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Those who flee also embark on a difficult and long emotional journey. The 26-year-old Ukrainian Olga Miroshnik tells about this.
For three nights, Olga and her boyfriend Ruslan hide in a parking garage from the Russian bombs on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Then it is clear to them that they have to flee.
They first flee by train to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. There they part ways. Ruslan, as a young man, has to stay in Ukraine. Olga travels on to Warsaw, where she stays with a cousin.
From the day she arrived in Warsaw, Olga and her family have shared the many conflicting feelings they have endured since the Russian attack in late February.
Fear came with the Russian bombs
The evening before the Russian attack, Olga is at the cinema with her boyfriend Ruslan in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. It’s the last evening of her old life. But they don’t know that. Only days later, the two are sitting in a crowded train heading west. Marked by fear, Olga arrives in the Polish capital of Warsaw at the beginning of March. On this day we meet Olga for the first time. And even then it is clear that her life will split into a “before the war” and an “after the war”.
After the flight, I even dare to become a mother.
Feelings of guilt after the escape
After two weeks in the Polish capital, Olga still winces at every loud noise. The fear from the nights of bombing in Kharkiv is fading only slowly. And what is spreading in Olga is also difficult to bear: the concern for her family and her boyfriend Ruslan, who as a young man is not allowed to leave Ukraine, and the guilt that she is safe while others in Ukraine are dealing with the are threatened with death.
The friend stays behind
The mass exodus of women, children and the elderly is also a burden on the men who have to stay in Ukraine. Olga’s friend, 29-year-old computer scientist Ruslan Sapon, talks about his loneliness, about how terrible it is when the bomb alert becomes a normal part of life. And he talks about his hate, which frightens himself.
I never thought I could wish death on other people.
Trying to build a second home
After two months, Olga has her “own little world” again. Ruslan, her boyfriend, was allowed to leave Ukraine because he is diabetic and not fit for military service. And Olga’s mother, Tatyana, was practically forced to flee by her husband. With a lot of effort, Olga found a small apartment for all of them in Warsaw. There the three are united in their fear for family, friends and their homeland. And yet they experience the escape very differently.
When you make a new home for yourself, you distance yourself from home.
“Not speaking Russian is more patriotic”
After four months, Olga settled in Warsaw: she found an apartment, landed orders, and is learning Polish. Your life is good from the outside. Inwardly, things look different: She suffers from helplessness in the face of the war in Ukraine. In order to distance herself from the Russian attacker, she has given up part of her mother tongue. She is now trying to speak pure Ukrainian instead of a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian as before.
