Many Ukrainians are still in the Russia-occupied territories. Everyone has their own reasons for this, and we won’t go into them now. I’ll only say that under occupation, all Ukrainians grasp at each other like at a straw. This is the only thing which helps you believe that one day you’ll be able to see with your own eyes how your enemy, whom you hate with every fiber of your being, finally leaves your homeland. However, not everyone can endure such a life for a long time. I want to tell you about what my road to freedom… Indeed, the world hasn’t the slightest idea who the Russian occupiers are…
Sticking together
To be strong enough to survive the hell of the Russian occupation day after day, to look your enemy in the eye every day and not attack him with your bare hands, you need your people’s support… At least a passing meeting, at least a few words. Sometimes even a look, a facial expression that says more than words, is enough. You aren’t alone, and that’s the most important.
But when one of the Ukrainians suddenly decides to leave the occupation, even if you aren’t too close, you immediately feel as if someone is tearing off a piece of your heart. Each time! All the time, as long as the occupation continues, some people decide to leave, while others keep staying.
I was among those who waited and believed, despite everything, and among those who one day took out their suitcases and started packing. So I know these feelings… I waited and believed for more than eighteen months. It was in the Kherson region… For 18 months, with a pang in my heart, I had been saying goodbye to those who were leaving and often didn’t even say the last word. When fleeing the occupation, few people talk about it out loud in advance. Only to the closest people. They are afraid of the evil eye. They are afraid that the occupiers will make them return home, not let them out, and then it’ll be even worse.
But then my time came. When I started packing for my journey, my neighbor, with whom we shared our hopes, a piece of bread, and our last penny, gave me a confused look and said: “Maybe you’ll change your mind?! How will I be here without you?!” “I won’t… I can’t stand it anymore, I can no longer watch it or wait…” I answered honestly.
But it was a complete stranger who surprised and impressed me the most. He worked in a toy store. I visited him shortly before I left, because it was my son’s birthday. Kids look forward to holidays even in peacetime, and even more so in times of war! While I was choosing toys, and I had to buy something small that wouldn’t take up much space in my suitcase, we started talking… It turned out that the shop owner’s wife had also left the occupation a few months before. And he remained waiting… I can’t even recall the man’s name now, but he told me that he had two or three little grandchildren, and his wife had gone to stay with them, so she had packed her suitcase almost completely with toys. “They were waiting for her so much! She left her own things behind and brought them a holiday!” the seller said enthusiastically. I smiled. Because I am like that myself…
As we parted, I wished my new friend to hold on and not lose faith… Despite everything! And he… He suddenly started crying. So unexpectedly and so sincerely… This adult and self-confident man cried saying goodbye to me, a complete stranger. There was everything in his tears: regret, pain, and despair… The tears that froze in my eyes were a response to his tears. And we didn’t need to say anything at that moment.
All life in one suitcase
It was the fall of 2023. For more than a month, the AFU had been holding a bridgehead in Krynky on the left bank of the Kherson region. This inspired incredible hope in the hearts of ordinary Ukrainians under occupation. We believed that one day our defenders would definitely go further and liberate our land up to the Black Sea coast. A woman I know who has a young son with a disability didn’t dare to leave, because she was sure her child wouldn’t survive such a hard long journey. “Maybe you should wait a little longer… Our guys will be here soon. We have to wait only a little bit. Just six to eight weeks,” the grieving mother told me when I met her at the store two days before I left. God knows I wished for the same thing she did. But the decision was made, and I was afraid not only of the occupation, but also of the bloody terror and violence that the Russian troops committed while leaving the occupied territories. I was afraid for myself, for my kid, for our lives.
While packing for a long journey, I wasn’t sure I would return. I believed in the best, but for some reason I packed as if I was leaving my home forever. So which of my most valuable things should I take with me? And what is the most valuable thing? At this point, I once again realize who I am. I go to the bookcase and take books – lots of books! As much as can fit in my suitcase. And these aren’t just books. These are books in Ukrainian and about Ukraine. Our traditions, our holidays, Ukrainian culture and lifestyle since ancient times… This is what I teach my kid. After a few minutes, I realize I can’t fit everything in… No, I don’t put the books back on the shelf. I take my favorite black suede high heels out of my suitcase and put them back in the closet. Instead, I put another book in my suitcase! Then I put my favorite booties out, and the suitcase has room for a few more books. I’m so happy! I’ll have many more shoes in my life and even better ones than these. But the books – I don’t want them to disappear in this war… And I’m not sure I’ll ever buy the same ones. These are my most valuable things!
