Six touching stories. Six stories of despair, hope and new beginnings.
Six brave Ukrainians talk about their experiences during the war.
This is Voice of Peace.
Hello to all the listeners of the Radio Fyrat. Welcome to the program Voice of Peace.
My name is Marina Krivinshuk. I am from Ukraine.
In 2022 I had to leave my country because of the war.
I became a refugee and I came to Austria.
In this program I interview people who lost everything because of the war.
Our guest today is Michelle Kandayan.
During the peace time she was an organizer of concerts and festivals in Ukraine.
But since the war had started she lost her job. Now she lives in Salzburg. Michelle, hello.
Hello. So it happened that I had to leave my country when the war had started.
It was very difficult at first, but now things are getting better and I am ready to tell you my story.
Tell me please, what was your life about before the war?
I think I should start from the moment when I graduated from my school.
It was in 2019. I finished school and I moved from my favorite city, my pearl by the sea, Odessa, and moved to the capital.
I entered the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy in Kiev.
It seemed to me that that life was just beginning.
I was young, I still had everything ahead of me and I was doing great.
I gradually began to work, began to organize concerts and festivals.
I met very important people, very interesting people who helped me, gave me advice, supported me in everything.
Well, then it just happened that the coronavirus came. I had to go back to Odessa to my parents.
I continued my studies.
I had a partner who proposed to me. Everything was great with us. Everything was good.
I was young, successful. I had a job I loved, a partner. I was doing great.
And at some point it all came just crashing down.
What has brought you joy?
Joy? Rather some trivial things.
Concerts, some events, various meetings with friends.
I also organized small concerts in different flats in Odessa with a team of friends.
Very warm and tiny events for my people.
Some, honestly, trivial human joy. Some little things could make me happy.
I mean, I don't need much.
What were your plans for your life?
Oh, I'm already so scared of that word plan.
Honestly, because I used to be the kind of person who doesn't like spontaneity, I had everything planned out.
It's always been clear. I had a definite schedule.
Today I will do this, this I will do tomorrow, that I will have everything done in summer.
I already had everything planned for my life.
I already told you about my partner, that we were going to get married.
We were supposed to have a wedding in August and I was planning a wedding.
We would start living together.
I would be a happy wife and a happy mother and everything would be fine.
I would do my own business, my own work, my concert activities and so on.
Those were probably my main plans.
Now it's very hard to say what my plans are because I'm just afraid to use that word, honestly.
Unfortunately, February the 24th came and shattered all your dreams.
At the time I thought that everything was broken, but now I realized that it was the opposite.
I felt like some kind of push towards a brighter future and a better future.
But that day, that night, they were just awful.
Do you remember that night?
Yes, I remember it very well.
I was supposed to have a conference on February 24th and there was an event forum planned in Lviv.
As I remember it now, I went to the mall on February 23rd to buy some new clothes,
a more formal style to go to this conference.
And then I called my mom and I said, I kind of felt like I said,
let me take my little brother to the mall with me.
I want him to run around, play in the children's entertainment complex.
Mom said he's tired already, let him stay at home, go on your own.
I went there on my own.
I brought myself everything I needed, came home in the evening.
I left the bag with my jacket, my trousers, my new shoes with the receipt and the tags on it by the door.
I planned that I would wake up in the morning, get ready early, take the train to go to Lviv.
And in the evening, some very strange news started to come in, all sorts of things.
Friends were calling, relatives were calling, saying that such suspicious things were happening.
And also that day on February 23rd, I forgot to tell, for the first time in three years,
I'm on the fourth year of my studies now.
I was on a third course for the first time in three years.
I came to my school, which I graduated.
I visited all my teachers and they were super happy to see me.
It was really like I felt something that I was going to see them soon.
So there I was.
My teacher's husband was in the army and he called and said that things were going really badly.
I didn't know what I could be.
Teacher and I laughed and said, what are you doing?
Why are you so nervous?
Don't think of bad things.
Everything will be fine and all.
And it turns out that at night I began to receive calls from my friends from everywhere.
And there were more calls from friends who don't live in the Ukraine.
They somehow knew more about the whole situation from the outside than people who live in our country themselves.
And I was very impressed.
I think, which news do you listen to?
What do you watch?
And where do you get this information from?
What for is this panic?
What is it all about?
But it turned out that they were right after all.
And that evening, my father asked me what options we had, what we could do.
If we were afraid, well, let us leave.
If we were worried and what options we have.
We thought and thought.
Well, somehow we just had a conversation and no decision.
But it didn't lead to anything.
I mean, yes, yes, yes.
Good.
We laughed.
Nothing would happen.
Relax.
Everything is OK.
Everyone went to bed.
And it turned out I had a very hard time falling asleep.
It was very hard to sleep.
I don't know why I had such a restless, very anxious dream.
I dreamed about some kind of turmoil or confusion.
I was in some kind of stress, like I was rushing somewhere.
I was running somewhere.
I woke up in cold sweat.
I laid there and I couldn't sleep for a long time.
I just closed my eyes and I started getting messages on my phone.
I picked up the phone.
Those messages were from my boyfriend.
He was on a sailing trip in another country and we had a very big time difference.
So when it was nighttime for him, for me, it was daytime for him.
He started texting me.
I told him, I will text you later.
I'm sleeping right now.
I don't have energy right now.
When I wake up, I will answer you about everything.
He asked me, please answer me if everything is OK with you personally and what is the situation like in the Ukraine in general.
I told him everything is OK.
Don't worry.
Everything will be OK.
He said that the main thing was that I was OK, that I was all right.
So I closed my eyes.
I've already texted him and tried to fall asleep.
I just closed my eyes and then suddenly I heard this kind of bang, this hard, hard bang.
At first, I thought that maybe it was imagining.
I was imagining something.
Sleep deprivation can make you dream something.
Once I heard a billboard falling down, I thought maybe something like that happened.
Maybe an accident.
