Plain English with Derek Thompson - “Every Person Is Ready to Die for Our Country”: Five Ukrainians on Life Inside Putin’s War Zone

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Imagine running from your home, from a foreign army, knowing that every decision you make could be the difference between life and death—stay or flee? Turn left or right? Leave at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m.? That is the world in which today’s guests live. Five Ukrainians who live in—or have recently fled from—Kyiv tell Derek what it’s like living in the Ukrainian capital, escaping to Poland, and returning to Kyiv to fight the Russian army. Host: Derek Thompson Producer: Troy Farkas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, Derek. So it was 4.30 in the morning when I woke up. This is Nadia Shapova. She is Ukrainian. A fashion stylist and a journalist. On the morning of February 24th, she was in bed in her apartment in Kiev. But then I heard like a blast. I heard it very far away. It seems like something, it could be like a car. So I'm used to these noises from cars. I was thinking like, it's a car, but something inside me were saying me like, no, it's not. And I was keep on trying to sleep and then I heard one more time the blast. At this moment, she realized Kiev was under attack by Russia. Nadia grabbed her passport, her marriage license, water, car keys. She took the

elevator downstairs to the parking lot, shaking with fear. Just as she was about to start the engine and began the hours-long drive to Western Ukraine, a thought flashed in her head, that she might never see her apartment again, that she might never see Kiev again. She realized she needed to take one more thing. I was like sitting and thinking that I have my cats there. And I was thinking that I will be back to this apartment. I was like, no, something inside me told me, like, you need to go. go up again and take the cats.

So on the third time, I was shaking in the elevator again. And like, I just took these cats and it's it. This was last time I've been in my apartment because I just start driving constantly to the west of Ukraine because I realized that it's going to be worse and worse. And now I realize that I did a very right choice to go away from Kiev. Nadia Shepoval is one of six Ukrainians that I've been in touch with over the last week. They are mostly in their 30s. They are artists, business people, restaurant owners, all lived in or near the capital of Kiev,

at least until the war began. Because of internet issues and limited cellular phone access, because they are on the run during a war and bombs are falling all around them, we did not speak on the phone. Instead, they recorded voice memos to recount their experience during the war. Then they sent the voice memos to me through a secure app, which I converted into an edited audio that you're about to hear. This past Sunday, a Russian force near Kiev fired shells toward a bridge where families were fleeing the fighting.

The explosion killed a mother and her children and left the father bloodied and unconscious. In a green carrying case scattered by the blasts, a small dog was heard barking. Imagine running from your home, from a foreign army. their missiles, their mortar shells, knowing that every decision you make could be the difference between life and death. Stay or flee. Turn left or right. Leave at 5 a.m. or 5.30. Every decision is potentially fatal or freeing. And now imagine making those decisions every minute of every day for weeks and weeks. That is the world in which these six Ukrainians live. There is only so much we can learn about this war by thinking about the biggest picture, strategy, finance, economics.

This is war and life is what matters most. Here are six lives that should matter to all of us. I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English. My name is Anna Kazitschenka. I'm from Kiev, Ukraine. And the day the war started, I was at home sleeping in my bed. when at 6 a.m., my friend knocked on my door, I opened it and he said, wake up. Russia has actually started the war. Anna owns a restaurant in Kiev.

In the days after the initial bombing, she decided to stay in the capital. She tries to make everything seem normal as possible, but it's getting harder by the day. Every single day I wake up, I go to my restaurant and I keep telling the guys, don't throw away these greens, soon we'll be cooking our salads again. But today was probably the night that I realized that it's not going to end soon. And today reading the news, I was completely sure and I realized that NATO will not close the skies and we're left here all alone and no one's going to help us. Many Ukrainians seem to have accepted that NATO won't close the skies, that is in force

a no-fly zone that would entail direct warfare between nuclear powers. but this means Ukraine alone will have to take on one of the largest militaries on the planet. It is a terrifying prospect. So Anna, a mother, has been torn between staying with her parents near Kiev or trying to go west where her husband and son live. The last 24 hours were probably the most challenging for me because I had to decide if I stay or if I go to the western part of Ukraine and see my son. and as a mother, of course, I felt and I feel that I need to be with my son and maybe take him out of the country

because his father cannot leave. But my parents are here in Kiev and they are outside of the city in a house where the bombs are falling all the time and they hear all those guns and everything. They're completely scared. They're in a basement all the time and it's a very dangerous war zone at the moment. It's like 20 kilometers outside of Kiev and they can get out because the bridge that connects this little cottage village where they are. It's ruined and it's really dangerous to go there.

