Reykjavík Grapevine - apr. 2022, Blaðsíða 9

Reykjavík Grapevine - apr. 2022, Blaðsíða 9
Olena Jadallah, a former deputy mayor for the city of Irpin and associate professor of Economics, couldn’t have imagined that a full-scale war was possible. “Everyone in my family believed in the strength of diplomacy, dialogue, and the wisdom of politicians and world leaders. We thought this could be negotiated.” As such, Olena didn’t make any arrangements before the war broke out—but her parents had. “My parents bought enough water, medicine, candles, matches, just in case,” she says. “They have a heated basement, so we were planning to stay together should the situation get worse. When at five in the morning, we woke up to explosions in Iprin, we couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t believe that this is happening to us, in the 21st century.” L i k e m a n y o t h e r f a m i l i e s in Ukraine, Olena’s family was confident that this was some kind of misunderstanding that would resolve in a day or two; a week at most. Her family stayed home for two days before deciding to stay with her parents in the town of Bucha. “We felt a bit calmer with my parents, but on the third day we realized that the whole region—Hostomel, Bucha, Irpin—was becoming more and more occupied by Russian troops,” she says. “There was active fighting all around. We realized that our kids can’t be locked in the basement all the time, especially our 1-year-old. We decided to leave.” Nataliia Baburina , an account manager at a software development company from Kharkiv, left the city one day after the shelling began. Prior to the invasion, her company had prepared a business continuity plan which meant they would relocate to another office of the company, located in Chernivtsi. On the morning of the invasion, it took Nataliia some time to gather her thoughts and wake up her husband and son to tell them that the war had started. “I was in shock,” she says. “They also didn’t realize i t r i g h t aw ay. I k n e w t h a t , should things get worse, they would fire artillery at military targets. We live not far from such a target, so my husband and I discussed the possibil ity o f r e l o c a t i n g even earlier. We decided not to panic and stay in the city. But seeing residential i n f r a s t r u c t u r e being bombed was an absolute shock. T h e r e a r e n o military targets there!” Nataliia and her family didn’t r u s h t o f l e e . Instead, they sat and thought about what they should do. Then they talked to their neighbours and decided to clear out their basement, and make it a shelter. Olga Druyanova, a freelancer from Kharkiv, found herself in the midst of war just three days after she returned home from a trip in Iceland. “A month before the war, there were lots of rumours already,” she says. “My Icelandic friends would ask what’s the situation like in Ukraine as they’d heard that troops were lining up at the border. I didn’t believe the rumours at all. I think a normal person with common sense can’t imagine that in the 21st century a war like that could begin.” Despite local friends suggesting she wait until the threat of invasion is over, Olga returned to Ukraine. On February 24, her son woke her up telling her that the war had begun. “I didn’t panic,” she says. “I managed to keep peace of mind and concentrate on what I can do and what needs to be done. I didn’t pack an anxiety suitcase, I didn’t even plan it. I didn’t rush straight to a bomb shelter. One of the main bomb shelters in Kharkiv is inside the subway, and I lived really far from the subway, my house also didn’t have a basement that would be suitable to use as a bomb shelter.” Olga would just stay home, using elementary safety rules when s h e h e a r d a i r raid sirens, like not staying close to the windows, choosing a room with load-bearing walls. TO LEAVE, OR NOT TO LEAVE W h e n a s k e d whether there was a turning point that prompted Olga to decide to leave Kharkiv five days after the war began, she shares a personal story about her family: “I have Jewish relatives on one side of my family,” Olga says. “In 1942, my great grandma’s family was shot dead by fascists in Kharkiv. She was 40 years old. All of them were shot and buried in Drobytsky Yar. Before the war, their relatives encouraged them to leave and go to the USA or elsewhere, but the family didn’t want to leave. Kharkiv was their home, they spent their whole lives there. They stayed. And they died. I sat there and thought that maybe I should do something different than my ances- tors. I’ve been to Iceland many times, I had some connections. I thought that maybe I could be of more help if I didn’t stay in Kharkiv.” “I understood that if they already attacked us, they would try to create a ‘Kharkiv People’s Republic’ here,” shares Nataliia. “Eight years ago we managed to avoid this, but it seemed like the threat was there again. So my husband and I agreed that we have to leave the city. We sat in our car and left. It was terrible, the city was so empty, it looked like an apocalypse. There were burnt cars along the road. When we were driving we saw missile strikes. We drove non- stop. As we didn’t find a place to stay overnight, the ride to Chernivtsi took us 22 hours. In Chernivtsi, we found an apartment, and, initially, we planned to just stay there. The situation changed on the night when the Russian troops attacked Enerhodar and Zaporizhzhia nuclear stations. We saw a real nuclear threat and understood that Russia has zero rationality at this point. No one could predict what would happen next. My husband decided to contact his colleagues from Iceland who offered us temporary accommodation earlier.” SANITY BITES THE DUST The journey to Iceland went smooth for Nataliia and Olga, but it wasn’t as carefree for Olena, who was traveling with a sick one-year-old. “I spent around ten hours at the Ukraine-Poland border with my kids,” she says. “It was cold. My kid developed a high fever and I had to call an ambu- lance to get him an injection. Maybe it was because of stress, but it was truly horrible. Lots of people, huge lines of mostly women and small kids, every- one’s arguing.” After passing border control, Olena and her kids received a warm welcome from the Polish volun- teers. “They met us, offered us food, gave us a ride to Warsaw, and helped us find accommodation.” Olena’s parents who had been evacu- ated from Bucha ten days later, however, received a different treatment. “A group of Kadyrovites [a Chechen paramilitary group supporting the Russian army], who are known for their cruelty, broke into my parents’ house,” Olena says. “They broke into the house with machine guns and shot abso- lutely everything, including windows and furniture. Thank God, my parents weren’t home at that time—they were hiding in the base- ment. They tried to stay as silent as possible and prayed for their lives. The Kady- rovites discov- ered that there were four cars in the garage so just for fun they shot the cars too. Of course, they stole some things from the house, things l i k e a l c o h o l , some clothes… and gloves. My mom also told me they took some perfumes proba- bly as trophies for their wives. When leaving, the group of soldiers saw our neighbour, badly beat him up, and said they will be back in an hour and won’t spare anyone.” Olena’s parents decided to flee as fast as possi- “We saw a real nuclear threat and understood that Russia has zero rationality at this point. No one could predict what would happen next.” “Ukrainians not only stand for their own country today. They stand for the sake of security everywhere in Europe and probably everywhere in the world.” 9 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 04— 2022Part 1: The Uncanny Proximity Of War Three Ukrainian women, now in Iceland, tell their stories Words: Iryna Zubenko Photos: Art Bicnick Olena Jadallah Olga Druyanova Nataliia Baburina

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