Before Andriy takes me, he wants to see my passport. Andriy, in his early 40s, sits in the driver’s seat of his gray Toyota Corolla and stares into space as he says this. I’m not sure myself if I should get in. But options are rare at the Korczowa border crossing these days. Andriy looks at my passport, hesitates at the Russian surname, motions for me to get on. We drive.
I ended up on the border between Poland and Ukraine because I was accompanying a friend going to the war zone. We loaded his car with baby food, power banks and two bulletproof vests. My friend let me out at the border post. I’m lucky that Andriy is taking me with him. Andrij was lucky too: he made it to safe Poland. But I have seldom seen a person who seems more unhappy than Andriy.
He is silent for a long time, fields and a few tents pass us outside, some streets seem strangely empty on this sunny, cold March day. “I woke up too early on the 24th with a strange feeling,” says Andriy at some point very quietly, in Russian. “Shortly afterwards I heard the first detonation.” Andriy says that he lives in Kyiv and immediately decided to leave the city and the country with his wife and three children. They had packed their luggage the night before. “This fear…” he says, breaking off, and the fear in his voice is the first thing that breaks through the fog that surrounds him. Later he says that maybe the fear was too great. “She doesn’t go away anymore.”
First they went to western Ukraine, where his mother lives, but she refused to come with them. They drove on to the Polish border. “We were in the first wave and only needed 15 hours,” he says. As he says this, a few kilometers away, on the Ukrainian side, many people are waiting twice or three times as long. Andriy is allowed to leave Ukraine with his family on the evening of the first day of the war. The next day, the Ukrainian government declares general mobilization and forbids all men between the ages of 18 and 60 to leave the country. Everything in this war lasts forever and yet happens far too quickly.
Escape from Ukraine: “I’ve been awake for five days”
Andrij and his family drive to Tallinn, Estonia, where his wife is from. They need 20 hours. Andriy immediately drives back to fetch more relatives, which is why he is now at the border he crossed a few days ago, only at the wrong border crossing at first, he has to go an hour further south. The longer he talks, the more it becomes obvious why his words sound so fragile. Andriy says: “I’ve been awake for five days.”
Not only Andrij’s story is a story of these days. His family ties are too. The mother in western Ukraine. The woman from Tallinn. And a brother and many good friends live in Russia. “They called and asked for us. I said we’re being bombed, but they don’t understand. They watch Russian news.” It’s not just a painful present that divides them, but two decoupled realities.
Andriy has a butcher’s shop in Kyiv and employs ten people. “I just told them to get to safety.” He himself has nothing left except what he is wearing. Andriy tugs at his sweatpants. He then brakes too late and too sharply when a car stops in front of us. I tell Andriy that maybe he should sleep before he goes back to Tallinn. “Yes,” says Andriy, “probably.” He says it again barely audibly, as if he had to dim his surroundings to endure them. After only half an hour with him, it seems normal to me. Armageddon, Epoch Break. turning point. Loud words, loud words. Andriy’s world is quiet.
The bulletproof vests
As we continue there, I get scared at some point. Not in front of Andriy. but about how people are doing who didn’t get out safely. If Andriy already seems so traumatized, as if he is no longer anchored in himself, even though he knows his family is safe, what about those who are still stuck in Kyiv? I hope that my buddy will donate the bulletproof vests and not use them himself. Who knows.
We exit the expressway and drive to Przemysl, where Andriy wants to kick me out. In the center of the small town, hundreds of small Ukraine flags are waving at us from equally small hands. School children are demonstrating against the war here and, with their exhilarated manner, act as running image-text scissors when they smilingly carry a poster with a broken blue and yellow heart in front of them. Andrei looks at these children and says: “The Ukrainians will never forgive the Russians for this war. This is forever.”