I went to kyiv last month, I didn’t think Putin would declare all-out war on Ukraine. The idea of war seemed illogical and disastrous. Everyone I spoke to in Russia and Ukraine agreed.
But on February 24, I woke up to an explosion that proved us all wrong.
When the war started, Nika was so scared that she sat down at her piano, hit the keys as hard as she could and screamed. The 15-year-old girl couldn’t stand the sound of the bombs.
Nika is originally from Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city, but we met her in a small town, in a dark motel full of families who had fled in fear of Russian warplanes.
When we arrived at the motel, the receptionist took us to the canteen and told us to grab a quick bite before the staff came out to go home before the ban started. Those who came out after dark risked being shot.
Nika spent the first week of the war in her aunt’s basement
“Don’t turn on the lights, don’t use too hot water,” he said. When we asked where the nearest bunker was, he showed a spot behind the kitchen.
Nika had been there for a few days, but she didn’t sleep much. He said the first thought that comes to his mind every morning is “Thank God I’m alive”.
“We panicked because we thought our lives were in danger. It was cold and small. We didn’t have much food. It was a very traumatic time,” says Nika, who says she spent the first week of the war at his aunt’s house. basement. “Now I’m afraid of the slightest noise. If someone is clapping, I might cry. I’m starting to shake.”
With the light of her flashlight, Nika shows the photos on her phone. These are photos taken in the park or at home, laughing with friends before the war.
“We have no other wish than to come back,” he said. “We want to know that our families will be alive tomorrow. We want peace.”
Kharkov is only 40 kilometers from the Russian border. Most of the townspeople speak Russian, not Ukrainian, as their mother tongue, and they have relatives across the border. This is probably why Putin thought he would easily enter Kharkov and seize it. It is in Mariupol, Sumi or Kherson. But he was wrong about the atmosphere here.
A billboard insulting Putin in Dnipro
In 2014, the war in eastern Ukraine had transformed the country and served to forge a stronger national identity even among Russian speakers. But now that the occupation is at stake, the “brotherhood” has broken their relationship. People that Putin himself claims to protect are dying.
Driving through the country, now riddled with checkpoints and trenches dug into wheat fields, we saw huge billboards telling Russia or Putin to “get out.”
Some signs on the roads also addressed Russian soldiers directly. “Think of your families. Surrender and survive,” said one.
For most of the first three weeks of the fighting, we were in the town of Dnipro, 200 kilometers south of Kharkov.
While Russia bombed other cities, Dnipro was a relatively safe place. However, on March 11, we woke up to the news that the city center had been hit after the sound of sirens.
In no time we arrived at the shoe factory, which was the target of Russian missiles. A pensioner working as a security guard at the factory died in the attack.
Those who wanted to leave Dnipro ran towards the trains.
Sweeping shards of glass down the stairs of the next apartment, Natasha passed out as she described how scared her son was. She covered her face with her hands and wept.
Speaking in Russian, Natasha wondered why Russia was doing this, saying, “We didn’t want to be saved.”
It’s a phrase I’ve heard very often.
By then the public had started to leave Dnipro. The migration started after the bombing of the university in the center of Kharkiv. Even though they were far from the front line, no one felt safe.
Everyone rushed to the trains to evacuate. There were screaming women, crushed animals, and men trying to hide their tears from their families. I saw a man put his hand on the window of the train that was to take his wife and children and repeat to himself: “Everything will be fine”.
Like other men, he had stayed behind to wait to be called into action.
I learned that leaving Kharkiv was even more difficult when I received a call about a little girl named Polina.
Three-year-old Polina had cancer and lacked medication. His family had to leave Kharkov immediately for treatment to continue, but the city was under heavy shelling and they could not get out.
At first, Polina spent her days lying in the bathroom to protect herself.
During our first video phone conversation with her mother, Kseniya, I also saw the little girl. He was playing in the bathtub, which his mother filled with pillows because he thought it would be safer if a bomb hit the building.
The shelling did not subside, but one day Polina’s family risked everything and rushed to the train station on the other side of town. A few days later, Ksenia sent me a video of the little girl jumping on the trampoline in the garden of their house in Poland.
She says she burst into tears when volunteers came to pick them up at the border. “After four days of escape, we suddenly stopped. I was very upset. I was relieved that the children were safe, but we left our whole lives in Kharkiv,” he said.
“Polina keeps asking about her father, I don’t know what to say.”
In no time we were on our way to Kharkov. Driving north, we passed a 6 kilometer queue coming from the opposite direction. “There are children” was written on the windows of most vehicles in the hope of protection.
We heard explosions at checkpoints around Kharkiv and quickly saw the destruction.
The Kharkov metro has become a refuge for thousands of families fleeing Russian bombings
Next to a half-blown apartment building and the rubble of a shopping mall, people waited for the bus that would take them to another city amid the melting snow. There was no bus schedule, just a rumor that it was coming.
Sports trainer Svitlana said a missile fell less than 50 meters from her house and she didn’t want to risk her life for another minute.
“We haven’t slept in a week, they’re blowing up our houses,” he said, hugging his little dog wrapped in his coat. We could hear explosions while talking.
A stone’s throw away, thousands of people took refuge in the metro station. There were families on the steps of the station, on the platforms and inside the trains. Volunteers brought soup and bread. Many people, young and old, even babies, spent their days lying on the ground under blankets.
They were alive, but the war had left nothing but normal.
On the way home, on the plane, I sat next to a couple who were traveling from kyiv to their daughter in London. They said they drove through Ukraine, then went to Moldova and Romania, and were exhausted.
They were also angry. Speaking their mother tongue, Russian, they explained that their relatives in Russia did not believe what had happened to them.
Putin’s speech
Nikolai said he sent photos of kyiv apartments destroyed by Russian missiles and Mariupol under siege, but his cousin blamed the “Nazi” government in kyiv, saying the photos were fake.
I know many brave Russians were arrested for protesting the war, and some fled.
But a few hours before leaving Ukraine, I watched a video of Vladimir Putin addressing a crowd in a Moscow stadium addressing a crowd of people wearing Z war badges on their chests.
Putin hailed the soldiers he had sent to save Russian speakers from “genocide”.
I thought of Nika, Natasha, Polina and what I had witnessed since February 24, when I woke up to an explosion in Ukraine, and my stomach hurt.