The first days of the war
The months before the invasion
When, in November 2021, I saw the news reporting the buildup of Russian troops along Ukraine’s borders, I didn’t take it very seriously. Local people also tended to downplay the events. And I never would have thought that, in the 21st century, a war of such scale could break out in Europe. The reasons why both I and many others believed this are varied.
First of all, Russia had not amassed enough troops for a serious offensive to maintain control over a territory as vast as Ukraine. According to experts, it would have required at least 400–500 thousand soldiers for such an undertaking. Secondly, Ukrainians had not looked favorably upon Russians since 2014, when Crimea was seized and, later that same year, the conflict in Donbas began. I thought it would be madness to attempt an invasion under those circumstances. But as we later saw, the Russians expected a quick victory and a Ukrainian surrender. In reality, tensions between the two peoples existed long before 2014, but I won’t go into detail on that for now.
The Christmas season of 2021 passed as usual. I wasn’t the least bit worried. We did the holiday shopping to prepare Christmas dinner at home. Then, on New Year’s, we celebrated at my in-laws’ house. My mother-in-law, in a brief moment, expressed concern for the future, saying perhaps we would not be celebrating the following New Year, referring to the possibility of an invasion. But we didn’t think much of it and continued with the festivities.
Only about a week before the invasion began did I start to worry. This was because the troops stationed at the border had begun marking their tanks and other vehicles with the now-infamous letters “Z” and “V” (the latter for the troops based in Belarus). This was a clear signal that an invasion was imminent. In addition, during that week, the Italian Embassy sent out SMS messages urging Italians residing in Ukraine to leave the country.
Below are some photos from the Christmas celebrations of 2021.
The unthinkable happened
February 24, 2022, is a day that’s hard to forget. My wife and I were staying up late at my in-laws’ house. I was in the bedroom on the computer when, browsing online, I came across an article about Putin’s speech where he made his declaration of war—or as he called it, a “special military operation.” I then spent the next two hours watching footage from surveillance cameras across Ukraine, where explosions and clouds of smoke could be seen. When I went to the kitchen where my wife was, she still hadn’t read the news. When I told her, she didn’t want to believe me. I think it’s normal not to want to believe that your country is being invaded.
Needless to say, we couldn’t sleep. We spent the whole day constantly online, reading updates. Ukrainian soldiers were heading to the front to defend the country, while the Russians kept bombarding it with missiles. During those first days we heard a loud noise—it seemed to come from just outside the front window, like a missile. We only heard it fly past, but it never exploded. Explosions were frequent, caused by tanks fighting not too far from where we were. Every time we heard noises, we went down into the basement of the house—a small room barely more than a meter high, where my in-laws keep preserves and other food for the winter. The cats came down with us too, and they weren’t happy about it either. When the battles got closer, we could feel vibrations coming from the ground. February and early March were particularly cold, so whenever we went down, we bundled up and brought 1.5-liter plastic bottles filled with hot water. Sometimes we stayed down there for hours and hours. We were lucky that Russian soldiers never made it into our town, except for a brief episode with two Russian tanks that passed by on a road about a hundred meters from our house. They were neutralized a little further down the road.
In the photo, the basement where we took shelter whenever we heard explosions. Now it just holds potatoes and preserves.
Life during the invasion
The nearby towns in the Chernihiv region were not as fortunate. Once the Russians were defeated and withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, the horrors committed by the Russian army in Bucha, Irpin, and many other towns came to light. In some places less than ten kilometers from where I am, soldiers targeted the local population, dragging Ukrainian men into basements and subjecting them to torture methods reminiscent of Soviet times. One of these techniques, called “the elephant,” involved tying the victim’s hands behind their back, putting a gas mask with a long tube on their face—hence the name “elephant.” The Russian soldier would suffocate the victim by closing the other end of the tube. Repeating this procedure several times, the victim would confess to anything just to make it stop. Other testimonies report grenades thrown into basements where civilians were hiding, rapes of women and girls, and much more.
One of my greatest fears was that the Russians might use thermobaric weapons. Some reports indicated they had such systems not far from where I was. This type of weapon can rupture the lungs, and hiding in a basement is useless, as it removes all surrounding air, making it impossible to breathe. Weapons like these have been repeatedly used against civilians. More than once we saw missiles explode not too far from our home, especially at the end of March, in the final days when the Russians were terrorizing the region.
During the first two weeks, I often thought about how to escape, but soon we found ourselves surrounded by the Russian army on every side. To the north, they had invaded the rest of the region; to the west, they were advancing toward Kyiv; and to the east, they were trying to secure another route toward the capital. Even then, many stories circulated about how dangerous it was to travel, as Russians attacked civilians for no particular reason. During this time, I received much help and information from the honorary consul in Lviv, who put me in touch with people who could assist us in leaving Ukraine, but out of fear of possible attacks along the way, we chose not to move.
Until the eventual liberation of the region, getting food was not always easy. Luckily, my in-laws had chickens, so during that period we ate a lot of eggs. In addition, some organizations—especially religious ones—risked their lives daily to deliver humanitarian aid to both free and occupied towns. As for water, we purified the iron-heavy water that came from the tap. In many small rural towns in Ukraine, it’s not 100% drinkable, so the filters we had were extremely useful. In such a situation, you don’t pay much attention to details like that.
We only returned to the apartment we had been renting before the war in May, once the Russian soldiers had completely abandoned the region. We found a semi-deserted Kyiv, with shopping centers nearly empty—both of people and of products. In the following months, life in the capital slowly returned to what one could call “normal,” as people who had fled began coming back. Our goal wasn’t Kyiv, though, since we wanted to return to Italy, and we had already bought bus tickets that would take us back to Friuli. Unfortunately, I got sick—a simple fever. Probably the sight of destroyed houses along the road from Chernihiv to Kyiv shocked my immune system. We saw homes completely destroyed, even ones with words like “Children” and “People” painted on the gates to indicate that only civilians lived there.
Some images of the houses destroyed by the passage of Russian tanks.
