Mary: 

So how long you’ve had your dog from the very beginning?

Yulia: 

Yeah. Yeah.

Mary: 

Very sweet. So you’ll you’ll will you please tell me where you were born and where you grew up?

Yulia: 

So, actually I was born in a region in one small village, but when I was one year old, my parents come to Kyiv. So my father born in QI, what was burning in Kyiv and here is our home. So I could say that as a one year old, I grew up skiing India and spent all my time there.

Mary: 

And did you go to university there?

Yulia: 

Yes. Cool. University kindergarten, everything.

Mary: 

So please tell me, are you still living with your family or are you on your own?

Yulia: 

I’m on my own. So I’m married. It will be like two years in this summer. And for three years I live with my husband separately from my parents, not the key, but like the Kyiv district, it, our house is like near 10 kilometers to the keyboarder. Let’s call it there. So also like give region,

Mary: 

So please tell me about what it was like for you and your husband starting in 2022. What was the, what plans were you making? What were you feeling?

Yulia: 

Actually, we had the really big plans for this year. So I have like house outside of give in give region. And we had plans to sell this house and took money from this selling and invest in the new, bigger, flat. So we have a, like small flat in where we live in Kyiv and we decided to grow up in this way. Also, my husband planned to start his own business,

Yulia: 

Like to be the boss for himself. He planned this with his close friend and I don’t know, I’m like 26 year old right now. My birthday was March nine, the right after the full invasion was started. So actually I didn’t like celebrate it as usual. And we planned, so the aunt of the year started seeing about a baby. We then decided like when it will, when it should be like correctly, but this summer December, we spent some time for checking our house and make sure that everything’s okay and we can plan for a baby. So that was our, that were our biggest goals for actually this year.

Mary: 

Those are a lot of very important goals.

Yulia: 

Yeah.

Mary: 

So tell me what life became like that last week in February. How did everything change for you?

Yulia: 

Actually, we’ve got news that like this invasion can be started at the beginning of January. So we even saw that maybe it will be after the new year, all of the news made such assumptions and we’ve got, we, we have, like, we had a lot of video instructions how to prepare like the specific bag with all of the first items that you have to include there, like documents and some clothes other stuff, monies. And first of all, I just watched those videos and I didn’t expect that I really need to prepare in this way, but we start starting discussion with our close friends and part of them, the toll that there is no necessity to start preparing this bag. But another part of France said that they already did it. And just for, to make myself calm, I started preparing these bags for our, for me and my former husband.

Yulia: 

So I collected all of the documents just because, you know, when you live at home and you don’t think about this possibility about work, you just, the, I don’t know, you have some documents in this way, in this like chair, some documents in that room and there are not collected and it’s properly reset into the one folder. So I started checking all of the documents that I need to have with myself. All of the also important stuff I prepared the back for maybe three weeks before the fall envision started. Yeah. But it was just only documents some medicines and some charge for mobile phones. And so I didn’t prepare any clothes or, or food like that.

Mary: 

So Yeah, me a little bit more about the videos, where did you find those videos?

Yulia: 

It’s like internet. So first of all, I actually, well together with my husband, we don’t don’t watch TV. We just like news. We don’t watch the news news. We just got everything real important for us from YouTube or from telegram channels or from our friends. So like, we, we, we used not to believe on all of this, not maybe not all of this, but the part of the things that are saying in use till this time. And we just try to save our emotionals and not to panic because of that. But some videos, my friend shared with me some videos I found in YouTube by myself. So how to prepare correctly because we talked, even if we didn’t watch video news. And nevertheless, we spoke about this possibility with our family, with our parents, with our friends and the know that something that at least we, we should, we should, we start, should doing something. So to prepare, at least anything, to have some stretch

Mary: 

Question among your friends who were prepared versus the ones who said, don’t panic, can you explain their different response? Like, do you understand enough about them to know why they responded so differently?

