Stories from Ukraine

Thousands of refugees have fled Ukraine in the last 6 months. The following is from Elena, a refugee Operation Compassion has been able to help.

My name is Borisova Elena, husband Shapoval Sergey, daughter Borisova Daria. We lived in the city of Izyum (Kharkiv region). On March 7, they broke our apartment, we were just in the apartment in another room. We lived in the basement for a couple of days.

A rocket smashed our apartment. I have photos, I can show. We lived in the basement for two days, then moved to relatives, more or less everything was whole there. Then after that two more times [rockets] flew nearby, right under the entrance. Once again, we just couldn't resist. It was not an option to go through Ukraine, we got out through Russia: Belgorod-Moscow-Peter-Peter-Estonia-Lithuania-Latvia-Poland. We arrived here [Poland] in the middle of May. For more than two months they sat without gas, water, electricity. They cooked borscht on the fire, even fried pancakes, porridge. In general, this is how they survived.

- And in the future, when everything is over, what do you plan to do?

- I don't know, our city is very heavily bombed, it is still occupied. My parents stayed there, very rarely get in touch. They have to go to another city, also occupied, but there is at least some connection there. We can only talk for a minute and a half and the connection is cut off. We simply have nowhere to return to, the apartment is broken, so much money needs to be invested in it to repair it. In addition to this, everything was broken: schools, work; there is no point in just going back. Every day we hear many stories from different families, from different cities. Often people just leave to protect themselves, their children, their loved ones. But there are stories in which people leave because they have nowhere to live, because their apartments have been bombed.

My name is Maria Demenchuk. I have three children, Nikita, Alicia and Polina. Mom is still with us, but she is not at home now. We ourselves are from Zhytomyr. We left the city on February 25, and we left home on February 24 at about 7 in the morning. The first rocket that flew to Ozernoye, I woke up from this, packed my bags, gathered the children. My husband works in Kyiv, we waited until February 25 for him to arrive. We went to Lviv, lived in Lviv for about 2 weeks. Constant alarms, the children were constantly crying, running to the basements, and after another air raid, we went to the railway station, sat down and arrived here.

There was a [evacuation] bus, they paid the money and drove off. On March 1, they sat down in the evening and arrived at night. They met us in Rzeszow at first, looking for a bunch of acquaintances... Basically, either relatives helped to find / rent something, or they [help] themselves. I worked for two months, but now I can't work with children.

My husband stayed in Ukraine. Although we could leave as a large family, he remained there to work.

In Zhytomyr, [it is] anxiety... We were going, we were planning to go home by the end of the summer, but then somehow 24 rockets flew into the Zhytomyr region, there were no victims, but after that we decided that we would stay here a little longer.