I didn't think it started.
I thought, OK, I thought I was imagining things.
I'll go back to sleep.
And again, I just closed my eyes.
There was another stroke.
I thought, well, no, something was wrong.
But still, I kept laying in bed until I started to hear the sirens from the cars.
All the cars started screaming really hard.
Some sort of commotion appeared again.
In general, the atmosphere in the city was very confusing.
I got out of bed.
As I remember the moment I got out of bed, I put on my dressing gown.
I went out of the room.
It was very cold.
Somehow everything was so scary.
That's the real thing.
I must have been the first time in my life that I really felt what fear is, because now for me, when people ask me, what are you afraid of?
I say I'm afraid of having a night like that again, because I've been that kind of person all along.
In fact, I was afraid of everything.
I mean, I'm open to everything, but I was afraid of some trivial little things like snakes, spiders, cockroaches.
It was horror for me.
Horror is nothing to me now compared to what I really felt in that moment.
So I was putting on this dressing gown.
I went out in a panic.
My mother came out.
My mother is a teacher.
She's the most discreet.
She's the calmest, the most relaxed woman.
I've never seen her in such a state.
Hear any kind of worry.
But in that moment, I was shocked that my mother came out and said, did you also hear this?
Has it already started?
Has it really started?
I think the words it has started, it was probably heard in all the flats, houses in our country that night.
It has started.
I say, come on, it can't be real.
Here I am talking to my mom and our conversation is accompanied by these explosions and alarms, cars, sirens.
And we woke up my dad.
The kids haven't heard a thing.
The children were really sound asleep.
That was good.
I don't think they were frightened.
They didn't understand anything at all about what was going on.
We woke up and the three of us were sitting together, me, father and mother.
We turned on the television.
Well, where else would we get news?
We turn on the TV and there was a news story saying that Russia had allegedly launched a military special operation.
Well, we didn't believe it at first.
It was even possible.
Well, I don't think anyone believed it.
Yes, there were discussions and yes, there were rumors, but no one could believe it.
And it turned out that the first people whom we called were personally, I called my boyfriend's parents because he was on a sailing trip.
I felt responsible for him because they were my parents, too.
I called.
I asked them, what shall we do?
Let's maybe all of us move out together.
They said, what are you talking about?
Nothing will happen.
Don't worry, Michelle.
Go back to sleep.
How couldn't I be worried when there was such a commotion and panic around?
And I grabbed my phone and I started to write or rather I forgot the moment when I got out of bed and I was going to my mom and I was holding the phone in my hand at the same time.
I was working with a boy's band and so we were in touch with the guys all the time.
We were like family.
I picked up the phone.
I thought about texting them a notch that I heard something.
What if they think I'm some kind of idiot that I made it up for myself and stood there with the phone?
I stood there with the phone like I was frozen.
I stood and thought to write, not to write, no, write.
And then one of the boys, one of the participants of the group texted.
He sent a message that in Kiev, in Kharkiv, you could hear explosions.
He said he heard them, too.
I said that I heard them as well.
And then a little panic started, but not for me.
The fear took hold of me.
I didn't feel anything at the moment, but I didn't have any panic.
I think it was good that I was not nervous, but to some extent it was indifferent to everything.
I was so indifferent to life that if it would kill, it would me.
So that was my fate.
That's how I started at that moment.
I think it's very awful.
It's not normal.
That's why I was talking about my mother's condition before the war.
She was so calm.
She really started to panic.
She just went out and called my grandmother, her mother, and said, let's do something.
Let's leave.
Let's do something.
At the same time, she went around.
She collected real rubbish, unnecessary things.
We've got a flat.
We've just bought a flat just a couple of months before that.
And we were installing it and furnishing it.
But still, the flat was in such a semi-descent state.
And my mom went around and collected household things, some house trousers, sports shoes.
I don't know what she just took in her panic.
She didn't even think I could use it.
There wasn't a moment like that to sit down, concentrate, decide.
I will take this, this, this.
I definitely need this.
She just took everything and threw it in the suitcase like that.
I said, Mom, Mom, stop.
What are you doing?
Calm down.
All right, be quiet.
And somehow I calmed her down a bit.
She came to her senses.
Everything was fine.
We watched the news, sat together, and we calmed down.
I even remember that my mother and I went to the shop.
We bought food and there was a lot of people in the shop.
There was a real panic again, I think because of the lack of food.
As we usually have people running to buy toilet paper and salt,
a strategic stock of everything you can buy.
We went, we bought some food, and then we went back home.
But the day had started as usual, and here it was.
Just like a day accompanied by explosions.
It is weird.
Now I realize it all and I think about it.
It's weird.
And my mom said, Let's get out of here.
It's scary.
It's really scary.
I said, Mom, yes, I said, yes, I say, I don't mind.
I wasn't worried about me.
I was worried about my mom, emotional state.
I was worried about the kids and the kids didn't care.
They slept until 12 o'clock.
I woke them up afterwards.
I have a younger sister and brother.
And I said, Are you guys all right?
Do you know what happened?
And I said, No.
Well, everything's fine.
Everything's great.
I exhaled at the moment really, because if the kids had heard that,
I think it would have made a huge difference to their emotional morals.
I don't know.
I'm thankful that they were sleeping so soundly, really.
And I said, Mom, yes, it's a good idea to leave, a really good idea,
because I'm worried about our family.
But I think there are a lot of people now.
There will be a lot of traffic.
Everyone is leaving now and we don't know.
Maybe there will be some situation at the border that something will fly in there.
We do not know what is in the heads of the people who started it all.
Let's not rush.
I want to, I support this idea, but let's think about what we need now.
Gather some of the most necessary things and then we will see how to act.
So we discussed it with my father and my father said, It's OK.
We're not going anywhere.
Everything will be fine now.
Just for an hour, two or three a day or two and everything will be over.
Don't worry.
Everything will be fine.
He is the father.
