More than 7.7 million refugees have escaped from Ukraine and crossed over to Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Lithuania. Another 8 million people have been displaced and have found a safe place to stay in cities and towns like Lviv and Lutsk. Lutsk is in the northwest about 3 hours from the Polish border. Housing is scarce and most are staying in temporary housing. See photos in the gallery below.
Interview of Tatiana, a refugee in Lutsk, Ukraine by Volodymyr Khomyk. June 2022. Image: Volodymyr Khomik, Tatiana - teacher of Ukrainian language in school in Mariupol. Note: As per Lutsk City regulations, Volodymyr had to get permission from ‘the authorities’ to meet with refugees and to take photos of them.
“When the war began, my greatest fear was that I wouldn’t have a country anymore - that in a few days Ukraine would be gone. In the first days of the war we watched television - we watched the news about what was happening in Kyiv and even around Mariupol. I couldn’t believe it! Our capital was under siege.
On March 2nd, communications, electricity, gas, and water were all shut off in the city. And from that time on our own struggle for survival began. On March 22nd, our house burned down. My husband and daughter and I were staying with my mother, who lived in a small private house. We moved to her house 5 days earlier. Because rockets landed around the houses next to my mother's, we hid in the basement for 5 days. It was very cold and bullets flew straight into my mother's house. We couldn’t see our own home in the distance. Everything was veiled in smoke, neighboring houses were on fire. People were running in the streets.
We survived by living in the basement, but we didn’t know what the condition of the house was. After the shellings, the house began to burn and plastic water pipes began to melt in the basement. The basement was flooding and there was smoke everywhere. We tried to put the fire out, but we couldn’t. It wasn’t possible to stay there and we had to run to another part of Mariupol. But, we could tell that the city was soon be captured - in a few days the Russians would reach us.
We walked to the garage and it turned out that our car had survived - sitting safe and sound surrounded by other destroyed cars. My husband, son, and daughter, and I left Mariupol in this car. We arrived first in Zaporizhia, then in the city of Dnipro. From there we moved to Lutsk. My mother tried to stay in Mariupol but in May she was able to come to Lutsk and now she is with us. My husband Alexander had to leave and return to the front to fight.
Question: When was the most dangerous moment?
The most dangerous moment was when all five of us were in my mother's room and a bullet flew through a window. Somehow the bullet didn't hit any of us. Death was very close. Of course, shells were falling all around the yard, fragments were flying in all different directions. But when this bullet flew in, right in front of our eyes - it was the scariest thing.
I was scared at night when planes bombed the houses around us. Those explosions made everything shake. We heard all the windows shatter in a building next to the house.
The planes flew over during the day and sometimes at night. The artillery fired during the day - it never stopped. At night we heard planes flying overhead constantly - it woke us up. And, then, there were the explosions. First, we heard the explosions from far away, then closer, and closer - I knew that the next blast would hit us.
Question: Were there any people you knew who were killed by the Russians?
My friend’s husband died, and all our neighbors died. A women I knew was buried in her own apartment building. It wasn’t until later that they found her and dug her out of the building. One 15-year-old boy was killed by shrapnel on the street. There were many wounded people and many who were burned. The house of a friend of mine caught fire but she couldn’t get out of the house - she had an amputated leg and she was burned alive.
Question: Did you know about the Azovstal Factory in Mariupol?
(Note: Wikipedia: The Azovstal plant became one of the most emblematic points of the Siege of Mariupol. The plant had tunnels and bunkers capable of withstanding a nuclear attack, making it an extremely defendable position. As the Russian forces advanced into Mariupol, Ukrainian forces withdrew to Azovstal, and by late April it became the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance. The Battle of Azovstal occurred on the site, resulting in a conditional surrender by the Ukrainian defenders after over a month of resistance. The plant was almost completely destroyed by Russian bombardment over the course of the battle. After the capture of Mariupol by the Donetsk People's Republic, they announced plans for the plant to be demolished during the city's restoration.)
We lived very near the Azovstal Factory. At that time in March, fighting was taking place all around Azovstal. Ukrainian troops escaped into the yard and there were battles on the ground. And then, when we left Mariupol, I was told that the Russians had captured the whole city. Then the Russian troops came from the so-called ‘Donetsk People's Republic’. They walked in with white armbands, and came in as new masters of the city. The Azov fighters were in the basement of the plant, surrounded and isolated. Those brave Ukrainian warriors remained there until finally they had to surrender to the Russians. They had no food or water.
Many people hid in the drama theater in Mariupol.
(Note: Wikipedia: On 16 March 2022, the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, was bombed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was used as an air raid shelter during the siege of Mariupol, sheltering about 1,000 civilians, of whom about 600 were killed. Ukraine accused the Russian Armed Forces of deliberately bombing the theatre while it was sheltering civilians. Russia first claimed that the reason the theatre was bombed was because it was being used as a base by the Ukrainian military, and then denied the allegations and instead accused the Azov Battalion of blowing up the building. Both Russian claims have been refuted by independent investigation. The theatre is among the many Ukrainian heritage and cultural sites destroyed during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.)
A friend of mine from another school hid there with her son. She survived. She worked as a cleaner at the Mariupol Drama Theater where she could get food. Fortunately, she left the theater right before the theater was bombed.
Refugees from Severodonetsk and Konstantinovka of Donetsk Oblast, housed by the city of Lutsk. Photos by Volodymyr Khomyk.