“

I woke up on the 24th of February from hearing explosions and seeing the strange lights from my window. From the social media I found out that Russia started the full-scale attack. I could not believe it and felt helpless and vulnerable. I understood that I have to think quickly and make my plan to escape from the city to the border with the EU. I called my mom and told her to pack the emergency suitcase and started packing myself. Since my city Kharkiv is located in the Eastern Ukraine and its region has borders with Russia, it has been under shelling from the first day till now. My mom and our friends’ family with kids relocated to my apartment on the 1st floor, which is safer, and we decided to stay together. We arranged a sleeping place in the basement of our apartment house with other neighbors and bought some food while it was possible. After spending the first day and night in the basement and hearing shelling outside I could not stand it any more, was too scared to die and decided to catch the evacuation train. I tried to persuade my mother to go with me but she didn’t want to and she decided to stay with our friends’ family in my apartment.

I went to the railway station but due to the shelling near the railway station and enormous crowds and jams, I managed to get into a train only by midnight. The travel to Lviv took about 22 hours (it normally takes 10-12 hours), the carriage was overcrowded and stuffy, no place to lie down. The road itself was scary as well because we could see shelling lights in the countryside from the window when reaching Kyiv, and the train had to make several stops in the fields at night.

“In Lviv I tried to find any possible option to get to the border. I tried three times to get into the direct train to Poland but there was always a deadly jam of people. People were screaming, jumping, fighting, pushing, leaving their luggage on the platform. “

The buses to the border were overbooked and the waiting time at the border with Poland was many long hours. After unsuccessful attempts to find any safe and available transport to the border I spent the night in the railway station hall. In the meantime, I lost my suitcase and found it several hours later, but it was rather a foolish story of me. Next morning, I went to my friend’s place to take a nap since I had not slept for three days. Then I went back to the railway station and managed to catch the train to the border with Hungary. After few hours of travel other refugees and me spent the night on the railway border waiting for the train to Hungary, that was the first time in my life I had a panic attack because of the uncontrolled crowd of people and their inhuman behavior. And, finally, I crossed the border with Hungary and then took a train to Vienna to my friend’s place. So, my evacuation took 4 days. My mother went to the house of our relatives in a safe part of Kharkiv and later they went to Hungary by car.

Our apartment house and its yard were shelled three times, some windows have been broken. Kharkiv is being toughly bombed and shelled every single day and night. Our city area is under constant shelling - no building remains untouched. A lot of houses fully destroyed. There are still people in the basement, from time to time we arrange humanitarian help to the house. Many people do not escape the city because they either cannot manage it physically or have no place to go. Intensely inhabited cities under the constant shelling, like Kharkiv and its region, it is very difficult to deliver food and medicine to the people in need. All help lies on volunteers and rescuers. And due to some reasons, the humanitarian help from EU does not always reach the tense regions of Ukraine.

 “