Forced to flee: Ukrainian journalist recounts escape from war-torn country
Petro Radetskyi and Anastasia Zahorna at Pittsburgh’s Point Park
The eight Radetskyi siblings pose outside their oldest brother’s home in Peters Township. Front row, from left, are Anastasia, Sofia, Maria and Ostap; second row, Ivan, Mikhailo, Petro and Nazar.
Anastasia Zahorna works at her laptop.
Courtesy of Kostiatyn Liberov
A battered Ukrainian flag flies above a war-torn landscape.
Anastasia Zahorna, right, with her mother, Yulia, and sister, Maria.
I never thought that I would have to live through a war – the war in my country that forced me to leave home and travel thousands of kilometers from relatives and friends. For me, as well as for millions of Ukrainians, it all started on Feb. 24. I woke up at 6 a.m. when my beloved said, “Nastia, it has begun.” I still did not understand the scale of what was happening, even when I saw the smoke through the window. I remember imagining the impossible, that the smoke was just morning fog. No, it was smoke from a Russian rocket that fell two kilometers from us.
I was born and lived all my 22 years in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. This city is wonderful with its history, architecture, and people – life before the war. It was terrible to watch, how in a matter of hours this best place on the planet turned into an environment of panic and fear.
So, it was decided to leave, and my mother and I went to the gas station. There were long lines of 20 to 30 cars filled to the brim with clothes, food, and people. When we were filling up our car, I saw a man selling his car to another man. I thought, is everything really so serious? People at the gas station were buying cars, illegally, exchanging cash for a car without any guarantees. With trembling hands, people handed over a wad of U.S. dollars and nervously signaled to their families to get into a newly acquired car.
I have been in a relationship with a wonderful guy; he is my strength and inspiration. And we broke up because my family needed me and his family needed him. Everything was like in a movie: I just screamed to the whole world (but no one heard this, my soul screamed). It seemed to me that I was hugging him for the last time. At the same moment, I tried to drive away the thought that kept popping up in my head: that I would never see him again. We said goodbye, and I and my family – my sister, mother, father, grandmother and aunt – went to a safe place.
Temporary safety
Dense green forests, endless fields, and clear rivers – that’s the place where we spent every summer relaxing and looking after our garden. That is the place where everyone knows you. They love you there, and it makes you smile. When someone doesn’t like you, it just amuses you. There I got real pleasure and could take a break from the bustle of the city. I always considered that place – Gruzskoye – the safest on the planet. It’s the village where my maternal grandmother was born, and it is the place where my parents met for the first time and fell in love. Of course, as we ran away in panic and fear, it was the place to go.
We sincerely believed that we were safe, but this belief vanished overnight. We learned that hopes and human lives can be lost in a second. On the day after our arrival in the village, we were stranded, ordered not to leave. But we could move around our site, and sometimes we went to visit our neighbors to exchange rumors and complain about our loved ones, who every day grew wearier from their stress and panic.
Makarov is a neighboring village, 20 kilometers from where we were. It seemed far away, but when Russian soldiers drove into this village in tanks, we thought it was very close. We learned about this from the Ukrainian military, who came to rescue the village. For two weeks I slept dressed in a tracksuit and sneakers, next to me a backpack with documents and photographs of my already past life. On the third day, a Russian rocket hit the power plant, and we were left without electricity, and some had no heat. Our stove saved us.
When Makarov was occupied, they stopped producing bread. No one could deliver any other food, because all the roads were blocked; any car that left became an ideal target for the Russian military. They spared neither bullets nor people in these cars.
We were literally disconnected from the whole world. It was possible to find out the news only by rumors, and they did not cheer us. Phones lost connection and their batteries eventually died. After many attempts I was able to get through to my beloved Petro a couple of times. In one call, the conversation was short:
“How are you?”
“OK, how are you?”
“OK too. I miss you a lot.”
“I love you, princess. I’ll be there soon. Believe me.”
Russian rampage
And I believed him, looking at the horizon of thick, black smoke accompanied by a modern symphony of explosions. And while I was getting at least some strength from the voice of my beloved, in neighboring Makarov, the Russian invaders – as we would learn later – were destroying families, breaking into the houses of our people, taking out all the men and shooting them without a thought: the grandfathers of their sons and little grandchildren. After that, they looted these houses, and for whom it was not enough, they raped the mothers and wives of the men they had just killed.
After a month of occupation, we had the opportunity to leave, which we did. My dad stayed in the village, and after our departure, he went to the territorial defense (TD). In simple words, territorial defense is a group of men who organize themselves and defend their chosen territory.
