Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 disrupted the lives of millions. Three Ukrainians remember for AFP how they experienced the beginning of the war, and what has changed for them since.
On the night of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Sergiy Osatchuk, then governor of the Chernivtsi region (west), slept with one eye: the day before he had received a report on the imminence of a Russian offensive.
“I was woken up by explosions and messages on my phone indicating that Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine had begun,” he told AFP.
A year later, his life has changed radically: Mr. Ossatchouk, 50, has indeed put away his neat suit to put on the military uniform.
Having become a lieutenant-colonel in the corps of border guards, he is now in the heart of the clashes in eastern Ukraine, the epicenter of the war.
“I am happier here than if I had remained governor”, which is more in the west of the country, more spared by violence, he said. “It’s a big responsibility.”
Mr. Ossatchouk is notably responsible for coordinating the actions of his unit with those of the other branches of the army.
The ex-governor was a reservist when the war broke out, and he explains that he was not able to enlist immediately, to his chagrin.
“For the first six months of the year (2022), I organized the mobilization (…) in Chernivtsi. Every day I urged people to join the armed forces.”
“When my term ended on July 14, I immediately joined (the army),” he continues.
With an automatic rifle wedged between his legs as his car zooms through Bakhmout, the scene of fierce fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces, Mr Ossatchouk says he will keep the uniform as long as it takes.
“This is where the future of Ukraine and free nations around the world is decided,” he said.
Before the war, Katerina Moussienko, a resident of the cosmopolitan port city of Odessa (south), spoke only Russian and even despised those who preferred Ukrainian or “Sourjyk”, a mixture of the two languages.
But “everything changed” for this young woman of 24 with the war.
As the blasts rocked kyiv, she still believed reports of strikes in Odessa were “fake news”.
It wasn’t until President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared on television to declare martial law that she realized “it was all serious.”
And then, in March, his grandfather was killed in another Russian strike on Odessa.
“I was so overwhelmed, I felt no sadness (…) only disgust and hatred for everything related to Russia,” she says.
“In the same way that I was a radical Russian speaker, I became a radical Ukrainian speaker. Without concession, in an irrevocable way”, she adds.
Her parents and her boyfriend followed her in this linguistic transition, like many Ukrainians who now refuse to speak Russian.
Her commitment took a step forward when she published a message on social networks calling for the unbolting of the statues to the glory of Alexander Pushkin, a monument of Russian literature.
After this publication went viral, Ms. Moussienko launched an NGO for the protection of Ukrainian.
Languages ??“only develop when they live in everyday life,” she says. “If our children don’t speak Ukrainian, the language will die.”
The war left its mark on Andriï Yériomenko: “My beard has turned gray,” jokes the potbellied 53-year-old train driver, sitting in a carriage in his blue uniform.
The scion of a long line of Ukrainian railway workers remembers the early days after the invasion, when his team of around 20 people – including his wife – evacuated thousands of residents fleeing Kyiv.
Crammed on the station platforms, “people were scared, they were all in shock: children, dogs, cats, adults, the elderly,” he told AFP.
“We picked up everyone we could. There could be ten, twelve people in compartments designed for four”.
Once the train was filled to the maximum, then began a crossing of the country for several hours, sometimes with the lights off to avoid being spotted and targeted by the Russians.
The worst part was “frightened children and animals,” said Mr. Yeriomenko, who has worked in the railways for 34 years.
“Once something slammed in a train car and a five or six year old girl threw herself on the ground with her hands on her head, screaming it’s bombing!” he recalled.
Much criticized before the war, the Ukrainian railway company Ukrzaliznytsia continued to operate even under the bombs, allowing the evacuation of millions of people.
Many Ukrainians today refer to railway workers like Andriy Yeriomenko as “iron heroes”.
But the train driver, whose two sons are currently fighting on the front line, refuses this qualifier.
“We just did our job,” he said. “None of us has ever burned a tank, shot down a plane or killed a Russian.”
22/02/2023 07:46:41 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
