The Russian-Ukrainian war is the eleventh year of daily pictures of the occupiers’ atrocities and the defenders’ unprecedented heroism and humanity. These stories change like in a kaleidoscope, human memory is unable to record them all. However, the world still remembers the horror of the first days of the Russian invasion. Back then, the news was full of the names of cities and villages that were in the path of the Russian terrorist army. Hostomel was one of them. Read the story of Kateryna Brodatska, a software tester whose family was lucky to escape from hell in those days.
The war caught me and my husband Oleksandr in Sri Lanka, where we had gone on business for a short time. The news that Russia had attacked Ukraine, and the invading troops were advancing on Kyiv, was a blow to our hearts, because our nine-year-old daughter Nastya and my mother were at home, in Hostomel…
From the moment we learned the terrible news that war had broken out, my husband and I had only one desire: to get to Hostomel as soon as possible. Planes were no longer flying to Ukraine (and we had a return ticket for February 24), so after getting to Poland, we went to Lviv to our friends who agreed to shelter us. At that time, there were kilometer-long queues at the border to leave Ukraine, but we were not the only people returning home: many men were heading to Ukraine to defend their Motherland. Our friends and relatives warned us not to go to the war-torn Hostomel, but what can stop parents when their child is in danger?!
To explain all the horror of what was happening, I think it is enough to note that we live not far from the infamous Hostomel airfield, which was attacked by the enemy in the first hours of the war. The airfield was the main starting point for the Russian offensive on Kyiv. They tried to capture it, and our defenders repelled the attacks several times. But the forces were unequal, and the Ukrainian soldiers had to retreat.
From the very first hours of the war, enemy helicopters and bombers circled over the homes of local residents, and there was constant fighting, which resulted in a loss of communication, electricity, water and gas. To make matters worse, our high-rise building, like the neighboring ones, had no bomb shelter. There were no alternative sources of communication. If people wanted to say only two words to their relatives – “alive and well”, they had to line up near cars and, with the permission of their owners, charged their mobiles from car batteries. My mother kept in touch with us in the same way, but the signal was very unstable.
Our village head brought humanitarian aid to the townspeople, but on March 3, the occupiers cynically shot him dead…
On February 27, we were finally in Lviv. But it was a big challenge to get to the capital and then to Hostomel. We met frightened people who had left Kyiv and advised against returning there, because the occupiers were already swarming into the town from all sides like locusts.
Once we got a grip on ourselves and settled in Lviv, we considered all possible options to get to our family in the conditions when Russian troops attacked Hostomel, entrances and exits were blocked, bridges were blown up… My husband and I had only one goal: to take our child and mother away. Anxiety and worry for them increased every minute, because already on March 1 and 2 we lost touch with them. We couldn’t contact our neighbors either…
My husband left for Kyiv on February 29. I wanted to go home with him, but he said it was easier to travel alone.
Those were the hardest days of my life! I was left alone, in the dark and under stress. I didn’t know what happened to my daughter and mother, whether my husband would get to them. I couldn’t eat or drink and kept looking at my phone, following the troubling news. I closed my eyes to get at least some rest, but I was constantly overwhelmed by a wave of terror. I felt like I had already died ten times!..
When my husband reached Kyiv on March 1, he didn’t understand how and where to move further. There was mass panic at the train station, with frightened people everywhere. Sasha first decided to pick up the car we had left at Boryspil airport before flying to Sri Lanka and then drive on. He even managed to call a taxi and get to Boryspil, but he wasn’t allowed into the airport. The taxi driver, to whom my husband told our story, didn’t charge him a penny for the ride!
Oleksandr made posts on Facebook to find at least someone who could help him meet the family. And caring people responded! Our friends, who were in the Irpin sector as part of the Kyiv Territorial Defense at that time, also responded. For two days, my husband waited for a signal from the guys to move on. He never got it, so on March 3, he went home alone. However, there was already fighting in Hostomel, and Sasha was turned away at checkpoints with the words: “You are risking your life!” The soldiers of the Irpin Territorial Defense were especially uncompromising. In the end, he managed to persuade them, for nothing can stop a father who wants to save his child!
The man had to walk several kilometers to Hostomel under constant crossfire from Grads and artillery. It was incredibly hard and scary!
In Hostomel, he saw that our soldiers had taken up positions in the trenches and were waiting for the enemy landing force’s assault. Many invaders were already at the Antonov airfield, they broke into private homes… That’s why Ukrainian defenders tried to stop Sasha when he had only a few hundred meters to go: “Your house is in the part of the town we don’t control, you risk dying!” But he was adamant, and explained that the child he was going to was more precious than his life! Then the soldiers showed him the safest way and covered him while he was walking the hardest meters in his life. And the enemy fired mortars incessantly…
On the way across the bridge, Sasha saw the horrifying remnants of the Russian soldiers and riot police, who could be recognized by their chevrons and broken vehicles – enemy sabotage groups that tried to enter Kyiv. Shots and explosions were heard from everywhere, bullets whizzed past. He often had to fall to the ground, get up, and walk again…
When he finally opened the door to our apartment and hugged the family, he sighed with relief. But street fighting and shelling made it very dangerous to evacuate immediately. Friends also advised to wait until the enemy was “cleared out”.
