The Decibel - One year later: The stories of Ukrainian refugees

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Since Russia invaded one year ago, eight million people have left Ukraine.Olena Tsebenko, Sonya and Oliver Hawes and George Fedorov all left behind their homes on February 24, 2022. From births to deaths and marriages, they share their stories of how their lives have carried on in the wake of the war.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hello? Hi, is this Olena? Yes, yes. Yes. Sorry. Hi, this is Meneka calling you. I'm a journalist with the Globe and Mail in Canada. How are you doing?

Thank you. I'm fine. Thank you. In the last few weeks, I've been speaking to people who fled the war in Ukraine. Hello? Hi, is this Sonia? It's Alam, I've been speaking to people who fled the war in Ukraine. Hello? Hi, is this Sonia? It's Oliver. Oliver?

Yeah. Both of you. Hello? Hi, is this George? Yeah. Olana Sabenko, Sonia and Oliver Haas, and George Fedorov all left their homes and their lives behind in Ukraine after Russia invaded on February 24, 2022. The 24th of February, it was at morning, at 6 o'clock in the morning, I remember this, I woke up at 6 o'clock and we...

I had some stuff already packed because I was nine months pregnant. It was quite quiet. I remember that in my morning routine, I received lots of text messages from my friends all saying like asking is it real what's happening how are you what's going on I think like my husband's mom wake up first and like hey hey, like things are happening. It really came as a shock. And, you know, especially waking up at four o'clock in the morning to like the sound of bombs is not something that I really ever expected I would live through. And it's not something I would ever hope anyone else has to live through.

But I know there's a lot of people who do. Olana, George, Sonia and Oliver don't know each other. But in the last year, they've been on a similar journey of displacement. And all four of them kept in touch with Globe correspondent Paul Waldie and photographer Anana Ljuminovic. Today, we're going to bring you their stories. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. We originally wanted to get married before the end of 2021. That's Oliver Haas. He's an American who was in Kiev when the war began.

His parents had been living there for years. And while visiting them in 2019, he met Sonia. She's now his wife. But then a string of things happened. We had a miscarriage, and then we ended up having... Oh, I'm so sorry. we both got COVID after that. Things just kept getting pushed back and basically we had to have a date

locked in. As we were getting to the beginning of the year, I was like oh, it's the 22nd or it's 2022. I was like, why don't we get's the 22nd or it's 2022. So I was like, you know, why don't we get married February 22nd just to make it really fun and easy to remember. Yeah, my husband did everything for not forgetting this time. And so even though it was small and quaint, it was really something special that we cherish. But it was also something that seemed so long ago.

And when we look at pictures and stuff, we're kind of like, wow, that was really nice. We really enjoyed that. But we almost immediately afterwards, we had to put it aside because we had other pressing things just two days after. The world was shaken by Russia's invasion. But perhaps not as much as some Ukrainians were. The two countries are more than just neighbors. They have a shared history. Many Ukrainians speak Russian, and some have family in both countries.

So when the invasion started, some have family in both countries. So when the invasion started, some people were in disbelief. Like, you're like, no, this is some sort of joke. It's not real. I have my best friend who still lives in Kiev, and her grandpa, he was born in 1925 and he was fighting on the first, like Second World War. And the first months for him was pretty hard because like it's a lot of family that they have in Russia and a lot of friends that you have that you can't believe that they will go and murder someone.

A lot of Ukrainians who speak, now they changed the language, but they speak the same language for a long time. And they're like, no, this can't be happening. A lot of people didn't go to basements or hide somewhere because they wasn't doing that. Meanwhile, in the western part of Ukraine, Olana was living in Lviv when the shelling started. She was nine months pregnant. My husband's mother said it's not safe to give birth here was living in Lviv when the shelling started. She was nine months pregnant.

My husband's mother said, it's not safe to give birth here because we don't know how it will be. Maybe rockets come to hospital and something terrible can happen. You go to Poland. It was no time to decide, to plan. We just listened to her and went to the border, crossed the border.

