Two days before the war began, ntv.de spoke to three young women from Kiev about their life in a city that could be attacked at any time. Only one of them thought a robbery was possible at the time. A year later, they look back on the day that changed everything.
Natalia Adamovich from Kiev remembers February 23, 2022 well. During an evening walk, she noticed how empty the city is. "There were police everywhere, there was tension in the air and the feeling that a catastrophe was inevitable," the 29-year-old recalls a year later. She was right - the next morning she was woken up by explosions. The war started.
Adamowitsch (name changed) is one of three young women from Kiev with whom ntv.de spoke on February 22, 2022, two days before the start of the war, about how they deal with the risk of a possible Russian attack. All three are Belarusians, because of the repression in their homeland they left the country and found a second home in Ukraine. "Fled from dictatorship, ended up in war?" was the title of the article that was supposed to appear on February 24, but never appeared because it was out of date because of the attack by the Kremlin troops.
In the unpublished interview, Natalia described her move to Kiev around four years ago as the best decision of her life. "I experienced a lot of beautiful things here, met friends, found cool jobs and met my love," enthused the media producer at the time. A year later, Natalia is sitting in a Berlin café and looks back on the past twelve months. "It feels like I've aged ten years in just one year," she says. Her partner stayed in Kiev. He cannot and does not want to leave his country. The couple has now been in an involuntary long-distance relationship for twelve months.
"I'm physically in Berlin, but mentally I live somewhere else," says the 29-year-old. Although she kept her job at a Ukrainian medium and works from home. With a salary of just over 1,000 euros, she finds it difficult to make ends meet in Germany. "My life is on pause. It feels like I've been frozen and can only wait until the war is over," Natalia describes her everyday life in Berlin - a city in which she actually wanted to live in the past, however not as a refugee. "This is how dreams come true," she laughs bitterly.
When the first rockets landed on February 24, panic and uncertainty reigned in Kiev. It was unclear which is safer - to stay or head west. Natalia and her boyfriend finally chose the latter. "I cried the whole time in the car," she recalls. "We left everything in the apartment: clothes, food, flowers in the vase." She had the feeling that she was in a war film, "except that it's not a film". After a few days in western Ukraine, Natalia had to say goodbye to her boyfriend and cross the EU border to Poland alone. After another two days she finally arrived in Berlin.
"My biggest success this year is that I haven't gone insane yet," says Natalia. "Sometimes I think how sad it is that I spend my young years like this: without friends, without my partner, in loneliness in a foreign country." Nor can Natalia go back to her parents in Belarus: the regime of the ruler there, Alexander Lukashenko, uses violence and arrests against opponents of the war and members of the opposition. Belarus is part of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Lukashenko provides Putin's armed forces with military bases, technology and territory for attacks on Ukraine. "It is a very painful feeling when your home is being attacked from your other home. When you know that your city where your friends and loved ones live is being shelled from your home country."
Of the three young women ntv.de spoke to a year ago, Natalia was the only one who believed in the possibility of a large-scale war. Russia had been massing its troops on the Ukrainian borders since the end of 2021. At the time, Natalia's friend Iryna Leutschanka said that there was constant unrest in Kiev. However, the scenario of a sudden attack on Kiev seemed unlikely to her. "I don't think there will be a full-blown war," the 33-year-old said at the time. "I was so fed up with being afraid in my country and have absolutely no desire to live in fear here," she said, explaining her relative composure with regard to the persecution of opposition figures in Belarus. Two days later the war began.
"Sometimes I had nightmares about being woken up by an explosion. And then it really happened," the journalist recalls in a phone call to ntv.de on the first day of the war. Today Iryna lives in Warsaw - her employer set up an office in the Polish capital for his fled employees. However, she spent the first month after the attack in Lviv. "I was just reading the news, volunteering and fundraising all the time." With the money raised, she bought equipment for hospitals and bomb shelters. During this period, a friend of Iryna's died in a rocket attack on the Kiev TV tower. "By the way, she was Russian," adds Iryna.
The 33-year-old has been living in Poland for eleven months now. "I realize that I don't have the strength to integrate and learn the language," she regrets. She's slowly getting better "because I'm taking antidepressants". Iryna was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Her boyfriend also stayed in Ukraine - "that's why it's not really possible to relax." The challenges and horrors she had to experience made her a different person that year. "My belief in justice disappeared forever. The illusion that life can be planned is gone too," she says. "But I understood that I'm much stronger than I thought - or is that just the effect of the antidepressants?"
A year ago, Natascha Kavaleva, also 33, told how humor helped her deal with the threat of a possible Russian attack. To calm the fear, she and her friends joked about the situation. "It takes away my nervousness. I think it's good that people are optimistic about the future," she said two days before the war began. A year later, Natascha relies on the tried and tested remedy: "Ukrainian Tiktok videos are almost the only thing that can cheer me up. The Ukrainians have an incredible sense of humor, very subtle and contagious. It's incredible how they find their way even in the most terrible situations , to stay optimistic and to smile. It's very inspiring and encouraging," she says now.
Natascha now also lives in Warsaw. In the peaceful Polish capital, however, she keeps recalling the explosions she heard from her Kiev apartment on the first day of the war. "That sound is hard to forget. Just like you can't forget the military columns heading into town. And the fighter jets zooming over the stuck cars and the fiery sunset somewhere near Hostomel."
A lot has changed in Natasha's life too. "I got angrier," she says on the phone. "I've become less tolerant. At the moment I have absolutely no desire to try to understand positions that would in any way justify Russia," explains the 33-year-old. The Russian language has also almost completely disappeared from everyday life. "I've made it my goal to speak Belarusian," says Natasha, who was first imprisoned in 2020 for taking part in the protests against dictator Lukashenko and then had to flee to Ukraine.
But one thing remains. A year ago, Natasha expressed her biggest wish in an interview: "I want Putin's Russia to disappear forever from the lives of Belarus, Ukraine and a dozen other countries that are preventing them from developing further and finally leave them alone. " Nothing changed about that.