So they still have food, they have everything, but they're in this house. and they cannot leave. Anna Koziceenko had a choice. To stay in Kiev near her parents or to leave her parents and go west to her son. She thought she only might have to stay for a few days, but now she says she feels trapped in her hometown with Russian forces closing in from the north and the south and the west.

And we are starting to learn just how Russian forces treat the civilians who do not flee. It's just torn me into two pieces, the one wanting badly to be with my child and the other one that wants to stay here and help as a citizen and be close to my parents. And this is a difficult decision that I couldn't make. And while I was trying to make it, it became obvious that it's too late to leave. It's too dangerous right now. In one Instagram recording between a musician, Nadia Dorofiva and her assistant, You're about to hear the assistant begin by telling the musician that she tried to escape her town,

but the roads were blocked or ruined or occupied by Russian tanks. This upcoming conversation is in Ukrainian, but I'll interpret it throughout, and the emotion in their voices doesn't require any translation. Can you go around them, Nadia asks? Can you pick a different road? No, her assistant says, knee, knee. There's nowhere to help. They're trapped.

Nadia asks about her family. In the next clip, you'll hear the assistant named several men, Papa, Vova, Banik, Uncle Sasha, the men in her family. The last time she saw them, seven armed Russians were at the door of a nearby home. She doesn't know if her father or the rest of her family is alive. So, Darin, they just, just They just

They just They just straight? Prosta, just, she says, meaning simply, Are the Russians simply shooting people? Yes, Nadia, she says. They simply see people and shoot them.

It is for this reason that many people who have escaped Kiev are coming back. So my name is I'm listening to Kiev. I'm living in Kiev. born in Kiev.

Alexander Ganovsky, a businessman, escaped from Kiev after the bombing started. Like most potential refugees, he went west to the city of Leviv, which is near Poland, and Ushgrut, which borders Slovakia and Hungary. But he made the decision to come back to the capital to defend it. So the last 24 hours, I think it was pretty challenging. So I, from Kiev, I went to Ushgir, and I came back to Lviv, and from Biv, we were supposed to go back to Kiev, like three of us in the end of the day. there were 30 of us, 12 cars, going rushing to Kiev for help.

Yeah. So the last 24 hours, I think it's like, has always been disturbing. Right now we're equipping ourselves, helmets, armor wrists, everything that you need for the combat. And we are starting our training soon. War remakes reality. Rewrites the stories of people's lives. Restaurant owners become resistance fighters. Fashion stylists become refugees.

is businessmen become soldiers. I was pretty wealthy and I can afford almost anything that you can afford. And right now it's like, hey, you are changing your habits completely. That's what I can tell you in like just one small sentences, but that's the new reality. And you are not, let's say, in your reality, that's the way it cramom. and even if you hear the noise of the rockets or bombarding or whenever they're shell in Kiev, you don't care anymore. It was scary for the first day when I arrived.

Right now it's day fours. And I completely, like, I'm okay with that. Yeah, it's like you are adopting as all human beings on this planning, adopting to the new changes to the shifts or challenges. That's the way how we're adopted here in Kiev. I asked Alexander, having witnessed the initial bombing of Kiev, having lost perhaps his entire business, having escaped from his home to the West, and then having returned to his home to fight for his country, what was the most painful part? The scariest moment was those, like, 5 a.m. bombarding as, like, my grandmother, she, like, just, when she was alive, she told me a story about how Key was attacked by Nazis in 1941. And that was pretty much the same.