Oh, Lena, can I ask you, how did you feel when you were crossing the border like that? Do you remember? I was so, so scared. Eight million people have left Ukraine. Most are women and children. And some are foreign nationals who were living in the country at the time. Like George Fedorov, who's Russian. When the invasion began, he was living in Odessa, in the south of Ukraine, with his wife and her family and their five There was not so much missiles firing at EREFA at the time.

And there was no suicide drone. We were so lucky that the only sign of the real destruction of war we saw only one blowed up truck at our journey to the uh to lvov so we got really lucky we kind of was ready to moving on and uh with the siren and all this panic, we decided that we just need to move to be safe. For sake. Do you remember how you felt at that time?

Cold-hearted? Cold-hearted? Yeah, I mean I have the thought that what I should do and what I must do, and I just dealt accordingly. Being Russian made the journey out of Ukraine difficult for George. His nationality made him instantly unwelcome to the Ukrainian border guards. I mean, second day of the war and my passport is like a red blanket for them. So they go through all my stuff, my laptop, etc.

But they found out that I was pretty clean. I mean, I never support Russian aggression and Putin, etc. My mother says that she does not support the war, but she believes that there is Nazis in Ukraine and there is crime in Ukraine against Ukrainians and Russians. And it's all hell and Russia needs to do something. She doesn't know what exactly. War is not the answer, but still there is something to do. And the problem is that I don't know if she's just afraid that, I don't know, government will read our messages and close up.

Or does she really believe in that? And what about your father? Pretty much the same. We never liked each other, so he was his own tyrant. Is there anything that I guess you'd want to tell your parents, George, about your life and about the war? It's not about what I want to say to them. it's more about what I want to hear from them. And what would you like to hear from them? Something about understanding what the world is today.

George, what does it mean for you today? What does it mean for you to be Russian? I hope that I don't have a citizenship. That would be better, but in our world, you need some kind of an ID, and I can't just throw it away, so

it's a wait. And throw it away, so it's a wait. And I really want to throw it away. I mean, I have this guilt that instead of fighting the regime, trying my, at least, I just run away. So maybe that's my penalty for that. We'll be right back. Olena ended up in the city of Premyshel in Poland and decided to stay there. It's just on the border with Ukraine. And in the first few days of the war, tens of thousands of refugees were showing up every day.

Most moved on. Some stayed in the city. But despite the other Ukrainians nearby, Olena says she was still lonely. I miss everything. I miss my friends. I miss my home. I miss everything, of course. I don't feel that I'm very far from Ukraine

because I'm on the border and I hear Ukrainian language every day in the supermarket. Here is plenty of Ukrainians. And that makes me feel closer, of course. But here life is different. Here I am alone. In Ukraine I could have my friends near me, my parents, my husband's parents. She gave birth to her daughter on March 17th, 2022. Vera weighed just under seven pounds.

Does Vera have a special meaning? Yeah, Vera is faith, if you translate it. Into Ukrainian. Yeah. It's not very popular. It's a bit old name, but I wanted to give her this name. What was special about this name? Why did you want to give her the name that means faith?

Faith is like, we believe that future for Vera, for us, will be different. Will be new future. And when we back to Ukraine, everything will change and she will not meet war in her life anymore. Olena wants to make sure her daughter knows that she's Ukrainian, even though she was born in Poland. A lot of my thoughts are about my baby. And it's helped me to be more positive because I cannot be inside the war in my thoughts because I want to give my Vera all the positive emotions she needed. She wants to see my smile and she wants me to be in a good condition. We will teach her, we will tell her what is the price of victory, what is the price of this war, how many lives laid down for our freedom, how all the world you need to help Ukrainians,

to help Ukraine, our soldiers, our army. I will tell her how she burned, how she was in hospital, how many kindness, how many good people was around us. She will know all these things. Sonia's family split as soon as they left Kiev. Sonia and Oliver went their own way,

escaping to Hungary, then Slovakia, then Poland, then the Netherlands, and then Britain. They've now settled in Ayr, Scotland. But Sonia's mother and younger sister went to Italy to be with extended family. But then in the spring, my mom started to feel bad. She was consistently going to doctor and they didn't really help her. But then during the summer, they figured out that she had cancer. It was pancreatic cancer. Yeah.