And then the unexpected happened: the Russians began shelling our house from tanks and APCs. A shell hit an apartment upstairs, and it immediately caught fire! The next one hit our apartment, the children’s room, where my family was. But, thank God, the shell got stuck in the wall and didn’t explode. It stuck very close to my frightened daughter Nastya…
It became clear that staying in the apartment was no less dangerous than going into the unknown. I also realized that, so I screamed frantically into the phone: “Get out of there now!”
But first, Sasha, together with an elderly neighbor, shut off the gas under bullets and explosions to prevent the house from exploding and killing the people inside. They also tried to put out the fire in a neighboring apartment, but failed, as it was engulfed in flames. Then my husband began to convince the neighbors to evacuate at once, because the soldiers he knew had told him it would only get worse and rescue would not come soon. However, not everyone dared to leave their homes. Only two families asked to go with ours.
All my family took from the apartment was a dog and a cat. There was a dangerous path ahead across a destroyed bridge littered with corpses, with a sniper already working: he was just shooting civilians trying to get out of that hell.
My family and their fellow travelers slowly moved on, with Russian tanks and military vehicles following them. When the refugees finally got to the bridge, our defenders met them, took off their bulletproof vests and put them on the kids! It was such a sacrifice, such kindness!.. Ukrainian soldiers are all Heroes!
After the refugees reached Horenka, they were also picked up by our soldiers and taken to Kyiv. It seemed like a dream. Everyone was crying, and the people, who ventured to leave Hostomel with my husband, thanked him for saving him.
My family stayed in the capital for another day to recover from those events. And the next day, amid a terrible hustle and mass panic at the station, they left for Lviv by electric train.
Later we found out that thirty minutes after my family left the town, a fierce battle broke out in Hostomel, with enemy tanks shooting civilian cars trying to get out of the town. Many people died then… And the Russian occupiers took everyone who remained in the town hostage, took away their mobiles, went to their apartments, raped and killed them. Torture chambers appeared in Hostomel. People from Hostomel, Irpin, Moshchun, Havrylivka, Vorzel, Horenka, Mostyshche, and other places were also taken to the torture chambers set up by the invaders in nearby Bucha… This went on for a month until our troops kicked out the invaders on March 30. So leaving right then, without wasting a minute, was the only correct decision to save my family.
I could hardly wait to see my family. I didn’t think I’d be able to withstand such severe strain. The train arrived in Lviv at night, when the curfew had already begun. So neither I could reach them nor could they reach me. I’m grateful to the caring volunteers who helped us meet that night!
Later, my Nastya recalled that when she was leaving Hostomel, she stepped over burnt human bones; that they got water from accidental wells; spent the night in the basement; that from her window she saw enemy helicopters firing at Hostomel. All that horror was etched in her memory. A psychologist worked with her for a long time… But the main thing was that we were together!
Unfortunately, our worries didn’t end there. My brother, without telling any of us, immediately went to defend his hometown. We couldn’t contact him for some time. After a week of silence, my call was finally answered… by a doctor who said that my brother was in surgery after a serious injury and that everything would be fine.
After a short rehabilitation, he rejoined the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He told us about the hellish battles he took part in, but the worst thing, he said, was seeing his dead comrades, so he went to take revenge for them. Every day we pray for him and all our soldiers, who have become a human shield defending Ukrainians and the entire free world.
We stayed in Lviv for some time, because we had nowhere to return to – our apartment was destroyed. But constant alert sirens, going down into the basement and what we experienced continued to affect my health and my daughter’s state of mind. I‘m convinced: children should not see war! So we made a tough decision – to go to Poland. It was hard because we love our country above all else. We waited nine months for a much hoped-for victory, but, sadly, the war dragged on…
Since November 2022, my daughter and I have been living in Krakow. Two things are important for me here: finally, after the New Year, my daughter went to a local school, socializes with her peers, and maybe those hard memories of evacuation and related horrors will be erased from her memory. And, secondly, I finally heard the words that sounded like a compliment to me: “You look better now.” Before that, my friends used to say that I looked very weak. Of course, I’m still far from my former calmness and confidence, but I’m trying very hard to find mental balance and recover as soon as possible. I live, work, and I even started sleeping at night…
By the way, in April 2022, after Hostomel was liberated, we did visit our apartment, or rather, its ruins. It was painful to look at what the occupiers had done to our house. We saw someone’s graves in the yard…
We went up to the apartment, and there was an unbearable stench all around, all the doors and windows were broken, the walls were painted with enemy symbols and bad words… The occupiers took away appliances, even underwear and children’s clothes, destroyed photos! Those monsters destroyed my dreams and memories… I’ll never forgive them for this!
But I believe that we will win, that we will be reborn and become many times stronger. We, Ukrainians, cannot be broken!
Olena Oliynyk wrote down what Kateryna Borodatska said
*On the cover used a photo courtesy of Kateryna Borodatskaya and a Getty Images photo of Hostomel during the Russian attack
Supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.