He is the head of the family.
We trusted him.
We still laugh at him for stopping us at that moment because we were sitting.
We were up all night.
We woke up at three.
It didn't start at half past four.
It started earlier.
It was by three o'clock and it turned out that my dad stopped us at that point.
I said, OK, we have not eaten yet.
Let's pack just in case.
We didn't pack emergency suitcases beforehand either, as many clever people did,
because, well, we didn't believe how what emergency suitcase.
What are you talking about?
That is nonsense.
Well, how is it possible?
What a war.
21st century civilized world.
I'm having a conference in Lviv, an event forum.
My jackets are in the hallway.
And what a war.
But in general, I slowly began to gather everything with my mother.
I'm that kind of person.
But the first thing I grabbed was equipment, all the laptops that were at home, tablets, chargers,
hairdryers, curling irons, everything.
I said, Mom, I'm going to sell my equipment just in case for having money.
If something happens for emergencies.
The most important thing for me was that we were all packed, that we were prepared, everything.
It was already about five when we sat down like that.
And dad saw mom's condition and said, OK, we leave.
He saw mom's condition and said, I can't look at her like this.
That's it.
We're leaving.
We're leaving now for sure.
And we got in the car.
So we loaded everything into the car.
And then I realized I have a pet rat.
I realized I couldn't leave her.
It's not normal.
It's my responsibility.
It's our pet like a child.
She's our family member.
How can I leave the rat?
But we've got loads of stuff in the car.
What to do?
How to do it?
We haven't had the thought of leaving her at home for a second at all.
Not for a second.
I mean, a lot of people love at me.
They say, but it's not a dog.
It's not a cat.
It's just a rat in a cage.
What do you mean?
It's just a rat.
It's a full fledged member of the family.
It's my responsibility.
It's my animal.
And we've already loaded all the stuff.
I was back home when I've packed the cage.
Just a couple of days before this whole situation.
I brought a huge new cage for her.
A very expensive one with all the slides, letters to make her feel like a queen.
But I really wanted to do it for her.
So I took this little cage.
I put her in there.
I moved her in and I picked her up to the car.
And the last thing I did was calling my little brother.
I sat next to him and said, I don't know when we're going to come back.
What's going on and if we're coming back at all.
This is such a situation now.
And I explained it to him in a mature way.
He's only four years old.
I explained what was going on in an adult way and he listened to me.
He understood everything.
I saw in his eyes how mature he had become.
At that moment, it really didn't seem like he understood anything.
He was such a conscious kid.
And we sat there and we picked out the toys he wanted to take with him.
We took a little bag and we were going through his toys.
Do you want this car?
Let's take it.
Do you want that horse?
Let's take it.
He was given a small bag of these toys and he asked a lot of questions.
Why?
What's it for?
How long is it going to take?
Where are we going?
Are we going to the cottage?
These were the questions that accompanied us all the way.
We spent the whole summer at the country house.
We have a cottage house in the countryside and we used to go there to swim.
And that's a favorite place for him.
And so when we loaded into the car, as usual, we loaded up to the cottage.
And it also was in the evening.
Are we going to the cottage?
And I said, no, my darling, well, we're not going to the cottage now,
but we'll definitely come back and then go to the cottage.
We love it so much, but we're not going there right now.
So we drove off and it was a very long journey.
My grandmother refused to come with us.
She said, I'll be getting an order for defending Odessa, liberating the city.
I'll stay.
But we didn't try to pursue her.
She's an adult.
What's the point?
Do you want to go?
Let's go.
If you don't want to, then that's OK.
It's up to you.
And it turns out we were off.
It's been a very hard road.
Very.
We have a Moldavian border near the town.
We drove up and we drove for 17 hours for a stretch of eight kilometers.
Seventeen hours.
At night we didn't, we did it in trucks.
Dad drove 10 centimeters.
Dad, that's it.
Stop.
And that's how we drove all night long.
And the whole problem was that he was very sad in that situation.
He was very unpleasant.
But our people did not have time to organize together.
They started to overtake each other on the track.
We started at Tormol there.
There was no such thing as here we are in order and that here was a queue of cars.
People started to overtake others from behind.
Panic started.
How could it be like this?
Why did somebody let himself get ahead and we were left behind?
Because there were just young kids in the car.
Dad didn't want to take a risk.
He couldn't.
But he didn't want to risk it.
Because our friends were traveling with us in their other car.
And because of this constant turning off and on of the car, their car broke down and they couldn't go the same way.
And we couldn't leave them behind.
Thinking about it now, I realize how wrong it was in the first place.
It would not be in our conscious, but our conscious would torment us later.
We would think how wrong we had done it.
And we couldn't leave our friends behind either.
Because there was no guarantee that their car would start up the right moment and they wouldn't be able to follow us.
We had been stuck in traffic for about 17 hours.
And in the morning or rather in the evening, we were already asleep in the car when his order to law had been passed.
The decree that men from 18 to 60 years are not allowed to cross the border.
I didn't want to believe it.
Well, how?
No, please.
We had been standing for 17 hours.
It can't be like that.
No, we were standing for 17 hours in a total at that time.
That's from 6 to 12.
It was around nightfall.
This decree had just come out.
How can my father not be allowed to leave?
What are we going to do now?
And then what?
A lot of panic and stress started.
But my parents also tried to sleep because they hadn't slept for 24 hours.
I slept for about an hour in the afternoon.
And so my parents didn't sleep at all.
They were thinking about us.
We will do what will happen next.
And I said, OK, let's get some rest somehow.
Yes, it is very difficult to sleep in the car because I even have pictures.
They're just bags, bags, bags that BMW bags there.
So we had everything stuffed in them.
It turns out that we were driving.
Then my parents fell asleep.
I was all over the news.
I couldn't get off my phone.
And in the morning I saw some so many cars coming back.
And somehow this traffic jam, it was already dissipating because so many cars were us were going back.