It's no chance possible. So basically in October my mom died. You know her mom wasn't with us in this house that we are in in Scotland now so it's kind of it helps us to move on but it's definitely probably really difficult for her family back in Ukraine. Basically, I understand that my mom did want me to be happy and I want to support my family

and I want to support myself so I can help people. Like we did see a lot of people who was helping us. I want to do the same for people who struggle with their lives. So it's still like sometimes difficult times emotionally because things are still going. And sometimes my best friend friend she's still in Ukraine and I wasn't there at her wedding and

I'm sorry it's okay yeah so they basically I've missed a lot of things but I

I hope that one day it all will be over and I see them again. As the anniversary of the war approaches, so does their wedding anniversary. So there's a tradition, I'm not sure if i understand it all completely but i'm sure my wife will explain it to me better uh about where there's two candles that you get from the wedding that you're supposed to then uh light on the anniversary every year or it's three candles basically it's tradition when uh older families give give fire of their family to new ones. It's three candles. And it's like my parents and my parents-in-law are supposed to fire our candles.

And we take those candles from weddings with us so we can light it every year. A year later, George is in Germany, but he's still searching for one thing he hasn't been able to find. I mean, I want to have a home. Because right now it still kind of feels like we're on the trip. I mean, we live in our current flat for about nine, ten months, but it still doesn't feel like home. The problem is that right now nothing feels like home.

I hope the journey will end sooner. There is this next step in war, which everyone calls the most important one, which decides the end of it.

So I really hope that it will end soon. And definitely the Ukrainians as the winner. And for Olena, she can't wait to bring Vera home to Ukraine. Every day we are closer to our victory, I'm sure, 100%. When you do go back, Olena, what's the first thing that you'd like to do when you go home to Lviv?

Everyone told that they will celebrate. I will celebrate for sure, but I need to make Vera room because before Vera's birth we didn't organize her space. We just had plans and we just had free space for this. I will do a place for her. Yeah, and after

we will visit all our friends because we miss them so much. And Olena, so she is, Vera is almost one years old right now. What would you like for your life to be like when she's five? What would you like, where would you like to be living? What would you like to be like when she's five? What would you like, where would you like to be living?

What would you like to be doing? We are in Lviv, I'm sure. Back in Lviv in Ukraine. Yes, she is preparing to school. I teach her how to read. Maybe she will know already how to school. I teach her how to read. Maybe she will know already how to read. I work. Maybe we will have nanya.

Maybe we will go to kindergarten. I don't know. Time to time we go to Sambiak to visit our parents. We travel. We are happy. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and for talking to me today. No worries. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and for talking to me today. No worries. Thank you.

Thank you. I hope that your daughter has a good first birthday next month as well. It will be a small one because in Ukraine we will do bigger. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Elena. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye-bye.

Bye. Before you go, I want to let you know about a live Decibel event happening on Friday, February 24th at 12 noon Eastern. We're discussing the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. I'll be speaking with Senior International Correspondent Mark McKinnon, live from Kyiv, and Europe Correspondent Paul Waldi in Warsaw, Poland. We're streaming the event live on YouTube,

Facebook, and on the Globe and Mail homepage. That's Friday at 12 noon Eastern. Really hope you can join us. Okay, that's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. A big thank you to Paul Waldie and photographer Anana Liminovic, who shared their contacts with us so we could bring you the stories of Olana, George, Sonia, and Oliver in their own words.