'People from my country came to kill me': what Russians living in Ukraine say about the war

Stories of five Russians who left for Ukraine at different times and for whom it has become home. There they, despite the war, remain until now. "Medusafound out what happens to them during this war.

Photo: Shutterstock

The war in Ukraine has been going on for the sixth day. The decision to conduct a "special military operation" Vladimir Putin explained, among other things, by the desire to bring to justice "those who committed numerous, bloody crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation."

"Get up, war!" - the first thing Daria heard on the morning of February 24th. Her husband pulled her leg, trying to wake her up. She couldn't believe what was happening.

Shortly before this, Vladimir Putin addressed the Russians, announcing the start of a "special military operation" in Ukraine. Its goal, Putin argued, was “to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years,” including Russian citizens.

After that, rocket attacks began to be launched on various cities of Ukraine: Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Sumy, Dnipro, Nikolaev. The Russian Defense Ministry stated that their target was Ukrainian air bases. But civilian objects, as well as civilians, also suffered from the bombing. Russian troops entered Ukraine and began to advance towards Kiev.

According to the UN, at least 102 civilians, including seven children, were killed in the five days of the war. But the number of victims could be much higher, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
“When you live in the world and they tell you “tomorrow there will be a war”, you cannot realize this until it happens. Until they really start bombing you, ”says Daria.

Four years ago, Daria, who worked as a chef in Moscow, was offered to come to Kyiv for a couple of months to make a menu for one institution. “I just left my job and didn’t know what I wanted at all. I didn’t feel free—in my words, in my relationships, in my work, in nothing,” she says. “I decided to take this project and then decide what to do next.”

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But the first two months were followed by several more, and at the end of 2017 - the beginning of 2018, Daria packed all her things in Moscow, told her then-boyfriend: “I’ll probably be back in a couple of months,” and didn’t return.

“I started another life, from which I got high. I didn't need a therapist. I was happy, which I couldn’t say in Moscow,” she explains. Soon Daria met her future husband Ilya, a citizen of Ukraine. A year and a half ago, their son was born.

On the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Daria was going to the spa. But instead, at seven in the morning, she and her son stood in line at the pharmacy. She managed to buy the necessary medicines only after four and a half hours. Her husband at this time ran to the store for food and water. Then the couple moved to their son's nanny, who lives alone. We spent about three more hours at the gas station. “We are probably the last ones who managed to refuel with a full tank,” suggests Daria. “I don’t think there is gasoline anywhere at all today.”

According to Daria, messages began to come to the phones with an appeal to hide in a bomb shelter. The largest of them is the Kiev metro. But people also hide from missile attacks in the basements and underground parking lots of houses. Daria went to one of these parking lots with her family, a nanny and two dogs.

“Parking, full of cars, icy, no ventilation, no water, no toilet,” she describes. - The dogs started to panic, the son was also stressed. We have conscious parenting, partnership education. And then you run away from home, you have cold milk, which you can’t even warm up, because there are no outlets. We sat there for six hours."

We decided to spend the night at home. We collected bags with the most necessary things, sealed all the windows in the apartment, equipped a nursery in the bathroom and went to sleep next to it. Daria couldn't sleep. She sat on the floor and wrote a post on Instagram, in which she talked about her love for Ukraine. And at that moment she remembered a dream she had a year earlier.

“I’m sitting at the door, writing a post, and then our window explodes,” Daria retells the dream. “I was covered, I woke everyone up and asked them to go to the shelter,” she says. “Everyone, of course, said that I ******** [not myself], but we went to the shelter.” A few hours later, Daria, lying on the cold floor of the parking lot, heard explosions.

When the rocket attack broke off, the family decided to leave Kyiv. They gave warm clothes to the people who remained in the bomb shelter. “The track was completely stopped. Every three kilometers we saw broken cars. Someone had an accident, and someone was fired upon,” says Daria. “The roads were destroyed after tanks drove over them, two Russian fighter jets flew overhead, rockets exploded. It's terribly awful."