I didn't understand what the situation was.
I asked the guys who were coming back and they said men are not allowed out and not allowed at all.
And I started to panic.
What do you mean?
They don't let men out, but it won't let them out.
But they will let us out.
They won't let them out and they will let me out for sure.
I was sure of that.
So we waited for a while.
The kids were already hungry and they wanted to go to the toilet.
This and that and my red too.
All my water for my red overflowed and poured out.
And my little brother woke up demanding sushi.
I said to him, what's sushi?
Are you kidding me?
What's sushi now?
Everyone needed something and he wanted sushi.
I decided that I would walk to the border on foot.
There were literally three or four kilometers to go.
I decided I walked to the border.
So I go out of the car and walked.
I was walking with my mother, the children and my father.
The whole family has decided to walk.
We reached the border and said, so and so we would like to leave.
They said no.
But my mother said, we're a large family.
You have three children.
So let us leave.
He tells us, no, no, no, that's it.
Then we started talking about the fact that Moldavian laws applied to us on this territory,
which means we can be allowed out.
If we applied for asylum, Moldova would obligate to shelter us.
So I talked to them and said, that's so and so.
And we know that we can apply for asylum.
Give it to us.
And the guy, when he already knew that we knew the laws, that we knew everything, these are the rules.
He said, OK, I can let you out.
Come on in.
I asked him if we had a car.
How could we get out?
He said we could not go by car.
I think they put us in front of a choice, either our father or the car.
And we could not leave our father.
Well, as a family, we all stand up for each other, but we could not leave our new car,
which was completely loaded with our things.
And we were on such a roadblock.
Because, well, why?
What would you choose?
I mean, really, what?
A father or a car?
You don't understand.
OK.
We would have left the car, would have walked as a family, would have crossed the Moldovian border.
What would have been next?
How to go?
Where to go?
And what to take?
To walk or to catch a bus?
What to do?
So we made a decision to go to our acquaintances, to a village.
It was a very, very, very poor village.
Very poor.
When we arrived, I was shocked.
I was not as grimmish at all.
Absolutely.
I worked at concerts, at festivals.
I very often slept on the road, in buses, in cars.
For me, there is no such thing as I will not sleep here.
I don't want that.
I won't eat this hot dog from the petrol station.
I don't have that.
But it was very horrible there.
I'm grateful to the people who took us in that day.
Grateful that they sheltered us.
But we lived for a month without water.
People didn't have a tap in the house.
I don't understand how that's possible.
OK.
Toilet in the street, latrine in the street happens.
This happens to many people in the villages.
But the fact that there is no tap, there are no conditions at all.
So you can imagine that we did not wash normally for a month.
All we had was a small basin and a ladle.
And there were little three liters of water in two rooms in the house.
There in that house lived the owners and an old woman and a man.
Sick people.
They had health problems due to their age.
A married couple or friends, our friends, their children and us with our parents.
Me, dad, mom and kids.
So you count 11 people in a two-room house.
It was just a nightmare.
We all slept in the same room.
So bad mattresses were thrown on the floor and everybody slept together.
Because, well, it was cold.
It was so winter.
We were heating the stove every night.
But what to do?
It was frightening to go back.
In addition to the fact that we were in such terrible conditions,
there was a lack of sanitation and constant news and constant news.
Stories about the death of people close to us.
I have many friends and colleagues that died.
Now it's really possible that I'm like, well, you can't say it like that,
but I just don't have tears to cry anymore.
I feel like I have already cried it all out because they're here.
You wake up every day and you're hoping to hear that everything has ended.
Yeah, like they said, two weeks, two weeks and it's over.
You hope to hear that.
But instead you get a call and they tell you someone is dead.
There's Pasha, for example.
It's hysterical.
It's tragic and the tears start.
I don't know.
I could hardly stand it at that time.
It was really hard.
But what can you do?
You can't bring the person back, but you still have to try and keep your health.
It turns out to me that in addition to being unsanitary in all conditions,
that there was no washing, nothing.
There was also homemade food from the owners' farm animals.
I'm not used to that.
There were homemade chicken eggs, milk, cheese, all that stuff.
I was brought up on supermarket products, on this powdered milk.
Everybody knows what good products we have, but it's not like that.
It's not homemade.
Whatever I ate, it all came back out of me.
I couldn't eat anything.
Everything made me sick.
It was all in a pile.
Depression, arguments with my boyfriend, because I was so sick.
Plus the conditions around me.
Death of people close to me.
This whole environment, it really, really started weighing on me.
Very much.
I was beginning to think I was just about to check it all.
And it all came to pass.
At one point, yes, I didn't want anything.
I didn't need anything in my life.
I was depressed.
But then I told my dad that sitting there would get more infections.
I was so worried.
And I told my dad that sitting there would get more infections from not washing ourselves.
Well, dad, it's okay.
And dad said, I agree with you.
And he and I made this maybe selfishness for the whole family.
But we said, it is better to die at home in Odessa than here.
In starvation.
I'll tell you again, starvation.
Let me again explain the whole situation.
That I can't eat homemade products.
That we would have died in an unknown village.
It was not clear where and what and how.
And my mother said, no, no, no, please, let's stay here.
We listened to her one day and we stayed.
Again the next day the conversation was repeated.
Anyway, dad and I talked about it for three days.
And on the fourth day, mom finally agreed and said, okay, well, let's go away.
Okay.
Already abroad?
We did not plan to go abroad.
We could not go abroad.
How could we go abroad?
While we were sitting in the village, we did not even know that this situation was going to happen.
We did not even know that this decree was issued.
The decree that allowed large families, disabled people, these categories of people to travel abroad.
There was also a terrible communication system.
There was no normal Internet there.
I could only check something out once and it was not always important.
So we sat down, made the Internet work and my parents decided to buy food in the village.
Because nobody knew what the situation was in town.
They said that there was no supplies and no bread and that all.
