My name is Alex. I am 18 years old, and I am from the city of Kharkov. My mother works as a store clerk
and my father is a school director.
My mother called me at 4 a.m. on February 24th. My parents were in the Transcarpathian region at the
time. She woke me up and told me, “Sonny, pack your things and always have your phone charged, the
war has started.”
Being half-asleep and having understood nothing, I told her I would call her back when I properly woke.
up, but she said that I should get up immediately and start packing my things, and that my sister would
Pick me up soon. She was on her way from Sumy, which is also on the border with Russia.
While my sister made her way over to us, I saw heavy city traffic through the window. Everyone was in a
hurry, and the roads were jammed.
At around 5:10 am, I heard a gunshot, but after that moment, it was quiet.
I waited for my sister. She came at 9 a.m. with her husband. They came into the apartment, and we
immediately started thinking about where we would go and how we would get there. The traffic was so
bad, we decided to wait another half hour to leave the city.
I went with her husband to the store to buy some food, but when we got there, we saw the shelves were
almost empty; there was no bread, no pasta.
As we were checking out, a man ran into the store and started shouting: “The Russians are already in the
city.” Shivers and goosebumps crept all over my body. We quickly ran out of the store, sat in the car,
and thought about the best way to get home to pick up my sister without driving through the center of
the city. We started driving through unknown streets.
While driving along these streets, something happened that shook us. To our left was a small vegetable.
garden that led into a forest, and on the other side were residential houses. And just as we turned so
that we could see the vegetable garden by the forest, I looked back and saw a tank emerge. It wasn’t
clear whether it was a Ukrainian tank or a Russian one.
We drove faster to pick up my sister. We got her up and left the city, driving along these same small
streets. At the city limits, we got stuck in traffic because a column of tanks was entering the city. We
waited about 10 minutes as these tanks went by. They were Russian tanks. We stood waiting for them.
to pass.
We finally left and headed towards my grandmother’s, in a village in the Kharkov region, and after getting
There, we thought about what to do next.
