.TsurkanKate on her decision to remain in Ukraine, which has been her home for the past four years, and the astonishing solidarity she has witnessed there.
, yet Chernivtsi, in southwestern Ukraine, had remained untouched. The only noticeable difference was that, very soon after the fighting began, tens of thousands of refugees had started to make their way into the city.
Most Ukrainian men between the ages of eighteen and sixty are banned from leaving the country, in case they are called to fight. And so, when Dima’s aunt and cousin left, he and his stepfather tried to persuade my mother-in-law and me to take advantage of the opportunity and go with them. We both refused. My mother-in-law did not want to leave her two sons behind, and I, similarly, felt as if I would be abandoning my husband.
That summer, I met several local writers in Chernivtsi, including the poet Khrystia Vengryniuk, and got involved in the Ukrainian literary scene. There was something deeply exciting about contemporary Ukrainian literature, and it felt as if I was witnessing history being written in real time. In 2017, I co-founded, an online literary magazine, and published Ukrainian, Western European, and American authors, alongside interviews with them.
The drive from Kharkiv to Chernivtsi usually takes a little more than thirteen hours, but it took Zhenya and Lena more than thirty hours to arrive. Although the sound of shelling faded as they left Kharkiv, the long lines of cars stretching westward served as a reminder of the horrors that they were trying to escape, as did the military vehicles speeding in the opposite direction.
Anastasiia Savchenko also came to Chernivtsi with the safety of her child—nine-year-old Sofia—in mind. Anastasiia had previously lived in Troieshchyna, a large residential district on the outskirts of Kyiv’s left bank. On the second night of the invasion, Russia bombed a power station close to their home, and the explosion illuminated the sky. Anastasiia and Sofia then spent their nights in the neighborhood.
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