The village near which Daria stopped with her family came under fire. And they were forced to continue on their way; The journey took almost a day. Now Daria with her husband, son, his nanny and dogs are in a relatively safe place in Ukraine - where exactly, she does not want to disclose.

“I never thought I would survive this. Bombs are scary. A huge shock wave that flies and destroys everything, says Daria. - It's scary that just two weeks ago you had a great life and you can lose it. You already lost her, in fact, she will not be the same. The very fact that you run away, leaving everything that you have acquired, leaving your son's favorite toys and buying him some garbage at a gas station ... Leaving everything that was home for you, comfort, your life. I realized this when our house was left out of walking distance.”

After Darya left Kyiv on February 25, the area where she lived came under fire. Whether the shells hit Daria's house, she does not know.

“It was shocking that people can rejoice in war”

“I go out for a smoke and I hear explosions and sirens,” Yulia says. A few days ago, she lived in Kyiv, but after the Russian attack on Ukraine, she and her friends left for the suburbs.

“My emergency suitcase is small,” Yulia says and lists: “Part of documents, warm socks, sweatshirts, three face creams (ha ha, haven’t used it yet), chargers, laptop, power bank, prescriptions for medicines (I have bipolar), reader, some other little things.

“I wanted to take a pillow in the form of a unicorn, which my friend gave me,” the girl adds. “But it didn’t fit in the bag.”
During these days, Yulia says, she managed to get used to the sounds of explosions and began to be afraid of airplanes. Now the girl goes to bed only in clothes, having previously collected the necessary things for a bomb shelter - in case of shelling.

Yulia says that she has always wanted to live in Ukraine. She was born in Arkhangelsk, but her paternal grandfather is Ukrainian. In 2014, when an armed conflict began in eastern Ukraine and Russia annexed Crimea, Yulia began to go to protests more often and think more about emigration.

“I was shocked that people who have been walking around all this time can rejoice at the war and the seizure of foreign territories. And not understand the consequences,” she says.

After moving to Kyiv, Yulia admits, she thought about leaving somewhere else - there would be no problems with work, she has a small startup in St. Petersburg. But the more time passed, the less this desire became. “Kyiv is the best city I have ever lived in,” Yulia explains. “I consider myself part of Ukraine.”

“Here, food grows on trees - it shocked me, especially when the first time an apricot fell on my head while I was waiting for friends at the house. There are good and open people here, the concept of “friend” is perhaps wider than in the Russian Federation,” she says about the advantages of the country. “After the start of the war [in Donbass in 2014], they called me “bead” and other affectionate words in stores, for example. Everything is somehow very close-knit and comfortable.”

In Kyiv, Julia lived near Kurenevsky Park - there she bought an apartment. This park, the girl says, is her favorite place in Ukraine.

“I walked in it with my dog. Cherry trees were planted there, green lawns in winter, a flat fountain, near which children run in the summer (well, I, too, what’s here), - Yulia describes. “There were corpses in front of this park yesterday.”

"I don't know where the rocket will fly"

How many Russians are now on the territory of Ukraine is not known for certain. The website of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine provides information only on the number of migrants from Russia for 2019 and 2020 - 5304 and 3691 people.

The Russian authorities did not offer evacuation assistance to any of Meduza's interlocutors with Ukrainian residence permits. This assistance, apparently, was not received by the Russians without a residence permit, who ended up in Ukraine at the time of the “special military operation” – we know of several such examples.

Some Russians were left without foreign passports, says lawyer Nikolai from Odessa. “There are Russian citizens who submitted documents for a new passport at the Russian consulate in Odessa at the end of December. They were supposed to be given passports in late February or early March, but on the 23rd [February] the consulate packed up and left. And they didn’t get these passports,” says Nikolai. - For example, if I want, I can now evacuate to Moldova. How they can do it, I don't know."

