Until the last moment I refused to believe that Russia would attack us. I was born of a Russian-Ukrainian alliance. My mother, Antonina Vasilievna, is from the Moscow suburbs originally. My father, Nikolay Nikolaevich, is from Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. They met, fell in love and lived in a harmonious marriage for 50 years. Just like they say – kindred spirits. I had a wonderful family and was very close with all my relatives, both in Ukraine and Russia. I didn’t believe until the last minute that war could happen. But it did.
Taking cover in an abandoned Soviet-era printing house
For two weeks, my husband and I and some 50 others took shelter in the basement of an old abandoned printing house on level minus two. It was a Soviet-era printing house, very solidly built – the walls were a metre thick. Down in the basement, the walls were very sturdy, but the explosions outside made them shake even that far down, and it seemed as if the building was being moved by the explosions.
I was somewhere between Bucha and Irpin. There was some heavy fighting there. There was incessant blasting, shooting and a continuous glow and black smoke could be seen. There were soldiers with weapons and equipment everywhere. We had to figure out a way to get food supplies from home. There were news reports of horrific events where people would venture outside to get some food or take a shower at home and be hit by shelling, killing them in their courtyards or apartments.
It was very cold outside – minus 6° below ground. We slept on wooden planks and tried to support each other. Under the intense bombardment, people were gradually leaving the shelter and our numbers were growing thinner. We too decided to make a run for it.
A friend of mine living in different part of town wanted to leave with her son, but she had no one to give her a hand – she was an orphan. On the day we decided to leave, we took them along and set out into the unknown. There were lots of cars on the roads. Tanks, big, scary military vehicles were moving from the opposite direction. It took us over 5-6 hours to travel a distance that would normally be an hour’s drive. We were on the edge of survival and not reality. We were in the middle of the war and it was becoming a bitter reality.
Vitaly
When I was living in Kiev, I had my own online shop selling prayer beads. A man from Khmelnitsky region wrote to me saying he wanted to buy prayer beads and asked me: Where are you? What are you up to? I told him we were on our way to Lviv and we were nearing the Vinnitsa region. His town was close by, and he offered to host and help us. We changed our route immediately. It was a tacit general agreement. I didn’t know the man, I only spoke to him on the phone for five minutes, but we needed help and I accepted his invitation. I felt that it was the hand of God reaching out to save us.
When we got to his house, he gave us food and put us up for the night. We had a lot in common, because for over 20 years I have worked as a guide to the energy-rich places in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, where people could receive spiritual assistance. Vitaliy also practiced praying and fasting – he was a believer who lived by the laws of God.
He recommended we not to go to Lviv, but to the Bănceni Monastery located near Romanian the border, in Chernivtsi, where the service is held in Romanian and Old Slavonic.
The nuns of the Bănceni Monastery
We agreed and the four of us drove to the monastery, a place we had never been before, where we didn’t know anyone, but Vitaly came along and introduced us to the Mother Prioress of the monastery, who welcomed us with a warm heart and motherly care. It was a convent. The nuns helped us a lot, and to repay the help received, we did hard, physical work at the convent. The convent offered us an abandoned house in a nearby village. It had a roof and an old wood-heated stove. We settled there. We learned to chop wood in the forest to keep warm. I had never done this before as I have always lived in a city apartment.
After a month we have spent at the convent we realised we had to go a different way about building our lives. We could not to go back, because the fighting and bombing in Kiev were ongoing, but we wanted to stay in Ukraine and help one way or another.
My girlfriend and I were praying all the time. The nuns helped us, taught us things and were always there for us. We got used to monastic life, we worked hard, we prayed as they did and, with God’s help, we have managed to reacquire some piece of mind. Although it can hardly be said that inner peace was a permanent state, because the past was gone and the future was uncertain. We were living day to day.
The neighbour and the dandelions
Then spring came and everything was green, dandelions and grass sprung up. And we, as city dwellers, could never have dreamed of such a thing, making a cream soup from dandelions picked in an ecologically clean area in a village far away from any traffic. But this is what happened and we had ourselves a green dish. I was inpatient, to show our gratitude, to treat our next-door neighbour to this “delicacy”. She burst into tears wondering why I didn’t tell her we had no meat. I tried to explain to her that it was a delicacy, that it was a very tasty dish made from dandelions.
But she still supplied us with a lot of meat and made us cook a meat dish, suspecting we were on the brink of starvation.
When I listened to the service at the convent or when I worked among the nuns, I loved to hear Romanian spoken. As I read about Romania, I have realised and felt that I would get there one day. But that had to wait, as my husband was called back to work in Kiev and we decided to return together.
We said our goodbyes as if they were family.
Back to college
In early July last year, we returned to Kiev. The city was completely different. Lots of military were everywhere. We were very afraid of bombing alerts. Explosions were constant due to artillery fire. We slept restlessly and couldn’t think of anything else but survival, it was very hard.
To find a way to disengage from the war and make myself want to live again, I went to my university, where I got my law degree as a young man, and asked how I could, even now during the war, continue my education. I needed to believe better days would come. I love learning.
At the enrolment office they told said I had to take preparatory exams and pass the Independent External Evaluation (IEE), which is a world-class accreditation system, partly in English, which I didn’t know very well. But still I was very eager to study “legal psychology” because I already had a degree in psychology and, separately, in law.
