LVIV, Ukraine — Every day for Ukrainians has become a nightmare. Troops in Russian helicopters land in neighborhoods, break into civilian houses, destroy buildings with tanks and fire their weapons at hospitals and orphanages. The stores are running out of bread and milk and the pharmacies are emptying of medicine. Putin calls it a special “denazification” and demilitarization operation and is not shy about saying he wants to take over all of Ukraine.
I work as a journalist in Kyiv. But on the fifth day of the war, I decided to leave the capital with my two young children for Lviv, a safer city in western Ukraine. We took a few things: a couple changes of clothes, a video camera, a bulletproof vest, a supply of diapers, a Lego Harry Potter set — which my older son loves — and a set of felt-tip pens that my younger son can’t live without. We left everything else in our Kyiv apartment on the left bank of the city: Ukrainian artwork, photography books, a collection of comics, copies of my book about the Russians who fought for the Islamic State.
Our whole life fit into two suitcases. My husband and I have already gone through this: I was forced to leave Crimea after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014, and my husband took his family out of the occupied Donbas region, where separatists seized control. Putin’s war against Ukraine really began eight years ago, but back then the missiles landed only in one region. Now the war has spread all over the country.
