Mommy, I Was So Scared…
The testimony of Irina and Aleksandr, refugees from Zaporizhzhia
Irina (known to friends as Ira) and Aleksandr (Sasha) are parents of three children. Their eldest son has complex health needs. Before the invasion, Sasha was a factory worker in Zaporizhzhia, while Irina was a homemaker.
Ira: We simply couldn’t believe it. At first, no one believed the war would actually break out. I remember how we woke up on 24/02/22. A noise outside the window woke us… I thought it was the weather.
Sasha: Ira woke me and said, “Go see what that is.” I got up, pulled back the curtain, and saw military jets—I couldn’t tell whether they were ours or Russian. One, then another… Right over the house, literally just a few meters above the roof. I was wide awake in an instant, because I knew my older son was in another part of the city, at school. That was our routine: I took him on Monday and picked him up on Friday. And the first thing I realized when I opened the window was that my son was in exactly the direction those planes were heading.
I grabbed my phone to call a friend who has a car. Instagram was open on my screen; I saw the page refresh and the news started pouring in: the war had begun.
I called my friend who lives 500 meters away. “Zhenya, start the car right now and let’s go get my son.” He said, “I’m already by the car, but I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.” He came to pick me up. Under normal circumstances it would take twenty minutes to get to Tima’s school. It took us an hour and a half. There were traffic jams everywhere because of the gas stations—lines for fuel stretched from the road deep into the stations.
Ira: Yes, and on WhatsApp, in the school parents’ chat, people were asking whether they should bring their children to school or not. No one understood what to do. No one believed it was real. And when the war began, we thought that in a couple of days, maybe a week, they would sort it out, come to an agreement… No one agreed on anything.
So by the second week, we fled without a specific destination: western Ukraine, Poland, Italy—it didn’t matter. The important thing was to leave. I swear, I hadn’t slept for a week. I might lie down, drift off for a moment, wake up and realize the city had been hit. I would ask, “Why didn’t you wake me?” Because usually there’s a siren, in case something happens. At first, we were all afraid, all trying to hide. Then we understood: whatever happens, happens.
For a while we lived in a concrete garage at relatives’ place. People said reinforced concrete structures could protect us, but now, with time, I understand that nothing can save you from a direct hit—maybe only a very deep bunker. Anya wasn’t even a year and a half old when the war began; when we brought her here, she didn’t even have shoes, she still couldn’t walk properly. She was wearing one of those warm one-piece suits with the feet covered. She arrived here practically a baby.
While we were fleeing—I remember reading this on the way—I saw a story about a child her age who had been killed. There were videos: the ambulance, the little boy on a stretcher, his parents crying… They couldn’t save him. Another strike somewhere, or maybe shrapnel. He didn’t make it. I looked at my daughter… I couldn’t imagine what those parents were feeling. For people who have lived through this to forget it—I don’t even know how many years would have to pass.
We all fought together against Nazi Germany, and now we are fighting each other. Our grandparents and great-grandparents lived through that and told us how terrible war was. We studied it in school, looked at those photographs in textbooks and thought, my God, what horror. And then this happens… I’m sorry, but are we savages? In our time, solving problems this way doesn’t seem normal to me.
We left by train. I had read that those might be the last two days of evacuation and that the city might be closed afterward. I was afraid—we had small children. At the beginning of the war, store shelves were empty. Sasha and his brother Igor went together to check the pharmacies, but there were no medicines, nothing. Potatoes cost three or four times more than before.
When we left, the train was packed. People slept sitting up. In fact, in the corridors people were crammed together—not even sitting, just standing, just to get out. Zaporizhzhia is slightly larger than Turin in area, slightly smaller in population. It’s a huge city—not like Kyiv, but still large. People were being evacuated by train; the trains kept coming and coming. In the first days everyone fled en masse: by car, with relatives, with friends—everyone escaping however they could. During the day I would look outside and hope it would all end. People were out in the streets, the sun was shining, spring was coming, everything looked normal. We had plans: going to the sea with the children in the summer, doing renovations at home. We had projects. And then one day you wake up on the 24th and see this. I ask you—are we savages? Don’t we know how to resolve things any other way?
Ira: We left at the beginning of March 2022, and on October 9, 2022, an explosive device hit our building.
