Our nights have become very short lately. The first siren usually rings at around 2 a.m. – a warning of artillery fire or bombs. We’restayinghome.
My wife and I just lie awake and read the news on our cell phones. fall asleep again Wake up and read the news. The last siren usually rings at six o’clock in the morning. Then we get up and I try to reach my friends.
A colleague and good friend of mine is in Melitopol, which is occupied by the Russian army. She sits in her apartment and does not go out. I don’t know how to help her. Occasionally she has reached out on Facebook, but I haven’t been in touch with her for a few days now. A few friends in Kyiv don’t pick up anymore either. I don’t know where they are and how they are doing.
Legend:
In the cities of Ukraine, the lights stay mostly dark at night. This makes it harder to find targets in an air raid.
AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
Escape with obstacles
We left Kyiv on the third day of the war. The journey took a long time, more than a day to Lviv. Thousands of cars were stuck in endless traffic jams. But we have arrived.
A friend of ours did not manage to get on the train to Lviv on the tenth day of the war. He wanted to bring his 96-year-old paralyzed mother out of Kyiv. He took her to the train station, found the right carriage, but despite the ticket, they wouldn’t let her get on.
Legend:
For many Ukrainians, fleeing by train to Europe is the only way to escape the horrors of war.
IMAGO/ZUMA Wire
The train conductors said that the tickets were no longer decisive: Today only mothers with small children are allowed to travel. There are trains from Kyiv to western Ukraine. People get on without tickets. Anyone who makes it into the wagon is considered a passenger. There are seven to eight times more people in each wagon than there are seats.
History repeats itself
Something similar happened in February 1919, when the Bolsheviks stormed Kyiv. At that time they shelled the center of Kyiv, killing everyone they met. Now history is repeating itself. Putin’s troops have almost entirely surrounded Kyiv, but are unable to penetrate.
The city angrily defended itself. The civilian population either hides in their homes, seizes the first opportunity to get away, or prepares to defend the city.
Information that used to seem alien and unnecessary is now important and even vital.
I know about the war now. I now know that an army that attacks loses ten times more soldiers than an army that defends itself. I now know how to make Molotov cocktails – recently foam granulate has been added that sticks to the tank or infantry vehicle when it is ignited and burns longer.
I can now distinguish the sounds of explosions and artillery fire. I didn’t want to know all that. But now information that used to seem alien and unnecessary is becoming important and even vital.
Secret escape routes allow for survival
I instructed my older brother Mischa and his family to leave Kyiv on the phone. They drove in an old Mercedes with his wife’s relatives, a cat and a hamster.
The only route that is relatively safe to get out of Kyiv is through the south-west of the city. But the GPS doesn’t show them. The GPS detects traffic jams and road works, but not Russian tanks and cannons.
Legend:
A column of Russian tanks near Brovary, a city in north-eastern Kiev. The aerial photograph was released on March 10th.
IMAGO / Cover Images
So you navigate like before. My brother first had to go to Obukhiv, then to the next small town, then turn onto an inconspicuous street called Kagarlytsky Lane and go from village to village to the Odessa highway. I can’t reveal more. This is currently the only escape route from Kyiv.
My brother has already arrived with his wife and their relatives, in an abandoned village somewhere between fields, in an old little house without water and toilet. It’s all outside. There is no proper cell phone reception and no internet. Also no television and no radio. On the phone he asks me what is happening. And I tell him every day.
Day-long traffic jams at the border
Other friends of mine are still on the way. In the meantime, not only traffic jams make any escape difficult, but also checkpoints where the Ukrainian military checks the papers and asks: Do you have any weapons?
Anyone who has made it to Europe is almost there. You are absolutely safe there.
There are also such checkpoints in eastern Ukraine, but there are Russian soldiers there who also check the papers and search the cars. Millions of Ukrainians are currently on the run. Even if they stop somewhere for a week or two. Anyone who has made it to Europe is almost there. You are absolutely safe there.
We’re still in Ukraine. It’s forty minutes from where we live now to the border. When there is no traffic jam. But there are traffic jams, the cars are queuing at the border crossings for days.
I’m not sure I’ll find my sense of humor again this time.
Can the whole country flee abroad? A terrible question. I do not think so. Most who leave are city dwellers. The villagers stay. When they hear explosions, they go down to their potato cellars or lie down on the wooden floor in their living room and cover their ears like Nina, our neighbor in Zhytomyr Oblast.
“If I don’t pick up the phone,” she told me yesterday, “I’m crying right now. When I cry, I can’t talk!”
I don’t cry, but the news from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol has often brought tears to my eyes. I’m not crying, I’m getting angrier. I’ve lost my sense of humor, like eight years ago during the Maidan. At that time I found him again at some point, but whether that will also happen this time – I’m not so sure.
Translated from the Russian by Ruth Altenhofer.