Nikolai moved to Odessa from the Belgorod region of Russia in 2010, immediately after graduating from university. He explains that as a child he fell in love with this city when he came to visit relatives. “Odessa is a little Peter. They were built almost at the same time, very similar architecture. Only here the climate is much better, there is a warm Black Sea in summer, cheerful people.”

On February 24, Nikolay woke up in his apartment, located near the airport, from the sound of explosions. “I wrote to friends, acquaintances. They confirmed that explosions are being heard throughout the city,” he says calmly. And he explains: “We have already discussed everything with each other, so for us this is already commonplace. Now there was also an explosion, literally 15 minutes ago the sirens were blaring.”

Nicholas assumed that Russia would attack Ukraine, but he did not prepare for war. “I’m not even ready today, I don’t have any alarm case,” he admits.

The city, according to him, was empty, many left. But Nikolai sees no point in leaving. He spends most of his time at home - only sometimes he goes to the store and "breathe the fresh air." Watch news and read telegram channels.
“I myself am a low-emotional person, so I take what is happening for granted, as a terrible period of my life. My friends and I chat, support each other, throw some news, memes - and so we entertain ourselves so as not to constantly cheat on some kind of negativity, ”says Nikolai.

But despite outward calmness, he does not feel safe: “I don’t know when the rocket will arrive, where it will fly, and whether it will fly at all.”

“My grandmother said that Putin did the right thing when he started bombing Ukraine”

“At the moment when I moved, despite some kind of economic downturn, I felt a little easier in Ukraine. I can’t explain what it was expressed in, but I felt some kind of lightness and freedom, ”says Nikolai. And he adds that even today, despite Russian citizenship, for example, he can publicly and without consequences criticize the Ukrainian authorities.

“It breathes more freely here,” Yulia agrees with Nikolai. - And people are more responsible for themselves, or something. For example, villages in the regions look completely different than in the Russian Federation, and this is not because of the authorities (or not only because of them). Residents do it themselves: they ennoble their houses and plots. In Russia, everyone seems to be waiting for someone to make their home, their future, their democracy for them.”

"It's such a spirit! I just realized that these are my people who are not afraid to say anything. There is freedom of speech here - this is probably the most valuable thing, ”Daria believes.

Other interlocutors also spoke about the feeling of freedom after moving to Ukraine. Most of them do not speak Ukrainian, but have not faced any serious problems because of this - or Russian citizenship -.
But the Russian invasion changed everything. Now Russians (as well as Belarusians) cannot withdraw money from Ukrainian bank accounts - this is the decision of the National Bank of Ukraine. Three out of five interlocutors have already faced the blocking of their cards.
“The hate level is rising every second,” says Daria and tells a story that happened to her in a grocery store after leaving Kyiv.

“Now I try to speak Ukrainian, but I don’t know it well, and I have an accent. The woman heard, came up, pushed me and told me to say “fuck”. I say. She takes out a knife: “You are an occupier! I will stab you and not blink an eye." My husband decided everything, but they took away our phones, checked our correspondence, deleted the photos that I took on the way to send to my mother.

Now Daria tries not to leave the house. “I can understand people. Their husbands are dying at the hands of our people. It is very difficult for me to condemn this aggression,” she says. “But at the same time, I have a residence permit, I have every right to live in this country, I pay taxes, my son is Ukrainian, my husband is Ukrainian.”

Daria also feels negative from some relatives living in Russia. “I am between two fires,” she says. - Mom already understands what is really happening, because I send her photos, which I can, up-to-date information. But she, for example, sends me from Russian public pages that Ukrainians are shooting at Ukrainians, that prisoners have been released in Kyiv and that they are being given weapons. It's just kind of surreal."

“And my grandmother,” Daria continues, “said that Putin did the right thing by starting to bomb Ukraine ... I replied that I would not call her again in the near future.”

"Where to go next?"

