Our story began in the middle of the night of February 24th, 2022. Until that day, we had lived a normal, regular life, but that night became a point of no return. At 5 am, all of Ukraine woke up to the sounds of shooting and artillery. Both of our families live nearby in the Mikolayev district. When we went outside, we witnessed unimaginable chaos and fear, everything was burning, people were paralyzed from fear.

Midday, we found out that the Kulbakino airport was wiped from the face of the earth, and many houses were destroyed and their inhabitants wounded. Every day started to be worse than the previous one. Russian army began to attack not only military or strategic targets, but civilian ones as well.

But in spite of all this horror, we were not loosing hope. We believed that all of this would not last long. How wrong and naive we were… Every night, we feared we would not see another day. Instead of the alarm clock, we were awaken by sirens. Our families tried to support each other as much as possible. For about a week, we lived in a cellar. The nights went by in the cold and humid darkness with minimum food reserves. We still hoped that the war would be over soon, but we were increasingly worried about the children and my unborn child. On March 9, during the third week of the war, we decided to leave Ukraine. Our fathers and husbands were called to fight. One of them is a volunteer now. They helped us reach the border, which was extremely challenging, as the occupants shoot at civilian cars. Afterwards, they came back to the chaos.

We had to leave our home, because our village was destroyed, there was almost no food in stores, there were constant attacks and the hospital was almost totally ruined. Our journey to Poland was very hard-almost two days without sleep. But we arrived safely. All we wanted was peace, but instead we have destruction, dozens of thousands of dead and wounded, cities and villages leveled to the ground.

We were fortunate to find the Hummingbird Effort Foundation. They secured and furnished an apartment for all of us in Gdansk, as well as an obstetrician, who will deliver my baby.