After weeks of war in Ukraine, recent immigrant Grygorii Rozdorozhniuk finally connected with his aunt Olena Lugova. Grygorii shares some of his conversation of her harrowing escape from her home in Dymer, Ukraine as Russian troops occupied. 

To escape Russian shelling, Olena who is in her sixties had sought underground shelter in her home city of Dymer. Finally, on Tuesday, March 15 around 9:30 am Olena with a group of approximately 250 people, began to evacuate Dymer which is now under Russian occupation, their destination Lviv, a city in the western part of Ukraine, and near the Polish border.  

Except for the clothes on her back and her purse that contained her identification and two apples, Olena left everything she owns behind in Dymer. The journey would prove to be a turbulent one, avoiding landmines, Russian firing, and Russian aggression. 

Her journey began with climbing into a Red Cross minivan, the Red Cross drove her from Dymer to the outskirts of Demydiv, a city just north of Kyiv and also under Russian occupation. As they drove, firing continued, and as a safety precaution to avoid Russian aggression she was ordered to keep her head down and not to look at Russian soldiers. Upon reaching the outskirts of Demydiv she had to walk and sometimes run a three-kilometre stretch which meant actively avoiding continued firing and landmines. 

“As they were walking through Demydiv they got warned that there are some red coloured rags on the ground and not to approach them, or risk being killed” as Rozdorozhniuk recounts his aunt's ordeal. 

At one point she had to cross a creek because the bridge had been destroyed, the alternative was a make-shift bridge created with flat-bed trailers provided by the Ukrainian military. “It was not very stable, so you had to be very careful as you were walking across,” Rozdorozhniuk continues. 

“As they were leaving the area there were lots of Russians, a Russian soldier was giving them little plastic bags with candies, first they didn’t want to take those bags but then they got told that if they don’t take the candies they might provoke Russian aggression, so they all took the bags of candies, but once they got out of that area, they just threw the bags in the garbage, no one wanted those candies from Russian hands.” Grygorii’s aunt tells him. 

After the three-kilometre stretch, volunteers drove the group to the Kyiv train station, once there, more volunteers drove Olena to the city of Lviv where her daughter Olga lives. Normally the commute from Dymer to Lviv would take just over seven hours but under current circumstances, the commute took 16.5 hours. The drive from Kyiv to Lviv meant avoiding highways and taking back roads. Olena arrived to be with her daughter in Lviv at 2 am on March 16.  

The impact of war can have devastating effects on civilians and their mental health and Olena is no exception. According to Rozdorozhniuk, his aunt has been advised not to watch any programming regarding the war or to answer further questions about her journey as her emotional injuries run too deep.   

“They live in an apartment building (referring to Olga) and there’s a family above them and they have a six or seven-year-old boy and sometimes he is playing, and he jumps or something, and because of this noise my auntie covers her head, and she gets scared, and she asks what’s happened,” Rozdorozhniuk explains.  “When someone shuts a door or there is a loud sound she shakes.” 

Rozdorozhniuk shared, while Lviv appears to be a little safer than Dymer, Olena can still hear air strikes happening in this area as well. 

Regarding other members of Rozdorozhniuk’s family, his mother, sister-in-law and two children have escaped to Germany, his brother remains in Ukraine, and he has not heard from his father in several days. His father lives in a major hot spot, the northeastern part of Ukraine near Kyiv. Internet and cellular services do not appear to be working. 

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