Yulia: 

Actually yeah, the friend who suggested us prepared this back, he really is interested in every thing that is going in Ukraine and almost in the world. So he watched news. He helped has a lot of telegram channels and other information resources. And he’s trying to monitor the situation, but nevertheless, stay calm. And like, because of the information, a lot of stuff of information that you’ve got, he suggested us to follow of follow the same way as he did some follow him like experience. And in regards to the two France who just suggested us stay calm and actually don’t worry about possible invasion. They, they are probably like me and my husband. Like they don’t spend a lot of time for checking news or like the monitor in Samsung. They just live their life.

Mary: 

So tell me, tell me about February 24th for you. Where were you?

Yulia: 

I already said to my husband, that that night was like, I was nervous that night. I work woke up several times and I had really bad sleep. And my husband, he works in some store in a vassal cough, baby. You, you heard Russell give, this is the city that was bombed. Firstly, in the key frigid, it’s near like 50 kilometers or so two kilometers from Kyiv. And my husband worked there. So every working day at 6:00 AM or health by seven, he walks up and start preparing to go for work. And this morning at 6:00 AM like before. So do you mean it’s still like the rink on the phone that you should wake up before this time? My husband got a phone call from his colleague that something is going on in bustle KIPP, and he walked up just, he had like discussion for maybe 10 minutes with the colleague and then he returned back to a bedroom and said that the war worry started.

Yulia: 

And I cannot say that I was surprised a lot, but those feelings, when you start thinking about what to do next. So what is your plan when you just a general in January when you saw that it probably may be what you should do, how you should, I don’t know, go run from Kyiv. How you should collect all of your parents. My parents, my parents in love how to collect them together. Where should we go? And when it started, you just think, okay, maybe I had some plan in January, but right now I don’t know what to do next

Mary: 

You freeze.

Yulia: 

And for sure, my hell. Yeah, yeah. It was shocked for sure. My husband didn’t go to the work this day and after this day as well. And I immediately mom, so ask how she is because our parents, my husband’s parents, my parents, they live in Kyiv and I asked how she is feeling. So what is in Kyiv? Is it calm right now? Or is it something is going on also there? Or then we start calling our friends. So like this blind to call, first of all, parents, then your close friends and ask where they are, how they feel in what tense. So what to do next. Then we turn on TV and start watching use and start checking every single what is going on in every city in our country. And it was really terrible to, to hear that it’s really it’s really started. And to watch this moments, it is photos that people shared with the news. It was really, I don’t know. It’s even not scared. I don’t know how.

Mary: 

Yeah, it’s unbelievable. Right? You don’t feel connected to it cause it feels impossible.

Yulia: 

Yeah. Yeah.

Mary: 

So tell me more about that day. What, what were things like for you by dinnertime?

Yulia: 

We also decided to go to our balcony and check whether we hear some sound around our place, but we actually didn’t hear nothing like bombs

Yulia: 

I, I just, I just start sinking. Okay. This is the Thursday. If I’m not mistaken, the Thursday.

Mary: 

Yeah. Thursday was the 25th.

Yulia: 

Yeah. And I started thinking, okay, should I start working? Or how should I react on the same? So should I start cooking? What should I do? Because I didn’t want to eat something. I didn’t want to drink water. So you just focusing on use and you not like interrupt with something else. Then my husband went for a walk with our dog. And if I’m not mistaken at this moment that this first day it was

Yulia: 

Explosion in our area where we live. So we had like the all military stuff, like in maybe 10 kilometers of our house, it was like some military station. And at the time when my husband was outside working with dog, it was this explosion, but it was, everything was okay with our house and within nearest buildings. But you know the sound, when you, for the fall, while your life, you didn’t hear such sounds in real life. You just watch you go to the cinema and you saw this explosions. Like the graphical explosions, part of them maybe was real, but it wasn’t in real life. And then you decide that this is reality. This is where you live right now. The, we actually didn’t do nothing. So we did not send till the evening, we just try to eat something, try to sell, come, try to be in contact with the, our family and watching yours. That’s that’s was it

Mary: 

So no, no plans, no sense of what you might do.