A journey I wouldn’t wish on anyone
The long-awaited morning finally arrived. My mom stays at home. She just won’t survive such a long journey because of her serious illness. And she also believes that everything will be over in a few months, so she doesn’t want us to leave. I ask her not to cry when we leave. It’ll be easier for everyone. She didn’t disappoint me. I cross the threshold of my home, feeling as if I am diving into a terrible abyss. In a way, it is really so. Since the first day of the full-scale war, I had never left my home and could only imagine what the occupiers’ checkpoints were like. Besides, the only way to leave the occupation for free Ukraine was through Russia and third countries… The enemy might have had a lot of questions about my pre-war work as a journalist during the very first inspection. So those eighteen months were for me like living in a reservation from which I had no way out. And then, I finally plucked up the courage…
A minibus came to pick us up. We loaded things into the trunk and set off. But we stopped after a few kilometers. Heavy, large concrete blocks laid out in zigzags blocked the road. The only way to move on was to meander between them. But first we had to explain to a freak in a balaclava and military uniform holding a machine gun where we were going. The driver took this matter upon himself. Five kilometers later, the situation repeated, but this time all passengers had to show their passports. Within a few hours, before we reached the administrative border with the Zaporizhzhia region, we passed up to 30 checkpoints! Each time, the Russian military stopped us, asked questions and often checked our passports.
One of such inspections could put an end to our departure. There was a man from the West of Ukraine among the travelers, and for the occupiers he was an absolute enemy, a potential scout/spy or whatever. They took the 45-year-old man out of the bus and interrogated him for an hour and a half in the open field: what was he doing in the Kherson region of the “Russian Federation”?!
In fact, that laborer came to the Kherson region to work in the summer of 2021. He worked for farmers in the fields, met a woman with whom he started a relationship, and stayed in the village with her. They didn’t manage to formalize their marriage as the war broke out. And then they decided to leave the occupation together. But the Russians at the checkpoint were not satisfied with his story. They ordered the man to take out his suitcase. They rummaged through his things. They interrogated him again and again. All of us who waited for him in the bus were praying incessantly. And when we saw him coming our way with a suitcase and passport in his hand, we rejoiced as if he were our family.
As we approached the temporarily occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region, they moved us to another bus, and there were more passengers. Oh, my God! It was also a minibus, with just a few more seats. We’ll be traveling in it for at least the next two days! On the way, we pick up people from Melitopol and Berdyansk and in the evening we arrive in the occupied Mariupol. The wounded, raped and destroyed city greets us with ghost houses, black window holes and empty streets. It’s eerie to be here, even if you’re on a bus, so you pray that the driver will drive through the city that Russia has turned into a real ghost as fast as possible.
First and second class people
Our first major inspection began half an hour after we left Mariupol, in Novoazovsk. Occupied by Russia since 2014, the city in the Donetsk region became not just a border crossing point with the Russian Federation during the war, but also a place for filtering Ukrainians leaving the occupation. We formed a long line, had our suitcases scanned, filled out some form with a lot of stupid questions. But the most disgusting thing begins later, behind the door, which everyone enters alone. Men are kept for half an hour to an hour, women a little less. Our kids sleep on suitcases in the corridor during that time. In the office, they take our full-face and profile photos and fingerprint us like criminals. Then there’s a “conversation”… Our filtration – twenty passengers in a minibus – begins at 8 p.m. and lasts until almost midnight. Men are more nervous. Later I’ll understand why. In my bus, almost all people are patriots of Ukraine (perhaps there really were spies and scouts among them). None of us has a Russian passport. And now we have to go through the hardest part to finally break free.
While we wait in line for filtration, a large comfortable double-decker bus pulls up to the checkpoint! Smiling women in mink coats and stylish men with expensive suitcases get off it! They put all the Russian passports in one hand, and then a Russian customs officer takes the pile for stamping. No checks! Everything is like for the upper caste! And we stand a few meters away: tired, nervous, with a heap of bags and waiting for our “sentence”.
