The story of two families from the Poltava region.
I am Tatyana Bobrova. I am a 35 year-old woman who lived with my 7 year-old daughter, Daria, in the village of Suprunovka, located in the Poltava region of Ukraine. Our village was located near the airport. When the war began, the sounds of planes flying over the village woke us up. A few minutes later, a friend called to say that the tanks were 80 kilometers from the village and that there was already some tanks at the airport and shelling happening there.
My cousin, 30 year-old Tatyana Ivanenko also lived in the Poltava region with her 6 year-old daughter, Vlada, and 10 month-old son, Danilo. As soon as they heard about the war they packed their belongings and left the city they lived in because it is more dangerous to be in a bigger city than in a village like I live in.
My cousin and I decided that we would travel together with our children to Poland where it was safe. But it wasn’t so simple. It was very difficult to leave Poltava. The train tickets were sold out for a week. Nobody would let us on the train because we didn’t have tickets and the priority went to the people who had them. We went from one railway carriage to the next one and asked the conductors to let us onto the train. They all said “no” until one finally let us on the train only because my cousin’s 10 month-old son was with us.
We traveled to Lviv in one of the train’s corridor carriage. When the train neared Kyiv we saw a rocket flying by the train. It was shot down but we all heard the explosion and saw the flash. It was terrifying. My cousin and I knelt down and prayed. My cousin’s 6 year-old daughter began to cry and said “Mom, I don’t want to die on the train.”
We traveled on the train for 25 hours. When we finally arrived in Lviv we were met by volunteers and taken to the Church of the Holy Gospel. We were given food to eat there and everything necessary for the children. Volunteers helped to get us on the bus that took us to the border where we were able to cross faster than others because we had a small child with us. Once we got across the boarder into Poland we stopped in Lublin and then drove to Warsaw and then to Gdynia. We finally arrived in Gdyna at 3:30 a.m. after 72 hours of travel.
Before the war, Tatyana Bobrova’s husband worked as an electrician in Schlumberger. Tatyana Ivanenko’s husband was working in Slovakia. Now their husband’s work at a bakery.
