Внутрішня міграція

Donetsk — Kyiv — Kharkiv — Kharkiv Oblast — Ivano-Frankivsk

For eight years, people would ask me: "Why didn't you take your parents out of there?" And I would answer: "They're not a suitcase to take them out." My father had always told me, "If we leave, who's going to stay? But you believe this is Ukraine, don't you? Well, then Ukrainians should live here."

Svitlana Kolodii, 35 years old

Kherson — Lviv

In the chat of the Union of the Owners of Multiple Houses it was written that orcs were getting into the fourth entrance, trying to tear down the door. I thought then: “Well, that’s it, they’re coming after me!” I dressed up and waited. It turned out that the russians got a person from the fifth floor. At that time it reminded me of the events of 1933 that Remarque described: when Germans from the Gestapo arrested people in their apartments.

Kostiantyn Kaposhylin, 38 years old

Pervomaisk (Luhansk region) — Crimea — Russia — Belarus — Kharkiv — Lviv — Chernivtsi — Berehomet (Chernivtsi region)

It was the morning of February 24. And when my wife got a wake-up call from her father, I just felt déjà vu — all the same for the second time.

Aleksandr Chudnovec, 27 years old

Alushta — Kharkiv — Horishni Plavni — Kharkiv

I realized that my wife is almost at the epicentre of the explosions. I rushed to her. At that point, the Grad multiple rocket launcher systems started firing. Tree branches were flying over us. Shells exploded some 50-60 meters away. Shell-shocked by the explosions, birds fall to the ground. I knew then that I was running towards my death.

Dmytro Yurchenko, 27 years old

Holubivka (Luhansk Oblast) — Cherkasy — Kyiv — Cherkasy — Chernivtsi

I was in tenth grade, and my classmates and I were already dreaming of how we would dance the graduation waltz in a year, imagining how we would celebrate the day, and even making a playlist already. And then everything suddenly came to an end because of the war.

Maryna Klimchuk, 24 years old

Kharkiv — Izium — Zalyman village — Kharkiv

That day we saw everything the Russians had done: a burnt-out school, smashed and battered stores, half-destroyed houses with "children" written on them, two entrances to a five-story building levelled to the ground, where 44 bodies were later found under the rubble.

Anastasiia Glazunova and Anton Glazunov, 22 years old

Sloviansk — Kharkiv — Horodenka — Kharkiv

I carried 20 guinea pigs from Sloviansk to Kharkiv. There was no public transport then, the bridges were destroyed. My dad drove us to Barvinkove, and from there a shuttle bus went to Kharkiv. I took a plasma box, made shelves for the pigs and they sat there like sprats — there was no other option. Then they got out, and I had to catch them on the bus.

Vladyslav Myrnyi, 25 years old

Horlivka — Kyiv — Kharkiv — Kremenchuk — Kyiv

It is as if my internal matrix superimposes on both Kharkiv and Horlivka the image of what they were like before the war. That is, I continue to visualize them as normal, undamaged, and war-free.

Staska Padalka, 33 years old

Kharkiv — Ternopill — Romanove Selo (Ternopil region)

It took us a while to adapt to life. The emotional state was a strange one. Work had kept us distracted from all the stress of the war, and we felt a lot of fatigue. And when we arrived and were able to exhale a bit, the stress came back like a spring. Everything that we experienced during the three weeks of volunteering came crashing down, and we could not do anything. Going to a store became incredibly difficult, and speaking to people — even more so.

Kostiantyn Molchanov, 21 years old

Internal migration

coming soon…