So my parents brought 40 kilos of meat.
They brought all.
And then, as I remember now, seven kilos of homemade cheese, homemade eggs, a lot of chicken eggs.
So we were driving home and we were driving and driving.
And my dad says, let's try it at our own risk.
Let's try it.
And we weren't expecting it.
And dad sat in the car and turned it around.
There was absolutely no queue there.
It was less than a kilometer.
And long as we arrived and we pulled in and the young guy came up and dad handed him our documents.
The guy said, on what grounds do you want to leave the country?
Do you know that men have no right to leave the country?
Daddy said, I'm a father with many children.
Look, all my family is with me.
We are here.
We're not going anywhere outside the car.
And as we came from the village, we were so dirty.
All I wanted at that moment was a shower.
Really.
I knew that when I came home, I would go into the bathroom and I would not come out of there for at least three hours.
So there, near the border, we were dirty in our sweatpants, like people were in the countryside.
We were getting into the car.
We were going away anyway.
Who could see us?
And that guy looked into the car and there were kids sitting in there, exhausted.
I was sitting with a rat in a cage.
Mother was getting nervous and the guy was like, OK, we're going through.
And we got into this customs checkpoint and I saw that all the cars went through.
Everyone was let through.
The women were leaving.
Everyone was let through and we were not there.
We stood.
We waited.
My mom was very nervous.
My dad was also very nervous.
And we waited and we waited.
They waited.
So dad was afraid for the children.
He was afraid for mom in the first place.
And he was very afraid for us.
If he wanted, he could go to defend our country.
But he understands that he is the head of the family and that we are more important for him.
We would not survive without him.
We stood there waiting.
Until one girl came up.
She handed us a document and said, have a nice trip.
We were looking at each other in shock.
What do you mean, have a nice trip?
And dad started driving straight in.
And we've got a message on our phone saying, Moldova, welcome.
Moldova welcomes you.
And we were like, what happened?
And we just drove in silence for about 10 minutes.
We just didn't understand what was going on.
We left officially.
That's all.
Our documents were stamped.
That's because we were a large family and we were in a category.
The list of those people who could leave.
We went and we kept quiet.
It has probably been the quietest 10 minutes of our lives,
considering my Italian family is usually so noisy.
Because it was a shock.
We've had a month of fear, shock, disgust and anger.
We were just so out of touch with everything that was going on.
And we left and called our relatives and told them that we left.
And everybody was very happy for us because some of my relatives left before this law was introduced.
But unfortunately, some of my relatives are still in the Ukraine.
I'm very worried about them.
I wrote to all my friends too that I had left.
They were very happy for the fact that we got out the children because, well, this is important.
I think we didn't know where to go next.
But you're in Austria at the moment.
Did you make this decision right away or you were thinking about it for a while?
Why did you choose Austria in the first place?
Oh, what an interesting question.
It turned out that we left for Moldova first.
We realized that we couldn't stay in Moldova for long, so we kept on going.
We went to Romania because one of my uncles was there with his family.
So we decided to go to him.
We arrived in Romania.
We stayed there literally for one day.
We rented a hotel, we took a shower, and that's how it turned out.
I also want to specify.
This is a very important point.
The gratitude to Romania.
We arrived at night.
It was four in the morning.
We could not find a hotel that would take us because every place we have been told is very late
and we can't accept you.
So I started searching for Ukrainians in the refugee chats on Telegram, where in Romania we could stay,
which Ukrainians could pick us up.
And I was given the address of one of the local centers.
And we arrived.
We met very, very nice people there.
They welcomed us with such warmth.
They welcomed us straight away with tea, sandwiches.
Here you are, take it all.
And we were given all the sorts of shampoos so that we could take a shower.
They gave us everything.
And we stayed for one night in the center.
The next day as well.
There was a full breakfast, lunch, everything that we needed.
And we decided that we would go further.
We went in and we stayed one more night in the hotel to discuss our plans in peace with our family,
some plans for the future.
The next morning we decided to drive on.
We left for Hungary.
And we thought about going to Germany because every time we went to Germany,
many Ukrainians left for Germany, many of our acquaintances, friends, teachers, colleagues left for Germany.
Well, where to go?
Before the war, many of our acquaintances lived in Germany and they always invited us to their home.
And when the situation arose, they were already ready to receive us and said,
yes, yes, of course, come, we're waiting for you.
And we began our journey to Germany.
And it just so happened that about 30 years ago,
my father moved to another country because of a war.
He moved to Ukraine, to Odessa because of the war in Georgia.
And his brothers moved to Austria, to Vienna.
So after Hungary, we went to Austria.
And when we were in Austria, my father said, I have not seen my cousins.
I haven't seen my cousins for 30 years.
I can't be here, not go see them.
I cannot afford it.
And we did not keep in touch at all because people have grown up.
Everyone has their own family and they are no longer little children, not boys who run and play.
They are grown men.
Everyone has a family.
Each of them works and they were exchanging messages on social networks.
Congratulations each other on holidays, but it was not a full-fledged communication.
And it turned out that we found a phone number.
The phone number of one of my dad's cousins.
We called them and said, so and so, dad said, I really want to see you.
I don't need your help.
I didn't come to ask for help.
I didn't show up when I needed help.
That's why I came.
No, I just really want to see you.
And we arrived at the meeting and there was another one of my dad's cousins.
I mean, there were two of them and they all started crying.
They started hugging and crying because they met after 30 years.
Can you imagine?
That's how they felt.
And I met my uncles for the first time.
I found out that I had three cousins.
I never knew they existed.
I wondered.
Yes, I knew I had someone there.
Well, what they were like, what their names were, who they were.
I never knew.
And these uncles, they hugged my father and said, I won't let you go anywhere.
Like you went to Odessa 30 years ago.
Now you won't go anywhere.
We will help you stay here.
Don't go to Germany.
He will stay with us in Austria.
