“It’s like waiting to die and hoping death wouldn’t be painful to your child“

Katya Ursulova

July 27, 2022

Hi, my name is Katya, I’m 36 years old and I’m a Ukrainian refugee who had to leave everything behind to get my son to safety. My story is just one out of 5 million stories across the country. I consider myself lucky because my son and I made it out alive, we had a little time unlike thousands of other women and children who didn’t get that luxury from hour one of this war. I decided to tell my story so it will forever be documented, so my son can read it one day and admire his strong Ukrainian blood.

I don’t even remember February 24th, the day the war started. It will forever be a blur in my mind. It was difficult to believe that the war started: we didn’t hear any explosions, we didn’t see any signs of war in central Ukraine, no sirens, no military convoys. Just lingering fear, disbelief, panic, long lines at the store to get anything people can get their hands on, in addition to gasoline and medicine.

My husband, 1.5 year old and I lived in a high rise apartment in the city. We had to pack and move to my parents’ house on the outskirts of the city because that’s where a bunker is. It’s not a real bunker, it’s just a deep hole in the ground where Ukrainians keep their produce and canning goods to keep them cold. It’s like a small underground pantry, but also cold and not really clean (picture 1).

Several days into the war we heard our first siren… it is the feeling I never had before and I never want to experience it again. It felt like a slow motion apocalypse, you feel nothing but terror inside. This is the first time we felt war this close to us. I didn’t eat for the next five days because of a real shock to my mental state, I stared at the phone day and night reading news updates, holding my son close to me, arranging a bunker for a long term living.

A few more days passed by before a lot of people I know worked up their courage to start leaving the city and the country. It took me 30 minutes to pack and get a plan in place. My friend with a 4 months old daughter was my travel companion. We got into the car while the sirens were howling and drove to the train station passing a military base, a target of the enemy. I said goodbye to my mother, father, brother and husband as if it was the last time I saw them, I took something small from each of them, something to remember them by. I was holding my son so tight because nothing else mattered. He was the only one who stayed calm. I’m thankful that his brain is not developed enough to understand what was really going on in the world around him. My friend’s husband insisted on getting us to our next destination.

We got on the train and got to a small town which was a major train hub for central Ukraine. There was no train that goes to Lviv, western Ukraine on the border with Poland, as it turned out. The train station was full of refugees like us, hundreds and hundreds of them cramped together with just a few inches between them, children on top of parents. Everyone was terrified, no one knew where they were going and what’s next. Everyone knew they might not ever see their loved ones again or come back to their home. Everyone knew though that this is the turning point for our nation and our children’s lives.

We got lucky again because mothers with small children had a priority at getting a chance to get on a train. We still didn’t know where the train was going, we knew it wasn’t going to safety yet. We only had a small chance of getting half way to safety. It still felt like a small win until the train started moving. Cramped on the train, in the middle of the night, the train had to go a lot slower than usual because of the howling sirens. The train had to stop multiple times, and turn all the lights off. Everyone was just holding their breaths, holding their babies tight only hearing their heartbeats, hoping the missiles wouldn’t strike the train. It’s like waiting to die and hoping death wouldn’t be painful to your child. Then the train started going again slowly, until we had to stop again and again.

We finally reached our halfway point to Lviv. This train station was even more crowded than the one before. I have never seen this many desperate mothers and children in one place, thousands of them here!! Some of them have been there for days, unable to get on a train. The next train was coming from Zaporizhye where everyone was fleeing from the possible accident at the nuclear station there because Russians have been bombing it. There was no hope that we would even get on the next train for several days.

The next train was approaching as the crowd of desperate women and children were running toward it in the hope to get on. The train stopped. Everyone was waiting for the doors to open but it never did. People were packed in the train like sardines. They could barely move. Only children and women. The doors never opened before the train took off again. My friend’s husband started running along the train shouting and begging people to open the door and let 2 women with small children on board. He ran and begged because our life depended on it. We started running too with children crying desperately. It’s either now or never. This is it. The train stopped AGAIN. Far away from the station, far away from the crown. Door opened and the conductor, who couldn’t take any more pleading, let us in. Just the two of us moms with children. We had to ride on the floor, on the steps of the train for over 12 hours, stopping and going between missile strikes (picture 2). But we made it! It seemed like an achievement of a lifetime to finally step on the peaceful ground on western Ukraine, just several miles away from Poland. It was a relief because I thought we could finally feel safe. Not for long though… It was a matter of 2 more days before missiles started striking Lviv and he had to leave Ukraine and everything we knew behind.