My Parents Have Been Under Russian Occupation For 50 Days
I want them to survive so they can meet their new grandchild.
Before the full-scale war on Ukraine, everyone was taking care of their families — going to work, raising children, dreaming, loving, watching their favorite movies, relaxing in nature, traveling, and hugging their loved ones. We were meeting up with friends in Gorky Park, and driving our kids to Feldman Park on the weekends to check out many exotic animals there. We lived, loved, and created.
I had my own clothing store, ZAZAMUT, in the city center. I organized girls’ parties, retreats, travels, exhibits, and did what I loved most — made clothes for very beautiful Ukrainian women. I went out to eat at restaurants, took walks in the city, made big plans with my husband. Most importantly, a whole new universe was growing inside me. I was going to be a mom.
To get ready for the most important event in our lives, my husband and I started renovations in our newly bought apartment, which we have been saving for a long time. We started preparing — picking out strollers and photographers, etc. When we found out we were going to have a baby, we shared the news with our parents and made plans to visit the shore as a family. All that was taken away from us in one moment. Those who cynically came here in the name of “Russian peace”, took it — destroying everything on their way. Right now, I am writing this from the hospital.
On February 24th, at 5:02 am, a phone call from my mom woke me up: “Darling, the war has started. I am not kidding. Did you pack your documents, just in case…”. We lost our cellular signal for a second. At 5:10am we lost connection for good.
My parents live in a little village call Tsirkuny, in Kharkov Region, only 40 kilometers from the border with Russia. It was occupied in the first minutes of Russia’s vile attack, at night, when everyone was sleeping. The village has been oppressed by more than 50 days of fear and despair. In the midst of it, are my parents.
I remember how my husband and I would always stop at this little store in the village on the way to visit my parents and pick up delicious baked goods and ice cream for everyone. That store is gone. The occupants burned it. I remember how my dad planted his garden the year before last and was supposed to have a really good harvest this year. But the garden is gone. A missile hit, leaving a huge crater behind. I remember how proud my mom was to have beautiful and straight rows of cabbage, beets, carrots, and greenery. On the warm nights we would sit outside together, discuss what happened on that day, what we were going to make for lunch tomorrow, and when we were going to get together again for a BBQ. And now, I don’t know if we will ever discuss that again. I do not know if my parents will survive.
Once in a while, when my mom manages to get through on the phone, I get bits of information. I know that my parents don’t have windows in the house, and their car was shot up. First, they were hiding in the root cellar, now they live there, and there’s no food or water left. We speak a minute or two, then they hang up and hide the phone, because the occupants are tracking down and taking away cell phones, so people don’t share any information. She talks quietly and careful about their life in occupation because she is afraid to reveal too much, and she’s worried about my pregnancy. She doesn’t want to rattle my nerves. Even in a situation like this, she’s concerned about me. Every talk ends with tears and her words: “I’m scared!”
The tears of my mother — her fear — breaks my heart to pieces.
The village has no electricity, gas, or wi-fi connection from the first days of occupation. For a month and a half, people have been hiding in their root cellars, not leaving them. There is no food or water in the village. The stores were bombed or robbed by Russian soldiers. People can’t get medical help, and drugstores are closed. But even if they weren’t, no one is going outside. Mothers are not letting their daughters out; afraid they will get raped and murdered. Men are afraid of being shot in the middle of the street. Humanitarian help from the Ukrainian side is not being let in, and volunteers and civilians willing to help are being shot on the spot. So, they simply stopped trying to get food, water, or medical supplies to those territories.
The occupiers are also not offering humanitarian help. In Russia, they don’t need fake pictures of happy local residents for their lying state-owned TV channels, like in Melitopol or Berdiansk. Russia simply wants to eliminate every Ukrainian — they want genocide, terror, and crime without punishment.
Leaving the region is only possible in one direction — toward Belgorod, Russia. Locals don’t want to, but some go out of despair. On the border they have to go through a filtration camp, where they get undressed, searched, interrogated. Their phones checked. As if the killers are us, not them. “Passionate interrogations” last as long as 24 hours. Some people get sent back, and a few lucky ones get back to Ukraine through Europe and tell horrible things about life in Tsirkuny. Looting, beatings, dead bodies lying around in the streets, shot up cars and buildings. The occupiers are looting everything from homes: consumer tech, clothes, washing machines, even carpets. Carpets. They are carrying out carpets from the houses. Poor, desolate, fallen people, and they are saving us? Saving us by murdering, raping, and extinguishing our people?
Still, no one can stop this horror. How are we going to live? What are we going to dream about when sounds of bombers and GRADs are everywhere? Every night I dream of saving my parents from the occupied village. I keep running and running somewhere in my dreams. Then I wake up to a reality of women with small children, the elderly, and bed-bound people who stayed, dying in their own homes without food or water.
I can’t read or listen to the lies from the Russian media, that they are bombing military objects only. They are destroying entire cities with rockets. The schools and hospitals are burning. The missiles hit the stores where people stand in line to buy food.
The scariest thing is when you stand in line of a supermarket yourself then hear GRAD hitting nearby and a multistory building explodes. When you see the complete terror in peoples’ eyes who run, leaving their food behind. And you run with them, choking with horror, to the basement, without food, and you don’t know what to do. You try to hang on, stay strong and breathe, but fear and pain inside take over all senses and break you.
I remember my grandma’s tales about WW2 and all its’ terror. I was sitting next to her, listening, but having a hard time imagining all of it. I no longer have to imagine it; I’m living through it with every cell in my body. I will never forget that piercing bomber sound, the explosions, how the earth shakes under it.
The last time I spoke with my dad I was literally begging them to run or hide somewhere, and he replied: “Where will we run if they won’t let us? We are in a complete occupation and lawlessness! Where will we hide when the craters are everywhere? They will get you either way. I kiss you, sweetie. We are hanging on!”
My heart is aching for my loved ones. I haven’t been able to get in touch with mom for a week now. It’s scary to think what they are going through, what they are eating, how they live in a root cellar, and, most importantly, what’s happening to their psyche. My imagination is painting terrible pictures, especially after what happened to occupied regions when Russians left: Bucha, Irpin, Gostomel, Borodianka. After they dropped the rocket on Kramatorsk railroad station, where thousands of civilians were waiting on the evacuation train. Russia is capable of anything.
I am afraid it’s going to be worse than Bucha. I am afraid that no one is talking about those territories, like they don’t even exist. I am afraid for those people, who die in their beds because there’s no food. They need humanitarian corridors; they need a voice. I want to scream. I want everyone to know about them. Right this moment my parents are hiding in the root cellar, with no food or water left. I want the world to respond, to do something.
Every day I wait for a phone call from my parents.
Mom, dad, we will hug each other one day.
