Stories from the Mothers

Ukrainian mothers from Kyiv share their stories

Anna lived in Kyiv with her husband and two daughters aged 12 and 9. On February 24, the whole family woke up from explosions, and then a fighter jet flew past their house. “We ran to the children’s room, turned the lights on and said to pack quickly because the war had started. The kids were terrified. The youngest one hid in the bathtub and refused to get out for a long time.”

For several days everyone sat in the basement, listening to the explosions and the sounds of sirens. Eventually Anna and the girls managed to get to Poland, where they were taken in by a local woman. Anna recalls how “one morning at her place we heard the sound of a siren. All of us got very scared and started running around in panic, we wanted to jump out the window. But it was only the sound of an alarm clock.”

Another Kyiv woman, also called Anna, fled with her two daughters to Ivano-Frankivsk. “The youngest, she is six years old, asks lots of questions every day. For example: will we bury dead people when we come back? Is her teacher alive? Are there dead children in her Pre-K grade?   One of the most difficult questions is: why did the Russians attack us? My grandmother lives in Russia, my aunt is Russian, and we have been all keeping in touch. We don’t know how to answer this question. We want to return to Kyiv and to rebuild it”.

From letters to Kit, an independent news website. Translated and abridged by Lena Nekludova