And my father could not refuse him there because he saw his cousins and that was it.
He was lost.
My relatives are the people who are the closest to me.
And we stayed in Vienna.
Vienna, Austria in general received us incredibly warmly.
They are very friendly people in Vienna.
They helped us.
They advised us and everything.
And it so happened that we came to Austria on March 21st and we were standing in line to check in Austria the whole day.
And March 21st is my mother's birthday.
So this was the present, which means we spent her birthday in the center walking, waiting for check in.
And that's the kind of present we got for her.
It turned out that we were looking for lodgings in Vienna, but it was really difficult to get lodging.
There were really a lot of people.
There was a great influx of refugees and we couldn't find anything for ourselves.
And my uncle told me that he had a very great offer.
You can go to Salzburg.
My acquaintance is there, who is very close to me.
We'll give you a job, provide you with a place to live.
She will help you.
We thought, well, what to do, what to do?
But you can go to Salzburg only on Monday, he said.
It was Tuesday.
We had to wait for a whole week.
So we came to the center for refugees.
There were two centers in Vienna.
In one of them people could stay overnight.
In the other center they were given food and humanitarian aid.
Clothes and all sorts of hygiene products, all sorts of things.
We were sitting in the center and some guys came to us.
One girl, a Brazilian journalist and one guy.
He was born in Austria, but now lives in Germany.
We got to know them and they turned out to be very warm guys.
They were very kind people.
They were the first people we met in Austria.
We told our story, told them our situation.
We exchanged contacts and we went to spend the night at the refugee center.
It was like a stadium.
There were a bunch of these beds and all the people slept on cots in one big room like this.
And as we arrived, I think we had to live there for a week.
We had to get used to everything because all this stuff was in the car.
You had to walk around all the time and you had to take them to communal shower.
Everything was in one room.
There was absolutely no personal space.
We had already come to terms with it and we got a call from that girl, that journalist.
She said, we want to help you guys.
We want to rent you a flat, at least for a period while you're waiting for your departure to Salzburg.
We said, no, no, no, no way.
What do you mean?
Well, complete strangers offered us help.
They offered us a place to live.
They rent us a flat and said, we will send you two options of flats.
Just choose which one you want.
And they sent us two variants of flats.
The first one was smaller.
The second one was very large.
We didn't have the nerve.
We didn't say no.
We just said, if you want to help us, it would not be nice to refuse.
Yes, people sincerely wanted to help us.
We chose a small flat and they said to us, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
I heard something about that city.
Yes, I was trying to remember.
How did I know that?
What is it?
I decided to look it up on the Internet.
What is it?
What is the Salzburg?
And I was sitting there in our car and I saw a picture and my phone fell out of my hand.
I started shaking and my parents said, are you all right?
I'm not.
My parents said, why?
What's the problem?
The thing is, when I first moved to Kiev, I lived in a student dormitory and my parents
gave me puzzles for the New Year.
I really, really love doing jigsaw puzzles.
It's a special kind of leisure for me.
Yes, yes, I love puzzles.
I saw a picture of a puzzle that did.
I mean, I was sitting in a dorm in 2019.
I was doing puzzles.
I just love that picture that I was putting together.
I'd been putting together this puzzle for about a month.
There were a thousand pieces.
It was very difficult and there were mountains, fragments of the sky.
It was just a very difficult puzzle and I was nervous.
I was so psychotic.
At one point I even threw out the puzzle because I wasn't getting it right.
But in the end, I got this picture together and it all worked out.
And when I typed picture of Salzburg in my phone and the first thing that came out was
this picture that I was putting together in the dormitory.
I was just stunned.
How was that possible?
There were so many beautiful places in the world.
I don't know if it's a coincidence or what.
How is it possible that I'm going to a city?
That city, the picture I did as a puzzle in 2019.
It's impossible.
I said to my parents, do you remember?
Do you remember the picture you brought me?
And again, again, silence inside the whole car.
It was like that 10 minutes when we crossed the border.
And again, we all went like, oops, what is going anywhere?
What is it?
Anyway, we arrived in Salzburg.
It was like the magical city.
I remember where I knew that city from.
It turned out that apart from that story, it's Mozart's hometown.
I don't know how I could have forgotten that it was the hometown of my favorite composer.
It's my favorite composer.
That's really it.
I was insanely happy to be here.
Of course, it's a city of music and you're the one who organized the concerts.
I just, I can just breathe there.
It's like it's permanent music.
I really feel like I belong there.
Yes, that's it.
Very easy, very warm, very friendly people.
And there is a very musical atmosphere in there.
You listen to it and you look at it all and melodies come to your mind.
The birds that wake people up in the morning and hum the melodies outside the window.
That's some kind of established composition that you can write.
Just supplement it with something.
It's a magical city and I'm very glad to be there.
Yes.
One of your favorite activities in Ukraine before the February 24th was PR managing of a boys band.
When the war had started, your collaboration collapsed.
The guys could no longer give concerts.
They couldn't leave Ukraine either, but they managed to do it somehow.
Oh, that's a very interesting story.
It turned out that I left, but my heart ached.
My heart ached for the guys because we were like family.
We were all collective.
We were a family.
We all worked together.
And for me, it was very frustrating that they could not leave just because they were men.
It's not fair.
It's so unfair.
Why is it like that?
And yes, first of all, I was frustrated that in a human way, they were sitting there in fear,
in an awful emotional state.
And secondly, I was nervous because what will I do without them now?
They were my support.
They were one of my main activities, not to mention one of my ways of earning a living.
I'm turning a blind eye to that.
At least I want to recover somehow.
Because after a month in a village where you had no internet and no connection and no washing, nothing,
what concert can you talk about?
What backstage at all?
We were talking to the guys, chatting, communication a lot.
And after three months, we decided to go on tour because the whole war was not over.
The guys were sitting there without work, stressed out.
I was stressed out here, too.
I was depressed.
I was terribly depressed.