These groups defend residential buildings, districts of the city or, in the case of my dad, entire villages of people. Territorial defense is a legal activity, therefore, it cooperates with the police and doctors, and representatives of the territorial defense have every right to use firearms in order to protect the civilian population.
We went to the west of Ukraine, and at first, there were no explosions and no attacks. The decision to leave was not at all easy. I think of it as the time I grew up. It was the first time I drove a car for such a long distance – more than 500 kilometers.
Before the war, such a road usually took no more than five to seven hours of driving. We drove for 17 hours. It was terrible, I still can’t remember how I was driving; all memories are in the fog. It’s funny, but on the way, we passed a wind storm, rain with hail and a small blizzard. It seemed as if spring wanted to show us all its possible moods. Each settlement was fenced with trenches, sand bags, tires, iron structures. Arriving in a town or village, we were met by an armed TD who checked documents and things in the car. I felt complete fear and tension; I constantly wanted to cry, but I never shed a tear, because I felt responsible for my family while dad protects our house. I was carrying my sister, mother, aunt, grandmother, and Petro’s younger brother. Petro was driving another car, in which there were his other brother, two sisters and the boyfriend of one of them.
Close quarters
The next month we spent in the village of Dmitrov, at the house of friends. The four-room house was already crowded, and our large company brought the number of occupants to 19. Grief unites us and in general, we got along. But in such conditions of fear and fatigue, even the closest people can open up differently, so there were scandals and resentments. During this month, we managed to put the house in order, cleaned up the yard and made repairs in the summer kitchen, where a separate room for four people was made, and even built a gazebo. I will always remember this time.
Also, I will remember how we went down to the basement of the house for the first time because of the saboteurs who made their way into our village. They were armed. We found out about them simply: one of us saw in the window that someone was walking around the yard. It was evening, about 10 p.m., and it was dark outside, and it could not be one of our people because we adhered to the 9 p.m. curfew order. Our men took weapons, sticks and knives and went for an inspection while the women and children went down to the basement. Fortunately, we did not have to wait long, and our men returned with good news: the Russian killers were caught and already handed over to our military.
Fleeing again
I can’t forget how I woke up from loud explosions. It was one of the last nights in Dmitrov when we thought about moving again. Every day it became more and more dangerous, the Russians began to launch rockets all over Ukraine. There is almost no city left on our map where a rocket or shell would not fall.
On March 31, we planned to return to Kyiv, but we had to leave two days earlier in a completely different direction. By then, Russian terrorists killed 144 Ukrainian children, and another 220 were seriously injured. Together with them, another 1,179 civilians of Ukraine said goodbye to their lives, and 1,860 people remained disabled. And close to 5 million Ukrainians left their homes, leaving the country: some forever, some in the hope that all this would be temporary.
According to the latest data from the National Police of Ukraine, as of Sept. 2, Russian terrorists killed more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians. Of them, 324 are children. Russians continue to bombard and shoot the Ukrainian population every day, and this is genocide of the Ukrainian people.
By the end of March, the United States, together with Ukrainian volunteers and the Mexican government, opened the Humanitarian Parole for Ukrainian Citizens program. We had nowhere else to go; it was becoming more and more dangerous in Dmitrov, in Kyiv every day rockets flew into residential buildings, where dozens of our people died at a time.
Safe at last
And so, on March 29, we left for the border of Ukraine and Romania. It seemed that everything would end now, and we would finally exhale. But on our way, we met new types of cruelty. Dozens of Ukrainian citizens died. One of our group was no exception and looked into the eyes of Death. Fortunately, his time has not yet come. But that is a story for another time.
A month later, we reached safety in the U.S.A., where Petro’s two older brothers were waiting for us. After nine years, all eight siblings of my beloved’s family finally sat down at the same table. We took a photo and sent it to the parents who stayed in Ukraine. It’s time to finally exhale and relax, but we forgot how to do it, and now we are learning again.
Anastasia Zahorna, 22, began working as a journalist in Kyiv, Ukraine, at age 15, even before her university studies. This is the story – in her own words – of how she and her family, her fiancé and his family fled to safety through Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Mexico and eventually to the United States.
They arrived in Peters Township in May and have become part of a growing community of Ukrainians in the greater Pittsburgh area. Zahorna is currently taking classes to improve her English with the Literacy Council of Southwestern Pennsylvania. She wrote this story with the assistance of her tutor, Parker Burroughs, who until his retirement was executive editor of the Observer-Reporter.