Yeah, it was exactly the same situation. And it's like a flash flashback, you know? It was absolutely insane. It was goddamn scary. Whenever you're fearing the sounds of like the blows that's like going somewhere. You cannot see them, but you understand it's fucking war. And it's like putting fucking started the war. The most painful part is seeing how our nation.

how our nation is like being suppressed by Russians. Yeah. How all these kids are dying, all this family are fleeing. That's the most devastating things for me. The last story I want to share with you was sent via text. The author is a Ukrainian American named Yvgeny Galyuk, who is living in Kiev with his daughter when the bombing began. His wife lives in the US.

When the bombing started, he picked up his daughter and a work colleague at 5.45 a.m. and started driving west. This is his story. Quote, we drove for 10 hours to Leviv in western Ukraine, where we made a push for the Polish border. The car line at the border was approximately 28 kilometers or 17 miles long. Some had been in line for four days. At 3 p.m. we decided to walk 17 miles with my daughter. We arrived at the border at midnight. We spent the night outside the Gates. It was a scene out of 1945. Mass hysteria, mostly women and children,

no border guards, people pushing and shoving, fighting, women and children crying, people fainting, freezing temperatures. Around 8 a.m., customs agents began to show up. Gates started to open. We were finally organized and let through. At passport control, the agents discovered that

I didn't have an entry stamp in my U.S. passport. I forgot that I used my Ukrainian passport when I entered Ukraine in early February. They immediately turned me and my daughter around

and sent me back inside Ukraine. At this point, I broke down mentally and physically. We hadn't eaten anything from February 24th outside some gas station snacks. We hadn't slept since 5 a.m. February 24th,

and now it was noon on the 26th. I was borderline hysterical, famished. My brain was deliria. I was met with the stark realization that I might not have the energy or mental capacity to make the 28 kilometer trek back to town. We hitchhiked several kilometers back

when I called people to see if anyone knew anyone in the area that could take us in. We got in touch with a family that agreed to let us stay the night. We arrived at 7 p.m. We ate and went to sleep. The next three days I spent with this family. They were an absolute blessing. I could tell you a whole other story about them

and their kindness. Meanwhile, my wife, who lives in the United States, used her network to figure out how we could escape even with my passport issue. On day four, we decided we would move from Lviv to Ushgrut, a city in western Ukraine near five different border crossings. We drove another five hours through many checkpoints and blockposts. In Ujzgrut, we were greeted by friends who had already got an apartment there a few days earlier. Eight of us slept in a two-bedroom.

450 square foot apartment for the next few days. After three days, we returned to the border. The same problem arose. No stamp in my passport. I stayed diligent. I spoke English. I explained that I lived in the U.S. for 30 years, was schooled there, had my whole life there.

The guards took my passport and left behind closed doors. We waited for 30 minutes. The guards returned, handed me the passports, and left. No instructions, nothing. We started to flip the people. pages of my passport to see if there were new stamps. We found the pages. There it was. A stamp with the day's date. We did it. We were free. We all thought that the world will stand up and protect us. We all thought that NATO will protect us. We all thought that the war in the middle

of Europe is not happening. It's not possible. Anna Kuzacenko, the Kiev restaurant, owner again. But now we all feel that we're left alone, but we still believe in our president. We still believe in our army and we still believe in our people. And as Ukrainians, we feel very united. I can't even describe this feeling. The love for your country, the love for your people, it's enormous. I've never felt like that. We hope for the best. We right now, we're not waiting that someone will save us. We know that no one will, but we know we're going to win. We believe in that. It's just that probably it will take time and a lot of people will be killed every day. We hope for the best, but we do not expect a miracle anymore.

As of this recording, Russian forces continue their bombardment of Ukraine. They continue, to make progress in the South. But Ukrainians have held up surprisingly well near the capital of Kiev. We don't know where we are in this war, the beginning, middle, or end. But Anna isn't waiting on a miracle from the West or from above. She has placed her faith in people like Alexander Ganovsky, Ukraine's own, to defend their home. To Alexander and Anna. To Nadia. To Vova and Banik and Uncle Sasha and to Elena. Stay safe. Stay strong. Slava Ukraine.