Yulia: 

Yeah. Yeah. Actually it go somewhere. But this day, at this first day of invasion, we start checking like the possible way, how to go out from Kyiv by our car. And there was the really crazy traffic jam, all of the roads in Google maps, they were red. So, and we also heard a lot of, from, from doxy.me members who tried to escape from gear for the first day, we’ve heard that they spent near 10 hours for going from the left side of Kyiv to the right side of GIF. And then trying to at least rights, maybe spent you’re still two kilometers from Kyiv and they still were in this carefree region. So almost half of the day they spent in car and this is not enough. So we decided that we will say at home for some period of time, for a non period of time.

Mary: 

And tell me how you are. How are you are now? Are you still in?

Yulia: 

I’m not in give no I’m in Uzhhorod. This is the city on the west of Ukraine. This is almost the, the like, it has border with Hungary. We decided to go here after first week. Yeah. So it wasn’t a planned decision, but my colleague who lives here, she messaged me that she, they were able to go to Italy at the first day.

Mary: 

Wow.

Yulia:  

Of February 21st. Yeah. And she messaged me that she has a flat here and we will decide to go from Kyiv. Then we can stay in her house. And I started sinking about this idea because last two or three days before our escaping from Kyiv, it was really noisy in our area. So I assume that somewhere near our house, it was like anti-air machines or how it’s called like Ukrainian machines that try to destroy rockets that are come from Russian side. I don’t know the correct name. I think he called

Mary: 

Anti air missiles.

Yulia: 

Yeah. Yeah. Samsung like this. They were like, Kate’s, it’s really in close to our area. And we heard every, every sound, every, I don’t know every how it’s called when they trying to, when they work, maybe also explosion, but it’s not like Explorer when it goes to, to the ground. But the explosion, when they try to destroy it, rockets that’s comes to, we, we knew that this is a machine that is going to save us, but this sound, you cannot normally live in the sound. You cannot work in the sound. I just started to take a shower. And I also, then I heard and decided, okay, maybe later, maybe I should stay somewhere in the safe place. First two days when we heard air sirens, that’s a, you should go to the bomb shelter. We, we spent two nights. We spent in bomb shelter. But the reason is that why also we lived our home because our bomb shelter, this is not the bomb shelter.

Yulia: 

This is just the, the place, the in our like house. And there’s only one entrance and there is no ventilation. So there is nothing the real bomb shelter, and we decided that, okay, we actually don’t have re like place in our flats where we can hide. So this is the rule that you should be hiring in the, after a wall to protect yourself from something. Yeah. From some Explorer. And we check that we actually don’t have the place in our flat, when we will be at safe. And two days before our escape, I was just crying because it was really emotional hard for me. I wasn’t crying at the first day. And at the first two days, three days, but one day before we went, it was, it was, it broke me. I couldn’t handle myself. So I was contacted. I was contacted. It was my mom. She agreed to come with us. Then we were chatting with my mother-in-law and she said that she will not left her house. So she decided to stay in Kyiv.

Mary: 

Was that hard for

Yulia: 

Her? My father in law,

Yulia: 

It’s hard for him. And it’s, it’s hard for myself as well, because right now they’re still, they are still there. And my father in law, he came to army. So he is not the soldier. He was like some time ago when he was young. And when envision was started at the certain day, he decided that we’ll go to our army and he will protect our receipt as well. And we, we, we know that we knew that we cannot force my husband’s parents to come with us. It’s their decision. We try to, to do, I dunno, to, to say that, to make the advantages, why they should leave, but they made the decision to stay. Then we asked our close friends whether they want to go with us because don’t have car and they agreed. So one small remark that’s this would hurt. I was visiting my friends who also lives here. And usually the road from Kyiv to alternate, it takes like 11 hours by car. But those day at February, it took us three days. It was, it was terrible because it was six people in one car. It was two dogs along with six people. And it was one cat.

Yulia: 

Yeah.

Mary: 

How did the animals get along?

