'We love our country more than anything, and we will rebuild it.'
On the morning of 24 February, my mum rushed into our hotel room and said the war had started. I couldn’t understand… What war? She said the airports were being destroyed. My sister, who was at home in Ukraine, had to take her child and go to the border. My grandparents and my husband’s parents are also still in Ukraine.
Before this, no one would have ever believed that Russia would start bombing at five in the morning. It sounds like nonsense to even say it. For me, before Russia took a big part of our country [Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014] and made a huge effort to destabilize the region of Donbas, we [Russians and Ukrainians] were like brothers. Now, it’s aggression, it’s full-scale war.
We Ukrainians outside of the country are trying to do what we can to help, we are connecting people through social networks—for example putting someone looking for shelter in Poland in touch with someone who can offer accommodation. We are crowd-funding, and sending money to organizations providing shelter and to the Ukrainian military.
Do I have hope? 100 percent. We love Ukraine, but neither I nor any of my friends were especially patriotic before the war. We live there, we work, we pay taxes. Now? We are 100 percent patriots. Ukrainian people are fighting with their bare hands to protect their country.