And I said, guys, I'm going to make sure you get out of there.
And that's what started about a month ago.
We tried and we called the Ministry of Culture.
We wrote a bunch of letters directed to the minister.
Only on the ninth letter we received a positive response.
They said, all right, go out.
And one of our guys, one of the boy band, joined the army.
He joined the National Guard as a volunteer.
And we could not get him out.
But we are very proud of him.
He's our hero, our defender.
And he stayed in Ukraine.
And my guys and I left.
I was already in Austria and Salzburg.
The guys left later.
So cultural figures can travel, then?
Yes, yes, they're allowed to leave.
But with a provision that the money earned would come to Ukraine for aid,
aid to the army, only on such terms.
But when you first came to Austria, you didn't know the language.
Oh, it's such a complicated subject.
It's a very difficult subject.
I sometimes feel like language is the only barrier to achieving my dreams.
I feel like this.
If I knew German, I would approach these people, talk to them and agree on something,
some kind of joint work.
Everything would be fine.
Sometimes I feel so sorry for myself that why don't you know German?
But I'm lucky that at least I know English.
At least I can somehow communicate with people.
I don't understand how people who come here without knowing any languages,
besides their mother tongue.
I think it is difficult.
It's simply unrealistically difficult.
At least I have the basics.
At least English I can somehow communicate.
But German, I really like that language.
Everyone used to tell me that it's so rude, that it's very harsh, not beautiful,
but it's one of the most beautiful languages to me.
It is very difficult to learn.
Yes, in terms of pronunciation, it's very beautiful.
I dream of learning it and do everything I can to learn it in a way that I can.
I want to learn it as soon as possible.
How did your relationship with your family change
when you started living together in Salzburg?
It turns out I have always had a very warm relationship with my family.
And when I went to Kiev to live separately, everything was fine.
Everything was warm, everything was friendly.
But when I came back, it started to be a bit different.
When you live separately from your relatives and come back again,
you no longer find common ground.
So it's all this, some little things, and you start fighting.
You start grumbling when grown up children and parents.
This is a different vision of everything, of everyone, of the total situation of everything.
That is why you start not understanding each other.
Quarrels begin, misunderstanding starts, arguments and scandals begin.
It used to happen.
But the war brought our family together very strongly.
My family, my mother, my father, my siblings, we all came together.
We became one.
We support each other very much.
Everything was fine.
Where do you live in Salzburg?
I am now renting a flat already because I got a job,
and my parents have been given accommodation.
My father is working now.
He has been provided with accommodation by his employers, and they live there.
Talking about us, thank God.
We bypassed all these terrible and horrible experiences with hotels, with everything.
And that is where our compatriots live now.
You're very lucky in this perspective.
And if you would have the opportunity to take something from Ukraine now,
even something intangible, what would you take now?
From Ukraine? For me?
I don't know.
Things stop having value.
I realize that the highest value is the people around you.
It was my birthday yesterday, and my friends gathered there in Odessa
and sent me videos of them celebrating my birthday.
I'm experiencing such emotions in this year that I've never experienced before.
Because that's what it feels like when you're here and your friends are there.
But they're celebrating your birthday.
They haven't forgotten that it's your birthday.
You're still theirs, you're still their friend.
You're still close, and even though you're far away.
And those are my friends.
Of course, that's something.
No thing is worth it.
Anything can be earned, anything can be brought.
The main thing is to take care of your family, take care of your health,
take care of yourself and your friends and your relatives.
Friends, of course.
What laws are you still struggling to counterterms with?
As much as I hate to bring this up, I broke up with my boyfriend.
I still think of him, and I don't understand why that happened.
We were planning a family, we were planning a wedding.
We were already talking to the organizers.
I was supposed to have, I repeat, a wedding in August.
But something went wrong.
It's just that we had the same position.
As much as we were there for Ukraine, we adored our country.
But the vision of the situation was totally different.
He was very impressionable.
He was very emotional.
He watched every picture, every went, those horrible, unfair scenarios.
And he became very emotional, unstable.
And we fought every day.
I said that I couldn't stand it anymore.
I'm sorry, but I can't take it anymore.
We broke up.
I mean, we broke up without talking.
It was such a stupid breakup over the phone.
What's that?
Why you think so?
I think so, that's it.
Bye.
I don't want to live in Europe, he told me.
I said, I don't want to either.
I'm here for you.
It's great.
I have a great future here, a lot of opportunities.
But for you, I'm willing to sacrifice them.
For the sake of my family, I'm ready to go back to Ukraine with you.
OK?
Come on, this is the period when it's scary for my sake.
What is scary?
Come on, we will sit here in Europe.
Because he was already at sea, he could come to me easily, he told me.
I will go to defend the country.
And I'm proud of him.
I'm very proud of him, that he made the decision for himself.
I couldn't accept that he didn't choose me, that he didn't support me.
Maybe it was very selfish of me, self-centered, even that he should be there for me, as I
had decided.
But it didn't work out, and that hurts.
This is the first situation, and the second one is about a close friend, Pasha Li.
He was an actor, a presenter, and it's really hard.
It's really hard.
His dad, isn't he?
Yes, Pasha died, yes.
He was the first person I met in Kiev as soon as I moved there, and when I heard the news,
I was really stunned.
What do you mean, Pasha?
It's impossible, it's just impossible.
As I talked to him, even when the war started, he called me, everything was fine, and we
signed up for the defense against the terrorists in our country.
I do not remember in general, in the army or somewhere else.
And he carried the baby, I don't understand, just to this day, why he did it.
As far as I know, he took off his flak jacket and put it on the baby, and he carried the
baby out in his arms.
I mean, I think he could have covered the child with his body and stayed in his flak
jacket, but he decided to do this, and he's a hero.
He's a hero for me, and he was carrying the child out of the destroyed house, wrapped
in his flak jacket, and he was shot in the back.
And the bullet went through his back, straight to the heart, and that's it.