“I haven’t figured out how I feel here now with my [Russian] passport. I’ll think about it later,” Yulia says. But she most likely won’t come to Russia again: “And I’m very sorry, because my family is there, my grandmother without a passport. I don’t know what exactly I will do, but I will probably do it in Ukraine.”
Alexander doesn’t understand what to do next either. “I don’t want to leave Kyiv. And I think that I won’t do this until the last minute. “I’ve lived here too long, and I have too much here for me to turn around and say that I don’t need it all,” he explains. - Not because these are some kind of material values. But because: “Where should I run next?”

Alexander is originally from Perm, but for work - he is a cook - he often moved a lot. Lived, for example, in Moscow and the United States. And he moved to Kyiv at the end of 2013.

“I was invited [for work] to go to Ukraine for six months,” Alexander recalls. - And I had a story about pneumothorax - when the lung bursts. A fairly simple illness, but due to the fact that it was the eve of the Maidan and there were a huge number of people in the hospitals, somehow everything was hard for me. Usually they operate for half an hour, and I was operated on for four. I was clinically dead."

What happened, continues Alexander, strongly influenced him. “Absolutely unfamiliar people who invited me to work treated me better than many of my relatives. And I thought that this is an interesting moment to reflect on life,” he says about how he made the decision to stay in Ukraine. And then he talks about the “very big bonus” of the country: “It’s a very pleasant winter here without snow.”

Upon learning of the Russian invasion, Alexander packed up in two minutes (“he took almost nothing with him”) and left the apartment. The house where he lives is located in the center and is now surrounded by the Ukrainian military.

“It’s rather dumb to stay there, because there are sensitive facilities nearby, which are targets [of shelling],” says Alexander. Now he spends most of his time in the apartment of friends. A curfew has been introduced in Kyiv from 17:8 to XNUMX:XNUMX.

During the time allowed for going outside, Alexander and his colleagues feed people. “You have a completely empty restaurant with a bunch of products, you need to do something with them,” he explains. - Yesterday, for example, we cooked for the guys who defend the city. You always have someone to help in such situations.

He did the same during the Maidan - he cooked for people who gathered on the square to express their disagreement with what was happening in the country. The job that got him invited to Kyiv in late 2013 was being delayed, he says: “And I was just trying to be as helpful as possible at that moment.”

“It was a very strange time. I have seen a lot of things, but when your central street is littered with garbage, tires, a bunch of people sit in tents... People have a lot to do with the Maidan, and everything revolves around it. There is still a street there that has never been opened [for passage]. For people, this is a big denominator in terms of the history of Ukraine,” says Oleksandr.

He suddenly interrupts: "Oops, they're already shooting at me." Distant pops can be heard in the background.

“To be honest, you get used to this story. You can get used to everything, as we understand, ”Alexander comments on the shooting.

“Any war is absolute stupidity. And it doesn’t lead to anything,” he continues. - You are sitting in the center of the city and you know that on your usual route, which you overcome by car in 20 minutes, there is a battle going on. You know where in the city they issue weapons. You watch a video about distant areas - and there the tank goes. Look how the rocket hit the house. And you know that it's not all that far from you. And it’s hard for you to call this a peaceful invasion for the rights of Russian-speaking citizens.”

- Well, now, do you hear? Alexander asks. The siren sounds long. She does not stop until the end of our conversation. But Alexander seems to forget about her and is in no hurry to the bomb shelter.

“I remembered a funny story,” he says. - When I received a residence permit [in Ukraine], the security officer asked me: “But if the Russians enter Kyiv, who will you feed?” I laughed. And now I think it's not funny anymore, of course.

“We have a good shelter. Clean, lots of space, warm”

At the end of the first day, when the Russian troops were not yet in Kyiv, we spent the night in a bomb shelter. Because now we believed that this mad tyrant was ready to do anything just to spread his "Russian world" to all neighbors.

Our apartment is right in the government quarter. So we immediately went from there to friends. Their apartment is around the corner from the hideout. We have the opportunity to at least take a shower and go to the toilet normally (the toilet bowl clogged in the shelter on the first night). But this is if there are no sirens. They often turn on, and we do not always have time to even wash ourselves - we immediately go down back to the shelter.

