Reykjavík Grapevine - Apr 2022, Page 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