The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022, changed the lives of millions of people. Three Ukrainians told AFP what they were doing that day and how their fate has changed since then.
– Serguii Osachuk, from governor to soldier –
On the night of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Serguii Osachuk, then governor of the Chernivtsi region (west), had a restless sleep: the day before, he had received news that an offensive from Moscow was imminent.
“I was awakened by explosions and messages on my phone indicating that Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine had begun,” he told AFP.
A year later, his life changed radically: Osachuk, 50 years old, put his suit in the closet and put on his military uniform. He became a lieutenant colonel in the border guards and is now at the center of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the epicenter of the war.
“I’m happier here than if I had stayed as governor” in the west of the country, which has been more on the fringes of violence, he says. “It’s a huge responsibility.”
Osachuk is in charge of coordinating his unit’s actions with those of other sections of the army. The former governor was a reservist when the war broke out, but he was unable to join the troops immediately.
“During the first six months of the year (2022), I organized the mobilization (…) in Chernivtsi. Every day I encouraged people to join the Armed Forces”, he explains.
“When my term ended on July 14, I immediately joined” the Army, he adds.
With the automatic rifle wedged between his legs as his vehicle speeds toward Bakhmut, the scene of fierce fighting, Osachuk says he will keep the uniform for as long as necessary.
“This is where the future of Ukraine and the free nations of the world is decided,” he says.
– Ekaterina Dead tongue music –
Before the war, Ekaterina Musienko, from the cosmopolitan port city of Odessa (south), spoke only Russian and even looked down on those who preferred Ukrainian, or “surzhyk”, a mixture of the two languages.
But “everything changed” for the 24-year-old when conflict broke out.
Although explosions were already rocking Kiev, she believed reports of attacks in Odessa were “fake news”.
It was convinced that “this was all serious” only when President Volodymir Zelensky made a televised speech to declare martial law.
Then, in March, his grandfather was killed in a new Russian attack on Odessa.
“I was so shaken. I didn’t feel sadness (…), just disgust and hatred for everything connected with Russia”, he admits.
“In the same way that I was a radical Russophone, I have become a radical defender of the Ukrainian language. Without concessions, irrevocably”, she insists.
Her parents and her boyfriend accompanied her in this linguistic transition.
She went further by posting a message on social media calling for the dismantling of statues honoring Aleksandr Pushkin, an emblem of Russian literature.
After that post went viral, Musienko launched an NGO to protect the Ukrainian language.
Languages ”develop only while they are present in everyday life,” he says. “If our children don’t speak Ukrainian, the language will die.”
– Andrii Yeriomenko, one of the “heroes of the railway” –
The war left its mark on Andrii Yeriomenko: “My beard is grayer,” complains this train driver, sitting in one of the carriages and dressed in his blue uniform.
Descended from a long line of Ukrainian machinists, Yeriomenko recalls the early days of the invasion, when his crew of about 20 evacuated thousands of Kiev residents.
Crowded onto the station platforms, “people were scared, in shock: children, dogs, cats, adults, the elderly,” he tells AFP.
“We rescued everyone we could. There could have been ten, 12 people in compartments designed for four”, he recalls.
With the train full, they began a journey of several hours across the country, sometimes with the lights off, so as not to be seen and attacked by the Russians.
For him, the worst part was “the scared children and animals,” says Yeriomenko, who has worked on the railways for 34 years.
“Once, something fell into a wagon and a five or six year old girl threw herself on the ground, her hands over her head, screaming ‘bombing'”, he says.
Highly criticized before the war, the railway management company Ukrzaliznytsia continued to operate under the bombs and allowed the evacuation of millions of people.
Now many compatriots consider train drivers to be “heroes of the railroad”.
But Yeriomenko, with two sons on the war front, rejects that description. “We just did our job,” she says. “None of us has ever set fire to a tank, shot down a plane, or killed a Russian.”
epe-ant-bur/pop/dbh/mar/aa/tt
© Agence France-Presse