“We are aware of the terrible things that happened in occupied territory. For example, when Russian soldiers have rounded up all the men who were part of the corresponding Home Guard and executed them in the park.”

On February 23, 2022, I was on a business trip in Nova Kahovka. My daughter was at school and I had left my son with my parents in Nova Majatchka (Kherson Oblast) on February 19. I worked as a medical representative for a pharmaceutical company and on the 23rd of February I met a doctor but all his things were packed when he was getting ready to go to the front, he was stationed at war. I didn’t think there would be a war and joked with him that all this was in vain.

At 04:00 on February 24, 2022, I woke up to my friend calling to say that the Russian army had crossed the border in the town of Tchaplinka. It is about 200 km from Kherson. At 06 in the morning, the Chernobaivka airport exploded. The explosion was so powerful that all the windows in our apartment opened. I didn’t think the war had started and wasn’t ready for it. I had no cash, the car was out of gas. My parents who live in Nova Majatchka were occupied right from the start of the war. I am so grateful to God that I have collected my son from them just before the war started. I was stressed and didn’t know what to do. Should I go away or stay in my apartment in Kherson? Then I decided to move in with my friend who lives in a house with a sheltered basement. I thought it was a safer place for me and the kids. We stayed there for two weeks. About two months we lived in occupied Kherson, we moved five times. We are aware of the terrible things that happened in occupied territory. For example, when Russian soldiers have rounded up all the men who were part of the corresponding Home Guard and executed them in the park. People were afraid, any Ukrainian symbol found by the Russians could cost their lives. All the time there were house searches, people were scared, some disappeared, there was huge psychological pressure and propaganda for “ruski mir”. All this made life unbearable.

I kept thinking that I have to leave the city. It wasn’t that simple as the Russian military randomly shot at civilian cars and the journey could just as easily end in death. There were volunteers who had contact with the civilian population in the city and offered ways out of the city. However, even these roads had around 20 checkpoints with Russian soldiers that you had to pass. These Russian military men ranged from real well-equipped soldiers to conscripts who just stopped cars to search and mess everything up. The phones had to be kept clean as these were also checked at the roadblocks. Even the map from the volunteers had to be memorized and destroyed to avoid problems. We were very scared. We were a column of 300 cars traveling the route the volunteers planned for us. It was a brand new road but already on both sides of the road you could see lots of smashed cars with people who had tried to leave the city and save the lives of their families. We needed to follow the road to the letter because much was already mined. One wrong turn could cost us our lives. After we left for a day we came to Snigorivka and there we were fired upon by GRAD rockets. It was a so-called gray zone, territory that was neither Russian nor Ukrainian, along the side of the road there were huge amounts of burning cars… It was terrible. We were slowly moving forward and then we saw two Ukrainian military men coming, OUR Ukrainian boys. It was pure joy; one and the same country but two different worlds. We survived the trip and left hell behind. In the evening I was with the children in Odessa but there were explosions there too and then I understood that I had to leave the country. In Sweden, I had friends who had constantly offered us to come as they were worried about us. On April 7, we were in Przemysl (Poland), spent the night there, and then volunteers helped us go to Stockholm. I planned to stay two weeks but we have stayed a month, I kept thinking it would end soon and we could go home soon. I have not resigned from my job until 2023. Then it became clear that the war was prolonged and we turned to the Migration Agency, which first placed us in Kramfors. We stayed there for six months and then we were relocated to Härnösand, where the children and I live today. My parents still live in occupied territory. I talk to them from time to time. They tell that Russian military controls everything, they force local people to take Russian passports, ban Ukrainian children from visiting Ukrainian school online, constant searches of houses looking for relatives of Ukrainian military. The houses that people have fled from have now been moved into by Russian soldiers. People are disconnected from the Ukrainian grid and do not know what is happening in the country. They are told that Russia is here forever and that Ukraine has already ceased to exist. A true psychological terror. It hurts very much that my loved ones live in such terrible circumstances. I can’t do anything for them. That hurts very much that we are away from our homeland and cannot live our lives as we want. It hurts a lot that I can’t go to my brother’s grave who died three years ago in an accident. It hurts very much that so many civilians have died just because they tried to save themselves. All this did the war that came to our country on February 24, 2022 and has changed millions of lives forever. There are no families in Ukraine that have not been affected by the war. Some are occupied, some were tortured, some are captured, some were murdered, some have been forcibly deported from the country. Many families are divided because of the war and it is unclear when and if they can be reunited. We believe in our victory! We want our lives and our cities back! We want to come back home and hug our parents in free Ukraine!