Dmitry. On Feb. 24th I was woken up at 7 am by a call from a friend, who told me to get ready. I thought that he was inviting me for a training session and started to refuse, saying, “Who goes to the gym at this hour of the morning?” “It has started! They are attacking!” — he screamed. I began to listen more carefully and could actually hear explosions outside. There was already panic in the street. I stood in lines for an hour to buy water, and another hour to buy groceries. At that point my pregnant wife was on bedrest at the hospital.

Alena. I woke up from the explosions and thought they were fireworks. I went to the hallway and saw a few women in the late stages of pregnancy completely hysterical, so I tried to calm them down. But soon I saw a notification in my work chat, that everyone was called in on duty.

Dmitry. I remember everyone laughing at the announced date for the start of the war (Feb. 16th), and then when the forecasts did not come true, they made even more sarcastic jokes about this topic. For that reason, everyone was shocked on the 24th. Nobody was expecting that. It’s amazing how brainwashed the Russians are: they sincerely believe that it is a small special operation, that the civilian population is not being bombed, etc.

Alena. I am disappointed in some people, who at one time spoke for Ukraine, and who now say that there is no war going on. One of such athletes is the boxer Lilia Durneva, who won silver and bronze medals at the European championships. She currently lives in Moscow. She straight up wrote on her Instagram that Ukrainians are to blame for all this and that it serves them right. And at the same time her new compatriots are hatefully destroying the biggest Russian-speaking city of Ukraine.

Dmitry. We lived next to the Belgorod highway, and I could hear perfectly well when the Russians broke through at Budarky (a village 4 km from the border with Russia - ed.). The explosions were practically next to us, so we moved in with my parents. And before the evacuation I walked 10 km to pick up our stuff. At that point we were without hot water and power for four days, and the shelling was a kilometer away.

Alena. The building next to ours was hit the day after we left. But we do not want to find out what is happening with our apartment, because there is nothing we can do about it. Our parents cannot pick up our things either, since it’s impossible to get there.

Dmitry. I was pretty calm about the whole thing. We got used to the explosions and rarely went down to the basement. Yes, there were constant explosions; the windows would shake; we would be woken up at 5 am by shells exploding and we would just turn over and go back to sleep. But my wife was seven months pregnant, and it was extremely dangerous to stay, especially since the explosions were often very close to us. I went to the supermarket, and when I got back our there was a crimson glow in front of our apartment building: a rocket had hit a private house, and set it ablaze. And there was a shell sticking from the asphalt at the spot where I had walked just a few minutes before.

When the war started, most of the pregnant patients were sent home, and the rest were lowered to the basement, where they spent the whole day. One of the women immediately gave birth there in those unsanitary conditions. And next to her sat moms with newborn babies, I mean 2-3 hours old, and male patients stood nearby. In the end, Alena was sent home too, even without discharge papers. It was clear that if something went wrong she would not be able to get medical help at home.

Three days after the invasion it became impossible to move around the city. Taxi drivers were asking for 7000 hryvnias (approximately $230) for a ride to the railway station. Anyone without a car was locked into their neighborhood, and that’s not even accounting for issues with gasoline supply.

It took us almost two days to get to Lviv on Jewish Agency buses. They gave us shelter and food. The volunteers tried to organize our day to day lives, but it was impossible to go further, given how big the crowds were at the bus station and the railway station.

By some miracle Alena found a minivan heading to Chernivtsy. Nobody announced its departure, and a ticket cost 700 hrn. We are not rich, so we made a deal with the driver: Alena would sit on my lap, and her younger sister (11 years old) would sit on my mother-in-law’s lap, and we made the trip like that. Those five hours were nothing compared to the two days it took us to get to Lviv, when we would stop in the middle of fields for a bathroom break. I don’t know how she made it through that situation, being pregnant and all…

In Chernivtsy we were welcomed by the ‘Aviv” community of conservative Judaism: who gave us food, water, and shelter. Our gratitude knows no bounds.

Alena. And I still would like to return to Kharkiv at some point. I used to have a job and a home there…

Dmitry. I am ethnically Russian, but I was born in Ukraine. I saw how Kharkiv was growing. And today the city is destroyed. Entire blocks of houses in the Saltovka neighborhood have been burned down. Nobody knows how long it would take to rebuild the city and how much that would cost. And I have a family.

I took part in fighting championships, got multiple injuries, spent a year in the hospital. I had fractures of my arms and the bones in my face. I fought to make it to the tournament finale, where the main prize was a car. I made it through five fights, and there was only the final one left. It was scheduled for April 2nd. The cost of the prize was approximately equal to an apartment. And then, bang, the war started.

Where am I going to work? People moved away, even the gym where I worked out, was hit. It was on the ground floor of an apartment building, and a rocket hit it causing the windows to be blasted out. The gym owner is a friend of mine; he let five families move in. And next to the gym there were corpses of civilians lying on the street. It is a residential block. The main street of Ukraine’s former capital is in ruins. Landmark buildings have been blown up. Soon there will be nothing left of Kharkiv. And all this was done by people who came to “liberate” us...

Instead of a post scriptum

In July 2022 Dmitry and Alena welcomed a baby boy. He was born in Berlin…