Lyuba’s Story

Hello. My name is Lyuba. I am currently in Lviv, recalling how the war caught us. Everything happened in the United States. At that time, I was in New Jersey with my husband. It was an evening based on Eastern Standard Time. It started with a scream. Because I just looked on the internet and started calling my family. I understood who I needed to reach. My sister is here, and she has a family and grandchildren. It was all terrifying from a distance. However, the feeling that something would happen was already present because, on the 16th of February, I was supposed to be flying to Lviv. My husband and I planned to fly here and continue our life in Ukraine after he finishes work. He's a pensioner. I was at my daughter's. My husband says come here; we'll leave together on the 12th of March, something is uneasy in Ukraine. So on the 24th, everything happened. Naturally, we stopped thinking about ourselves. We worried about our family. They were unreachable. We contacted friends who were also unreachable. So by the morning, when we woke up, I received all those responses because my sister and my friends managed to find a way to contact us. All my friends are here, in Ukraine. Each person had a different reaction. Of course, there was a lot of panic. Our panic was different because it was from a distance, and it's scarier that way because fear has bigger eyes from a distance. My sister and her family were already in Poland. The afternoon of the next day, they were already there. But all of my friends remained here, and nobody thought of moving.

At some point, we started looking for our cat. Our cat that we brought to Ukraine ended up in Poland. In Krakow. 

We were constantly postponing our trip. We didn't go on the 12th of March because Lviv was getting attacked. That's when they bombed Yavoriv Military Base. Many people died. So understandably, our American family and our daughter were against us going, saying don't go, don't go, maybe the situation will become more stable by summer. We found it very difficult to be making that decision because I'm calling my friend, and she says I'm in a shelter with my grandchildren, I call my other friend Nadiya, and she says I'm running to the school to seek shelter because they don't have any bunkers nearby. I watched TV - CNN, and it was very difficult because it was constantly on, and all of the worst stuff was always shown. During the Ukrainian TV Marathon held from basements, you saw people sleeping and living in the subway stations, trying to hold each other up. 

So that was how the war started for us - the first few days. I cried a lot. We have a big shepherd dog in New Jersey, and she always put her head on my lap. My niece was also always hugging me. My husband was really nervous. He didn't know what to do with all of it. So, in the end, we decided to go to Ukraine after all. Because sitting so far away and just worrying isn't worth it, we need to go. So we promised our family that when there's a threat, we will always seek shelter, promised to be careful, and then we left. On the way, we had to pick up our cat because our cat ended up a refugee. Our little refugee. So we landed in Warsaw, the journey turned out to be very long, because we had to change our tickets… It's a long story, and I can talk about it for a long time. So we landed in Warsaw, took a train to Krakow, and picked up our cat. Our family helped us cross the border, and we entered Ukraine.

We entered Ukraine, this land we dreamt of living on once we became pensioners, travelling to Europe from it because it's so much easier and so low-cost due to its proximity. But when we now, when we arrived, everything was covered in barbed wire, and there were bags of sand everywhere, not only strategic targets but also schools and kindergartens. Everything was fenced off in front of our apartment building. Everything was fenced off. There were soldiers carrying weapons everywhere. That was astounding. That this is your land. I only saw this in my dreams before. War came to me in my dreams because my father always talked about it. Both of my parents lived through war when they were children and told us about it. But I never expected we would have to live through anything like it.

Before we came here, my husband contacted his friend from Kyiv, who had it really difficult there at that time. Their family came here to live in our apartment. So when we arrived, we shared our little apartment with four people and our cat. But we enjoyed it. At that time, I also became sick with covid, which I brought from America, and then my husband caught it, so we had to look for a new apartment for our friends. And then, as soon as we got a little better (thankfully, we had it relatively easy), as soon as my husband received a notification that he was not ill, the next day, we were looking to go somewhere. To the Volunteer Kitchen of Pani Luda, which my sister suggested. Because why did we come here? We need to do something. Everyone is leaving the country, but things need to be done here. So we went to Pani Luda's.

There, we had some more bad luck. My husband picked up a box and injured himself so severely that he couldn't stand up for the following three weeks. I attended the kitchen alone, meeting new people from Kharkiv, Kyiv, Kherson... just the most wonderful people who are already friends for life. I will never forget them. It also turned out that it wasn't just my husband's back. It was ORTs, and he required an immediate operation. So there we were under sirens, under missiles, undergoing an operation. And they saved him. So this was a serious sign that we had to come to Ukraine. Because if we didn't come to Ukraine, and if he didn't pick this box up at volunteering, we would never know that he was carrying this slow-acting bomb inside his body. So I'm incredibly grateful to the volunteer community. I hugged Pani Luda, cried and thanked them all for existing because if we hadn't been there, we wouldn't have known what was going on with our family, with my husband. 