Pasha's gone.
And it really hurts, and it's really hard for me.
Meanwhile, really, he was a very close person to me, and I'm still crying.
Everyone started posting on social media right after about his death, and that was the hardest
part.
That was the hardest part.
When on the one hand it's like a tribute, that everyone started remembering, everyone
remembered, everyone wrote how good he was, everyone was sympathetic, but at the same
time more often it repeated, the more it hurt.
You just try to move away from it, try to accept it, try to forget it.
You get phone calls again, sympathy.
It is very painful.
It is unbelievably painful.
I mean, well, Pasha, you can't compare anything to human life at all.
I mean the death of a friend.
It was the hardest loss.
How did you come out of the depression that had formed in your soul?
Oh, here's depression.
I used that word a lot before.
I mean, I had a session of exams.
Oh, and that's it.
I was depressed.
Exams?
I couldn't.
It's all homework, credits.
I was depressed.
There was something else.
I often used that word.
I didn't give it much thought.
That's when I felt what it was.
There was such a rethinking of values, so many new concepts.
I learned what fear is.
I learned what shock is.
I learned what depression is.
I learned what depression is, what it is.
And I came to Salzburg with my parents.
I didn't even talk.
I wasn't talking and I was stressed.
Yes, I got stressed.
I started to eat a lot and I laid in bed for about two months.
No way out.
Just my parents said, let's go for a walk.
Let's go to see the city.
Let's go.
Let's go out.
Let's go there.
We need a distraction from everything that's going on.
I couldn't.
I was on my phone constantly.
My blood pressure was really high and I was nervous.
I was thinking, why did you bring me here?
I don't want anything.
I want to go home.
Just want to go home to my home, to my hometown.
I was nervous all the time.
I was eating and that was the worst part.
I gained 13 kilos, 13 kilos in two months.
I was just rolling out of my room.
They gave me.
I knew I couldn't go on like this.
It was unbearable.
I realized that who, if not me, who would lift me up now?
Who would help me?
Life goes on.
You have to do something.
You have to try something.
You can't give up.
You can't just lie on your couch and get fat.
You have to work on yourself.
You have to get on your feet and try to have a good, successful life for yourself.
And then one person came into my life.
This is my friend.
This is my close friend.
Yes, we had a language barrier.
It's such a thing because he doesn't know English very well.
I don't know German at all.
So we have no language in common.
But he was such a support for me.
He dragged me out of bad and made me go for a walk.
And we went for a walk.
We tried to communicate with each other.
It was a lot of fun.
And he became this kind of my lifeline friend.
That's what they say.
That's what he really got me out of.
And I'm very grateful to him for that.
We talk less often now, of course, because he's busy with his own stuff.
I'm working.
He's working.
It's kind of like that.
And you're working now, right?
Yes, I found a job.
It was very quite difficult because it was a foreign language.
Again, in Ukraine, I speak Ukrainian, ideally, Russian perfectly.
I could easily come to any company, any firm.
I could get a job.
I just dealt with my activities.
I had my favorite colleagues.
I had my best agency.
We worked together.
And still, I could find common ground with anybody,
find an approach to anyone.
And here, due to the fact that I don't know the language,
it was very difficult.
So I started looking for a job.
It turned out like I was offered a job.
But I was on tour at the time.
That's when the guys left and I had to choose.
Either I'm going on tour now or I'm going to work.
I knew that the guys cared about me more and needed me more.
I had to be there for them.
I said that I was sorry.
I couldn't take the job at that time.
But if I came back from tour, if it was relevant, we could continue.
So I went on tour with the guys.
We gave concerts.
We raised money.
And after that, I already went back to Austria.
I called back and asked, is your offer still valid?
I'm already home.
At first, he said, yes, of course.
Michelle, we've been waiting for you.
And we are very happy that you can make it.
I came for the interview.
We talked.
And that was it.
It was such a love at first sight, really.
And they hired me.
They love me very much.
They respect me very much and help me with my German.
That is practice.
It is very important.
I don't go on courses now because I'm the kind of person who finds it difficult to learn
under pressure.
That's when they said to me, you need to study.
Go five hours a day.
There's an 8 o'clock to 1 o'clock class.
I can't do that.
I need free time.
I need it when I want.
But when you work, when you're surrounded by German-speaking people, this community of
people, you slowly get into it.
Or you start to talk.
You communicate with them.
I was very warmly welcomed.
I'm helped in everything.
I'm grateful.
My supervisor is simply the coldest man I could be.
He always understands me, treats everything with understanding and acceptance.
Cold, really.
He is cold.
I never thought I would say that about my boss, that I would have bosses at all because
I've always been self-employed.
Michelle, thank you so much for coming to us today.
You brought your soul.
Thank you so much for your story.
It's clearly going to leave no one indifferent.
Yes, my situation now is like back then when I was freaking out because I couldn't put
my Salzburg puzzles together.
I think these are my nerves.
It's like now I'm at a breaking point.
I can't put the puzzle together.
I can't learn German.
That's one of the fragments of one of the pieces of the puzzle.
There was depression.
There was also a moment when I was breaking this puzzle down and putting the pieces back
together again.
I hope that in the end, as I put my puzzle together, I did put this whole picture together.
I hope that I will be able to build my happy, successful life.
Already here, I will not forget my beloved homeland, my country.
I will promote Ukrainian culture here.
I will promote Ukrainian music.
It will live.
It will develop.
It will always live in my heart and my soul.
Because my body is here, I work here.
But anyway, a part of my soul is here.
Because I was born there, I am a little pearl by the sea in my Odessa, which is my mother,
and Salzburg is my father.
That's how it is.
I will feel good with my dad, of course, but I feel more comfortable with my mom.
And we remind you that you have been listening to Voice of Peace at the Radio Freiraat, and
we are looking forward to see you again in two weeks when we will have another guest.
Have a nice day, everyone!