Olha (29), Oleh (8)

March 20, 2022, Studienka. Day 24 of the war.

Olha is from Dnipro. From the same city that was called Yekaterinoslav in the times before the communist era and to which Potemkin wanted to move the capital from St. Petersburg. Today, the Russian army is bombing it.

"We fled to Slovakia, because the war had started in Ukraine and there was no longer a peace in our hometown of Dnipro. We heard frequent sirens, sounds of rockets falling down. We have been in Slovakia since March 9. We were very well received here, we got everything necessary to continue a normal life."

"My little son is very playful. He has been going to school for three days now. We want to go home. I told my son the truth that the war had started at home and that we had to flee to safety. My husband is still at home, fortunately he doesn't have to fight for now, it's not his turn yet. I call my parents and my husband every day. They say that so far it is more or less quiet there, that they can hear sirens and the distant sounds of missiles being fired. They say is good that we are in a safe place. The situation in our city is calmer than in Kiev, Kharkov or Cherson. Our house is still standing, only the airport was destroyed on the first day of the war."

"We have traveled to Slovakia by train via Lviv. The trains were overcrowded. There were 11 of us in the 4-seater compartment. The parents slept sitting holding their children on their knees. Then they put us on a bus and took us to Poland. In Poland we traveled through Warsaw, there we changed the train twice and finally we got to Bratislava by train. We've been here for 3 days now. It's just me, my son, my nephews and my sister-in-law. We knew we were going to Slovakia. When we decided to run away, we didn't have enough time to pack many things, just enough to change once. My mom didn't want to leave her husband, so she stayed at home with him. My father is 58 years old, he survived a heart attack. He probably wouldn't have been able to undergo the journey that we did."

"We have a family in Russia, but we are not in contact with them. They do not understand us, they think that the Russian army is only bombing cities like Donetsk and Luhansk, not the center of Ukraine. Our Crimean friends think the same. I don't want to wish anything bad to anyone, I just wish they (Russians) could leave as soon as possible so we can go home. We are fine here, but being at home is being at home. We do not speak the language, children also do not understand anything at school. The first words we learned in Slovak were "yes", and then "hello" and "a baby."