And after that, we just kept volunteering. Our children came, my daughter and her boyfriend, so our life changed. Somehow, here, you feel more realised, more needed. Every day is saturated, to the point that it seems like before this, you weren't living but just existing. You went to work, did chores, had lunch and dinner, went for coffee. Well, we didn't really go out for coffee in America, more so here. But now, it feels more important that the day exists, that you can somehow actualise yourself. You have more friends now. But, of course, there's little planning because you never know what tomorrow will look like. Currently, there's no place in Ukraine that's not under threat, no place where you can build any long-term plans. Nonetheless, life continues. It just so happened that all my closest, my sister and my cousins, have left Ukraine. My sister even told me that she finds it difficult to call because I'm always doing things, always busy and we're just waiting. And I say that it's okay because now it's my turn. It's funny, we used to send gifts to them on Christmas, and this year they sent gifts to us. From Spain.

Our life changed even more when our daughter came from Los Angeles. With her boyfriend. When they came here, we, first of all, changed her life, and her attitude, priorities in life, and our life changed also. Before, you noticed everything, took everything to heart and now you don't really care about yourself. In my family, we have three men fighting in the army. My sister's husband is fighting. My two friends, both of their sons, are also wounded. I spoke to Nadia yesterday, and after New Year's, her son was mobilised again. The way we interact with each other has changed. We don't have the words "hold on". We only ask each other how can we can help. Because I can't find the words for "How's Sasha". She doesn't ask me for anything. She says to pray because there isn't anything else that will help. People have different stories. Someone's son is fighting, someone's daughter is a nurse, Ludmyla's story is also… I struggle to understand how the people in that Lviv volunteer kitchen, Ludmyla, Oksana, Zoryana, how they're holding up? How they endure it, they've been doing it since 2014. And right now, it's so important to feed our soldiers that I'm not even sure if Ukraine would exist without volunteering. Without foreign help. It just wouldn't exist. Ukraine, as we know it now, would not exist. 

Every day is difficult. But you feel proud because people are changing and have changed so much. You feel proud because people's consciousness is so high. We have started to think critically and be careful with one another and everything that is Ukrainian. Last Sunday we went to a Christmas concert in the Opera Theatre, we were walking past and saw a lot of people gathering in front, thought there must have been a concert. It's so unbelievably easy to walk in and buy a ticket. Won't be the best seats, but you get to see it. And when the whole Volyn choir is carolling, and the audience is standing, applauding and carolling with them together, it's such a prideful moment. It's so pleasant. It's so high class.

We are witnessing the Ukrainian identity being born. I'm Ukrainian, and I'm not ashamed. Believe me when I say that when I just came to America, so many times I would hear russian or Ukrainian and would try to meet the person, and they tell me, "I'm from russia". I say russia where? They say Kyiv. Well, no, you're not from russia. You're from Ukraine! And why do they say this? Because nobody knew of Ukraine. And that was very painful. I was asked at work and by my friends, where is Ukraine? And I would tell them that it's between Poland and russia, a country with a population of more than 42 million, with its own language, culture, and everything of its own. Today no one will say this. Today no one will ask. And that's great. russia brought us a lot of grief, putin brought us a lot of grief, but he helped us wake up as a nation. We must preserve what we have, what we found, what we felt. Because only we can feel it. And we need to be feeling it and propagating it. 

And there's, of course, loads to dream about. We dream about victory and rebuilding, and we have much to rebuild because 5% of Ukraine is in ashes. So there's a lot of work, and thank God for our volunteers, donors, and foreign investors, who we hope will help us with this. Because right now, Ukraine is not just a country standing up for itself. We are fighting for the whole world. The whole world. And we feel it. We feel our serious, important responsibility, the importance of our individual participation. Even a tiny contribution, because if you put a seed into the ground, it will grow. The same with all of us humans. We are different but what unites us is that we love the same country. Ukraine.

My daughter recently told me that when she returned to America in October, everyone wished her well, to be safe, protect her health, and not go to the most dangerous places so she doesn't get wounded. They were worrying. So when she came back to America, she told everyone her stories and after that everything stopped. People went back to their lives. The only startling thing was everyone asking when will all of this end. I think a lot of people are tired. But we have no right to let people get tired because our soldiers, our army, ZSY (AFU) are also tired. But we have no right to say we are tired. You do it because it needs to get done. Because no one will do it for you. And the volunteers that come to Ukraine need to be recognised for the help that they're giving. They encourage us, they remind us that we are doing an important thing together. And they say, who else but us, together. There's a really great volunteer called Richard, and he's not the only one. He always says, "We all need to be here. The whole world needs to be here." And it's true! The whole world needs to be here! Life will change, and it will change not only for Ukraine but also for Europe, Eurasia, the entire continent, the whole world, and everything will be fine. That's the dream. The dream for it to all be fine for the whole world. To finally be done with this because, unfortunately, this was kept quiet for very long. Action could have been started back in 2014. And that's a shame. No one believed that it would get this far. But it will all end because all wars have begun and ended, and it will be the same with ours.