On the day entrance exam was held, we were seated in the auditorium of the Shevchenko University in Kiev when we were informed that in case of an air raid, we would have to move to a shelter. I was afraid of this and made up my mind I would complete the exam as quickly as possible to avoid an air raid. I finished my IEE accreditation test paper in 15-18 minutes, while under the rules we had an hour and a half to complete it. I got the top score and was a student once more.
It was a miracle and a joy, but I understood that a life-giving power was with me and would drive me to continue living.
When everything was shut down in Kiev due to martial law and almost half the city population had left at that time, I started providing therapy services to people who had stayed behind to do volunteer work. I provided consultations via Skype and took face-to-face meetings in between air raid sirens or sometimes in the shelters. I would also go to pray and ask for peace in my beloved Kiev Pechersk Lavra, because that was the only place where I could find solace at the time.
I worked a great deal with people who came to see me as a psychologist offering them support, although at night I would often feel devastated and cry. I didn’t know how to go on living, but I still managed to find the resources to be present in every moment and to give people hope even during my counselling sessions. I saw their eyes light up with life after therapy sessions and I took strength from that.
I also enrolled in the Academy of Arts, which was near my home in the Kiev centre. I took up drawing. Drawing puts me at ease, but when air raids would start again, I would continue drawing in the basement of the Academy or my own basement. It was unbearable. I have lived this way in Kiev for another three months.
There, underground, I made the decision to travel to Romania.
On December 31, 60 to 80 rockets were fired at Kiev. Before the war, the last day of the year used to be such a magical day, when we all believed in miracles and got ready for the New Year. Many people died that day in Kiev. There were dead bodies everywhere.
On the New Year’s night and the following two days the shelling was incessant. My husband and I remained in the subway station shelter, 70 meters below ground. It was the only place where you could not hear explosions on the streets of Kiev. There, underground, I decided to go to Romania. My life and my mental state were on the edge.
With pain in my heart, I had to leave my beloved Kiev, my beloved husband, my apartment, my cat Karapet and all of my life until that time. I packed my bags as best I could and on Christmas Eve my husband took me to a monastery. I was in a monastery again. A nun in Romania helped me enormously. On January 22, I crossed the border at Siret, there a relative of the nun met me and drove all night to take me to Bucharest.
To collect my thoughts, I took refuge in another monastery. I prayed for the Spirit of this new and unknown Land to help me find a job, a place to live and get some idea of what I should do next. And God heard me!
Merchandise handler at Băneasa Metro
Two weeks later I started my job as merchandise handler at Băneasa Metro store. It was new and difficult work for me. As a lawyer and psychologist, I was completely unused to physical work. I was scared, but I really wanted to survive and connect to life, to stop being trapped in the flow of war news. At that time, I was living in Sector 6, Bucharest, and had to drive 2 hours to work every morning and then 2 hours back at night. I usually left at 6:30 in the morning and returned at 7:30 p.m.
Every morning, 5 days a week, I would wake up at 5:30 and get ready to take my route to work. At work I had a specific task of unloading goods, which I did exactly as my team leader told me, depending on the version I got from a translation app, because I didn’t know Romanian and my boss only spoke a little English.
It wasn’t easy for me, but it did me a lot of good. The mind no longer frightened the body with dark thoughts. I would spend ten hours on my feet every day and try to muster up my willpower and ignore the pain I felt in my body, and that helped me forget the real pain. My physical body was exhausted at the end of the day, maybe even my adrenaline got lower, because at night, here in Bucharest, I was finally able to go to sleep.
I tried to be social and make friends with the people I was working with. I realised what kindness and warmth meant, even if language skills were not there. I realised what somebody’s look of compassion meant. I noticed how friendly the people in Bucharest were and how much physical work the people there did. Very often I was overcome with emotions because of the way people treated me. I had a new life. I received a life.
My first holiday. My first time feeling happy since the war began.
March 1st came bringing with it a holiday that does not exist in Ukraine. For me it was a truly Great day. It was a celebration everywhere there were people! On the street, at work, in shops. The women were beautiful! They were walking around with flowers, with all sorts of gifts and it was all magical and mysterious to see them wearing white and red brooches and ribbons. For me it was like a New Year’s celebration, like a new life, like a fresh breath of air.
In the year of war, we had given up celebrating anything, any holiday or event, because everything had just turned to sadness.
It was my first celebration. My first time feeling happy since the war began. I started believing again that everything would be fine soon.
Constellations of women and rediscovery
A few months after coming to Bucharest, I developed allergies and serious health problems and one day I couldn’t get out of bed. I had to quit my job at Băneasa Metro. And again, I sank into the fear of not knowing how to survive in a foreign country where nothing is your own.
I turned to God, to my guardian angels, asking them to show me the path I should follow. And which way to go. And, strange as it may seem, I started getting calls from people I knew who really needed my help and involvement, my advice, my techniques, and my counselling. And when I stopped going to work and started doing psychological counselling, in the refugee groups I found people with the same views and outlook on life as my own. It’s about the girls from the Women’s Club (Circle). There we started doing constellations and group counselling.
I started meeting new people who wanted to talk to me. I have always been interested in bringing something good and bright into people’s lives, and my heart and soul helped me to do that. I tried to define myself and answer questions to which sometimes even I didn’t know the answers. But when I started working, I got answers from space (Universe). I continued to visit many other historical places, churches and monasteries in and around Bucharest. After counselling other people, I saw happy faces. I saw hope and I saw that light shining in their eyes, even if for a little while, but we were taking small steps together to rebuild ourselves from the ashes of the world that had been destroyed.
Editor: Ioana Călinescu
Aliona Kurilko-Kuznetsova