We have a good shelter, judging by the many photos that I have seen these days. We are clean, there is plenty of space, it is warm, there is ventilation. Many take refuge literally in basements or in the subway, where it is cold and crowded with people.

We are also lucky with our neighbors. We discuss the latest news, if necessary, share exercises and water with each other. We have a supply of water and food. The problem is that in recent days, food has tasted like cardboard, and we literally force ourselves to eat.

We have a car with a full tank in case it gets really bad, but we want to stay here until the last moment. And we hope that we will not need to leave Ukraine anywhere. All night we heard explosions. I understand that you need to save yourself, take your feet in your hands and run somewhere. But this is very difficult to do when you love your home.

Margarita talks about her experiences since the beginning of the Russian invasion in text messages - the connection is unstable. Sometimes the flow of text is interrupted. “Now, for example, we are going to go up to the roof and check if there are marks for [strike] military equipment, as there has been information that they are doing on civilian buildings,” the girl explains.

Margarita was born in Timashevsk, a small town in the Krasnodar Territory. When she was 15, she began to communicate on VKontakte with peers from Ukraine. And two years later - during the European Football Championship - 2012, held in Ukraine and Poland - for the first time I was in Kyiv. "I really liked it. And I decided to come here to study,” she says. - Of course, this decision was not clear to anyone: neither friends, nor acquaintances, nor relatives, nor parents. Like, Ukraine is a poor country, there is nothing to catch there and all that.”

But Margarita did not manage to graduate from the university in Kyiv - after a year of study, the Maidan began, and because of the relatives' fears for her safety, the girl left for Moscow, where she began working as a copywriter: “My mother and I almost could not communicate - she told me about Bandera and the Nazis, talked about what allegedly happened on the Maidan, although I was in the city and saw everything with my own eyes.

In Moscow, Margarita continues, she began to frequently attend peaceful protests. And more and more to think about the fact that nothing has changed. “One day [in the summer of 2019] I went out into the yard - I then lived near Kitay-Gorod - and while I was walking to the store, I saw a lot of policemen. The store was unable to pay with a card, because they jammed the network - they tried to extinguish this wave of rallies. On that day, I realized that I was tired of pointless fighting, and I decided to move to Kyiv as soon as possible.

Shortly after the move, she married a Ukrainian citizen whom she had met on VKontakte nine years earlier.

Despite participating in Russian protests over events in Ukraine, Margarita says she has always felt guilty and ashamed of the actions of the authorities. Feels it even now.

“As a person who lived in Russia and knows how to knit in paddy wagons, I still cannot justify [the passivity of people]. Because I know: they knit, because not enough people came out, because they put up with such a life, and this, to some extent, is consent, ”Margarita believes. - Putin has been in power for 20 years, the people allowed it. I'm really sorry, but it's true. Although the last thing I would like is for my relatives who live in Russia to feel bad. Now I advise everyone to leave the country as soon as possible for at least a month. I am very afraid that Russia will become the new North Korea.”

From Russian citizenship, Margarita adds, she decided to refuse. The same decision was made on the eve of the Russian invasion by Nikolai from Odessa.

“I have already started processing [documents], but I didn’t have time, because martial law was introduced, shelling began,” he says. — I do not want to have the citizenship of a country in which I do not live and whose policies I do not support. Even when I came to Russia in 2018, I understood that these were already different people, with a different worldview, and I have nothing to do with them, unfortunately.”

“I want to start the procedure for renunciation of citizenship, because Russian people, people from my country came to kill me,” says Daria from Kyiv.

When the war is over, she wants to return and participate in the rebuilding of the city. Because Ukraine, she explains, is now her home.

You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants, and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York.

In the meantime, Daria helps those who, like her family, were forced to flee, look for food and shelter: “It seems to me that most of all I feel shame for my country. This is a monstrous thing. I can’t even say in my head that it’s not my homeland that does all this. So I don't know how we can live with this. The only thing is to help the Ukrainian people — people who have lost their relatives, loved ones, homes.”

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