Yulia: 

My mom’s dog just felt the like, okay, because my mother’s dog, it’s small dog. And it has like, the carriage has the carriage. But my dog that you saw a few minutes ago, it’s like the medium dog. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t have carriage. And maybe he was, he was feeling the worst. In this case, he just wanted a little bit more free space for him to at least go inside car. But it wasn’t a lot for him three days. But finally here we here, we almost three weeks. It’s two weeks as we are here or not two it’s three weeks already. It’s three weeks as we are here in Uzhhorod, in the rest of your grade. And I really want to go home, but I know that it’s not safety right now. I spent, oh, no, I, I, I it’s my home. I left my plants that there is no one who can come there and take care of them. And it’s, it’s hard for me to know that maybe when I come home, I will see that their diets. But yeah.

Mary: 

Is your husband considering joining the military? What are his feelings about that?

Yulia: 

It’s hard emotionally for him because he does, he doesn’t have the experience even to hold the gun and not calling to shooting someone or something. Right now we are just staying here and we, me, and he’s also don’t have a plans to join the military because we not sure that in this time, military can educate you for the short period of time, how you should react on all of the situation. Because from the news that we heard that the trainings in military, it takes one week, and then you are relocated to the, to the, to the war area. It’s not enough to have one week of education just to start thinking that you are really soldier and you know how to deal with any kind of weapons.

Mary: 

Yulia. If you and your husband wanted to leave and cross the border into hungry, could you,

Yulia: 

First of all, we don’t want, I can, but my husband isn’t loft to leave the border because of the, yeah, because our country does know who is from 18 til 60 to leave the border.

Mary: 

And how did you come to the decision not to leave your country?

Yulia: 

First of all, I want from now, how can I support the army and country is financial kinds of support. I can pay taxes here. I can buy goods here. I can buy services here. And I don’t want to spent money in other country because other country will not redirect to my money to Ukraine. Also, there are lots of ways to volunteer here in Ukraine. It’s it will be harder to support someone outside of Ukraine. It’s possible. A lot of people do this, like in Poland, but I don’t have contacts to start this volunteer program abroad. And the, the most reasonable, the, the, the highest reason is that here is still our family. So my parents in law, they’re still in Kyiv. My mother is in the region. My father is also in Kyiv, so it will be hard to live there. So it was hard to leave them in here right now when we are at at least safe in safe area. And for sure, we are in, we don’t plan to go abroad just on the, in case something very critical. We’ll be in area where we right now, but for, for this time, we decided to stay here and we want to come home in soon as time. So, yeah, I hope it will be in the end of April. I really hope.

Mary: 

Do you feel safe where you are now?

Yulia: 

Yeah. There are also some, a or severance here, but nothing after them.

Mary: 

So, Yulia, Looking back. Do you wish that you had watched more news or do you feel satisfied with your approach before the invasion?

Yulia: 

Actually, I don’t know whether watching more news will, will really help me to take another decision. I trying to follow the rule. Like don’t regret of anything, if you are safe right now. And if you already did a lot of stuff for this moment, so make sure that your and your relatives are at safe places. It’s already the big achievement. You shouldn’t regret it regarding anything. So if I would know that it will start, I don’t know that I will change my decision.

Mary: 

So you feel at peace with how things have unfolded and, and, and grateful.

Yulia: 

Yeah. Trying to,

Mary: 

Yeah. I’m just curious how it has felt during this time to be the caretaker of an animal. Have you felt, do you think more vulnerable

Yulia: 

Regarding all the animals or

Mary: 

Your animal, your dog?

Yulia: 

I don’t think that our relationship and our care changed the, in regards to him, we still love him as much as possible. We still try to do anything for him, like to try to find here those foods that he used to eat in the Kyiv. It’s, it’s hard for him. Like the, the place where he is right now

Yulia: 

But we still try to play with him, try to show him that everything is okay. And yeah, it looks, it looks good.

Mary: 

It’s a good preparation for parenting.

Yulia: 

Yeah. Fuel.

Mary: 

Yeah. Is there anything you would like to share before we end?

Yulia: 

Actually, that’s all because I also have another meeting in a minute.

Mary: 

Okay. I really am very grateful that you took the time to share your story. Thank you so much. All right. Take care.

Yulia: 

Thank you. So thank you for taking this moment and trying to, to share it to all of the words. Thank you for help us to, to, to, to help us to make this stories and all of the information to be here in all of the words.