'The day we evacuated was the most terrible day of my life.' The Ukrainian mother on TIME's cover recounts fleeing her home with an infant
, Julia Pavliuk had what she considered a rather idyllic life in the town of Irpin, Ukraine, on the outskirts of the country’s capital city of Kyiv. But on March 5, despite desperately wanting to stay, she and her husband Oleh fled their home with their 6-month-old daughter Emma and set off for the city of Rivne, a city in western Ukraine, where strangers allowed them to stay for free in a spare apartment.
It’s very stressful with a 6-month-old child when you hear explosions. There’s a lot of anxiety because you just want to be safe and make sure everything will be OK for you and your kid. It’s really scary. In this situation, our minds just concentrate on what we need to do to save you and your kid. I’m lucky my daughter is so young and not a few years older because I think older children would understand what’s happening better. I’m not sure our daughter feels the situation like we feel it.
I tried to call him, but I couldn’t get through. We just waited for him for what was probably more than 20 minutes. It might have been shorter, but it felt so long. It was the most awful thing. I didn’t know what to do, so I just waited and hoped that every man I saw emerge was my husband. I was crying and my child was crying. It was cold in the street where we were standing. I tried to breastfeed her, but she wouldn’t stop crying.
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