Seven floors of the building collapsed immediately. The top two floors remained standing, and there were some survivors. Neighbors, even before the rescuers arrived, began running, breaking down doors, and pulling people out. Many doors had warped and wouldn’t open. On the top floor that remained, there were refugees from the occupied territories: a woman, her mother, and a small child. They were saved—they managed to get them out—but by morning, the rest of the building had collapsed. Two people were never found. They say there were people in the basement. Naturally, they didn’t survive: they were simply buried alive.
My neighbor’s husband had been standing by the window. Their son was in the same room, in bed under a blanket—that’s what saved him, because shrapnel flew everywhere. But the husband at the window was thrown out by the blast wave, down onto the street. When people ran out, he was still alive. He was moaning, and his body was engulfed in flames.
Sasha: Where I used to work, we had a Viber group—a factory group. It was already late, even here in Turin it was 11 p.m., and Ira and I were in bed, when I received a message. It was from Rome, a friend who worked with me. He wrote: “Sanya’s house is on fire.” I thought I must have misread. At that moment, he called me.
Ira: At that time, one of my aunts was staying with us. I started shaking, called her with a broken voice. I remember running back and forth; the children weren’t asleep yet. My aunt said she could hear the impacts nearby… She always kept a chair in the corridor, because when she heard explosions she would go there. She said: “I was sitting quietly on the chair, watching”—she had positioned herself to see everything from the corridor—“the impacts falling, but then they became stronger and stronger.” She said that at the very last moment she thought, “No, I’ll go to the bathroom.” She had never gone into the bathroom during bombings. As soon as she closed the door, there was a tremendous explosion. In the room opposite the bathroom, the blast shattered the window and the balcony double doors: debris flew down the corridor and slammed against the bathroom door, jamming it. The door was stuck, and my aunt physically couldn’t open it to get out.
Sasha: This friend’s house wasn’t badly damaged—the balcony just collapsed. He told me, “I’ll get dressed and go there anyway to help.” He ran out. Later, he called me himself, because we couldn’t reach my aunt; there was no signal. He said she was safe, that they had pulled her out. It wasn’t the firefighters who rescued her, but ordinary people who had come to help.
Ira: I called my sister—she lived across the street—that very night, asking her to take my aunt in with them. The next day, her husband went to help; he knew how to operate cranes and excavators, so he assisted the rescuers in clearing the rubble. He told me: “Ira, you have no idea how many bodies are here.” What was reported—thirteen or so—was nonsense. Our media don’t report many things, because if they started publishing the real numbers, it would cause panic. I remember his words clearly: “Ira, you have no idea how many bodies there are.” He said there was simply a vast stretch of black bags.
Many people living nearby said that, just minutes before the tragedy, they heard a plane flying overhead: it was therefore an aerial bomb. The pilot couldn’t have failed to see that these were residential buildings.
The next day, Russia issued a denial, claiming they never hit civilian homes and asserting that the images were an old photo of a gas explosion in the Russian city of Magnitogorsk. But I recognized my house: they had placed two photos of my home next to two of another building, but it was obvious from the images that they were different houses.
My mother-in-law has a sister who moved from Ukraine to Russia a long time ago. One day she called my mother-in-law and said: “But we’re saving you, Russia doesn’t hit civilian homes.” So I sent her a photo of my house, showing the street and house number, along with my residency document, to prove that I was the owner of the apartment in that building. And I said, “Look how Russia is saving us.”
Sometimes you have to show people that these things really happen. It pains me deeply when I hear acquaintances speak like that, without believing anything. Many of those in Russia have been brainwashed. Others may simply refuse to believe it out of fear — I don't know. For those abroad, it’s easier to speak out, provided they don’t have to return to Russia. If a person keeps traveling back, they won’t risk speaking up even here.
Ira: Sasha’s father, my father-in-law, is still under occupation in the Polohy district, in the Zaporizhzhia region. We were able to communicate in 2022 until September; his birthday was on the 11th, but I could no longer wish him a happy birthday because all communication was cut off, and it still hasn’t been restored. We only managed to exchange a few messages once, and on another occasion I had to start searching for him. I looked for him on social media: I wrote in groups asking if anyone had contacts in that village, explaining that I was his daughter-in-law and was seeking news. Some Ukrainians responded, even though they weren’t there, saying they were in touch with relatives or neighbors. They said: “Yes, we know, but we can’t tell you anything.”
As is obvious, people in occupied territory don’t speak freely on the phone, except about the weather or their health. They only said he was alive and working. Recently, we heard that he has been hospitalized in Berdyansk.
