On Feb. 24, 2022, I woke up from the sound of an explosion in my home city Bila Tserkva in Ukraine. I got up from my bed and went to the kitchen where my mother was making breakfast for herself. I asked her what it was, hoping it was not what we all were thinking. Another explosion followed. We tried to hope it was just thunder. But our hopes were false.
War was always a possibility that hung over our heads, constantly reminding us of it with every word that Russian President Vladimir Putin said. Everyone in my school was talking about how the Russian military was on the Russia-Ukraine border. At home, my father told me about how there were a few bombshells that Russia might have thrown on Ukraine. But there was no proof of that. We didn’t know what this war was for. Putin called it a special operation. What we knew for sure is that Putin wanted to take the land of Ukraine and join it with Russia. Possibly, it was his way to bring the Soviet Union back to life.
On Feb. 23, 2022, my friend was trying to prove to me that the war wasn’t going to start. I already knew it would. That day, my father talked about how Ukrainian President Zelensky should have given more money for the military. Then, a state of emergency was declared in Ukraine.
In the morning of Feb. 24, my family and I watched television in fear, waiting for the President’s announcement and for someone to explain what was going on. The news came soon. The explosions we heard were Russia bombing Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and many other Ukrainian cities. The sky was gray that day. My mother tried her best to stay strong. Watching the news, talking to her friends who lived in the most bombed areas, she tried not to cry, at least not in front of me. Yet, sometimes it was impossible to stay strong in the situation we were in. And we tried to help each other even though we both were slowly breaking down.
The first air raid alarm was at night. My family and I quickly dressed and went to the basement of our apartment building that we called the bomb shelter, but it was nothing like real protection from the bombs. It was a very cold and small space filled with way too many people. Through next week fewer people came in. The inhabitants of our 9-floor apartment building were leaving for a better life. Out of the city. Out of the country. As two explosions erupted in our city, we could rarely see anyone other than our family in the bomb shelter.
Our experiences weren’t pleasant. “In a study of 6,993 Ukrainian refugees, prevalence of (C)PTSD was 29.4 %,” according to Science Direct. One of the hardest nights was when an air raid alarm lasted for eleven hours. My family and I spent it in the basement until 6 a.m. Then we went up to the sixth floor of our apartment building, where we lived. If we would die that night, it wouldn’t be worse than the bomb shelter. Another hard night was when I was woken up so many times at night that I was now falling asleep, leaning against cold concrete walls. The door of the bomb shelter was open so that other people could come in, but the wind got in instead. I was sleeping on the chairs near the door. The temperature was less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
One of the most memorable moments was when my mother was cooking noodles in our apartment, when a few air raid alarms interrupted us. She had to stop many times and go to the bomb shelter with me. Then, when she finally was able to finish cooking, she at first put the bowl with noodles near the window. Then immediately relocated it as far as possible from there. “I spent so much time making these noodles, now if I put them near the window, they would blow away with an explosion,” she said. We both laughed at her joke. We laughed because we had no more energy to cry.
In our school, there are many students from Ukraine who left their home country, searching for safety and security. Senior Maximillian Arbatskiy left Ukraine just as the war started. Later, his family chose to return but the circumstances made them leave again.
“We lived a very bright life in Ukraine for a year, despite the war,” Arbastkiy said. “We tried to compensate for everything that we missed over the past six months abroad. But then we realized that we had the opportunity to leave for America under the program United for Ukraine. Accordingly, we received documents and realized that this would be the best decision for us since I have a younger brother. He is 8 years old. He was very scared and we decided that we needed to go. ”
Sophomore Kira Taran, another student who came to the United States from Ukraine, had to leave her home city, as the Russian military was already there.
“I left Ukraine when my city was already occupied,” Taran said. “Around August, my family and I left our city and then went to the Western part of Ukraine. The road was not easy, there were quite a lot of checkpoints where the military stood and checked our bags, as well as our electronic devices.”
According to unrefugees.org, “approximately 12.7 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in 2025, including nearly 2 million children” while “6.9 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded globally, ” (as of February 2025).
One day, my parents found out that there would be Russian prisoners released as soldiers near our city. That’s when we gathered our things to leave. The next day, we got in the car and drove away. Just when we were heading toward the main city road, an explosion erupted. When we were already outside of the city, we found out from the news that there was a missile strike that destroyed a residential complex close to our house. The car ride lasted for two days, with rare stops at the gasoline stations and a huge traffic jam at the entrance to some city. We settled in Lviv, a city in the Western part of Ukraine. The kind people allowed us to stay in their house for the next few days, where we were in a much calmer state than constantly being disrupted and scared by the air raid alarms. After, we took a bus from Ukraine to Poland.
My father got me and my grandma to a bus station. My grandmother and I got on the bus. My mother was already there. I hugged my dad goodbye and waved at him from the bus window. That was the last time I saw him in person. According to Ukrainian law, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country when martial law is declared. The bus drive lasted for 19 hours, 10 of which we spent in the bus waiting to be admitted to the territory of Poland. There, we saw many people. Young. Old. Mothers with children. All in tattered clothes and in the cold. They were outside of the bus, waiting at the border, in the temperature of 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
We lived a few days in Poland. All those few days, I took to improve my health. It was not in the best condition after sleeping in the cold, the 2 day long car ride and the impact the air raid alarms had done to my sleeping schedule. After, my grandmother and I went to the United States on the plane. In America, my aunt allowed us to stay in her house for a while. My mother lived in Poland for the next month. Later, she came to the United States to help me secure my future in this country.
It’s been three years since the war between Russia and Ukraine started. According to the United Nations, “Since 24 Feb. 2022, at least 12,654 Ukrainian civilians — including 673 children — have been killed and 29,392 — including 1,865 children — have been injured.” And, unfortunately the war continues and more and more people are dying for nothing and becoming parts of the conflict they didn’t cause.