Fortunately, all of us passed the filtration in Novoazovsk. We were happy to return to our bus and at midnight headed towards the aggressor country to cover the long way to the Latvian border. Over the next day, we drove north. The farther we went, the more snow and fewer towns, villages and at least some signs of human life we saw. At 3pm on the next day, we reach Moscow. My feelings are even worse than when we were driving through Mariupol. I feel like I’m in the enemy’s jaws, and I want to get away from here as soon as possible. But outside of Moscow, a few dozen kilometers away, we have an unpleasant experience. The road patrol stops the bus under the pretext of checking the driver’s documents, and ten minutes later enters the cabin and asks us, the passengers, to hand over our documents for inspection. In a minute, the patrolman had 20 Ukrainian passports in the hands! We stand on the highway near a field. We wait for half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half… The driver smokes half a pack of cigarettes. We cannot leave the bus to use the toilet. Little kids, who are more than tired of the journey, start crying. Madness! My biggest fear is that we will be returned to the occupied territory, after we have already travelled over a thousand kilometers to freedom in these thirty-six hours… I’m scared that they may take us to a detention center and imprison us, because we look suspicious to them. The bus is full of Ukrainians! Everyone was worried about their own things, and then someone told a joke, and everyone started laughing. It was very timely. If only those damned patrolmen didn’t think we were laughing at them! Because then they would definitely not let us go! An hour and a half pass, and they return our documents! Off we go!
Transition to another reality
We’ve been on the way for almost two days now. From the mild autumn in the South of Ukraine, we’ve got into the harsh Russian winter. From +8 to -15, and there’s almost a blizzard outside. It is night. The driver who takes us to the Russia-Latvia checkpoint receives a call on his cell phone from “someone”. He is instructed to urgently change the route and choose another border crossing point, as, where we were going, buses with Ukrainians have been waiting for filtration for two days. We make a “loop” and add more than one hundred kilometers and two hours of travel time. Finally, the border! A few hundred meters away, behind tall lanterns and a several-meter high fence is our freedom! But we still have to get there, and these last meters of the foot crossing will be the hardest we’ve seen in the last two days!
Russians don’t want to let anyone through at night. We stand in the cold for two to six hours. I freeze my toes off. In the morning, they let us in a few at a time. The children, frozen, exhausted and frightened, instantly fall asleep on the cold metal benches in the corridor. After nine in the morning, they start “inviting” us in one by one. First, all women, even with their kids. After them – men. Hell begins. Everyone had their own experience. And no one wanted to talk about it later. We, twenty people from our bus, get stuck at this Russian border crossing for a whole day! During the filtration, a young woman swallowed her SIM card unnoticed so that no one would know that she is a patriot of Ukraine. A guy was threatened with having his knees broken just because the phrase “how to leave the occupation” was found in his phone’s Google search history. Someone was banned from entering Russia and the occupied territory for the next 50 years, because the song “Putin – huilo” was restored on his cell phone (but that person was even happy with such a “sentence”, because all he dreamed of was to leave the territory of tyranny). And one man among us, a very inconspicuous and elderly teacher from the Zaporizhzhia region, did not return from filtration at all! Our bus waited for him until the last, but in vain. We still don’t know what happened to him.
Latvia welcomed us warmly, despite the snow and frost. Everyone registered their arrival to the EU country at the customs post in a matter of minutes. Our hands were shaking with excitement. Tears kept coming to my eyes. I couldn’t believe that we were finally here, safe! At the checkpoint exit, a permanent tent of Latvian volunteers was waiting for the exhausted Ukrainian refugees. Their hot pickle soup and coffee seemed to be the most delicious in our lives. And that was the only taste for all of us – the taste of freedom!
During those three days, it was as if I had lived another long and difficult life in another, parallel, reality. The fear of what I experienced still haunts me. Even if you drive bad thoughts away during the day, the subconscious catches up with you in your dreams and brings you nightmares. All of them are about the occupation.
It’s been 10 months since I left, and the situation on the left bank of the Kherson region is still unchanged. In mid-July 2024, the AFU had to leave the bridgehead in Krynky, because within a year, Russia had completely razed the village to the ground and turned it into a pile of rubble. But I know for sure that people in my region are still waiting for liberation. They believe they will still have time to live under the flag of their beloved Ukraine. And recently, 10 months after I left, my mother told me for the first time that she was very happy that we didn’t stay…
Author: Olena Horoshok.
All photos for the article are illustrative, and provided by the author.
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.