He doesn’t want to leave—elderly people often refuse to abandon their homes. We told him he could try to leave via Russia if they allowed him to exit the village—but I don’t know if they would let him. They often use civilians as human shields. If he is discharged now that he is in Berdyansk, and there is an opportunity, why not try to escape through Russia or Belarus? Maybe by plane… it depends on his documents. And not everyone makes it through the “filtration.”
In 2022, my father-in-law used to call me often; as long as there was signal and his Ukrainian SIM card worked, he told me everything. There were times when our forces tried to strike Russian positions, since the village was occupied. He told me what he saw: near the village there is a hill, and Russian soldiers brought heavy weapons there to fire toward the settlement—maybe not directly at the houses, but at the fields, I’m not sure—and then they told the residents that Ukraine was hitting them. But people living nearby see everything. It was a provocation, a lie. Why do such things?
He told me a lot. Then communications vanished. When I began searching for him on social media, maybe someone risked themselves to give me news; one person called and told me: “Your father-in-law was taken to a basement.” “To a basement” meant they put a sack over his head and that of his neighbor and locked them underground; he stayed there for more than a day. I asked if he was alive; they said yes, and indeed they later released him. This happened in the summer of 2022.
Later, I think between 2023 and 2024, after a phone call with his son Igor, he said that Igor had become too “pro-Ukrainian.” Since then, they didn’t speak for a long time: maybe out of fear of being monitored, or because he himself was terrified, or perhaps due to brainwashing—I don’t know. I continued searching for him once a year, just to know if he was still alive. Now, shortly before New Year’s, we were told he was taken to a hospital in Berdyansk, apparently for a stroke. And I can’t bring myself to call. We weren’t that close, but I don’t want to hear, God forbid, that he is no longer with us.
I remember when I used to call him and beg him: “Dad, leave, the war has started, we’re fleeing, they could shoot you or worse.” He would answer: “No, everything will be fine, they won’t come here.” Everyone believed nothing would happen there. He told me about the time he was walking after having had a bit too much to drink, and Russian soldiers pointed a gun at his head, asking what he was doing out. He said there were eighteen-year-old boys; he wondered why they had sent a child—as he called him—there. Someone aimed the rifle at him: “Why are you walking here?” He was so scared that from that moment he even stopped drinking.
He also told me another incident: “Oh, we found a rifle.” One of those young soldiers had simply forgotten the weapon. They picked it up and returned it. They never considered using it against them; they simply went to give it back, saying: “You lost it.” People did not resign themselves, nor accept the situation, but they kept a glimmer of humanity. When you face a man your own age, you can still fight; but when you’re old, have your grandchildren, and see an eighteen-year-old boy coming at you, you end up seeing him as a son, almost feeling pity for him… Our people feel anger, of course, some wish the Russians dead, which is understandable—they entered their homes to kill. Yet, there isn’t the instinct to go and slaughter them cold-bloodedly.
Sasha: We learned from a cousin that Vadim, one of our cousins, was being held prisoner in Russia. She saw him in a Russian propaganda group, recognized him—so she found him. He remained in captivity for a year and a half before we learned about it. That’s when my mother started writing to his mother, urging her: “Do something to get him included in the exchanges, because close relatives have to take action.” They submitted the request… In total, he stayed in prison for about two years. He returned changed…
When he was taken away, he was a contract soldier. At that moment he was on leave, back for the holidays in the very village where my father lived. He had arrived just a few days before the start of the war. When the invasion began, the Russians occupied the village and took him straight from his home. He hadn’t even fought, yet he spent two years in prison. Being a serviceman, someone in the village probably gave his name, handed him over.
Ira: Something broke in his mind after captivity… He lost a lot of weight. We didn’t ask too many questions: after all, he was a man just back from a nightmare…
Sasha: Also, back during Maidan, he had just started his service. He was right there, serving in the “Berkut,” and participated in dispersing crowds. He was very young then, just starting his career. Later, he signed the contract and continued serving as a professional…
Ira: One of my classmates, on the other hand, really hates the Russians—she wishes them absolutely no good. I understand her… She had left for Poland before the war, and it was her mother who had to evacuate her child. She wrote to me: “When my son was about to leave with his grandmother, he was terrified because two rockets flew over his head. He told me, ‘Mommy, I hid under the barbecue.’” He had gone to close the gate and was alone; his grandmother was inside. Even now, he refuses to go back home. I don’t ask him anything, to spare him bad memories, but when those little eyes look at me and say, ‘Mommy, I was so scared I hid under the barbecue’… Well, what am I supposed to think about the people launching those rockets? Naturally, nothing good.