The walk to freedom might otherwise have been a relief — but for Vlad Cherniavskyi, there was only horror. It was during his and his family’s first attempt to leave the war-torn town of Hostomel, Ukraine, in early March, that they witnessed the full scale ofRussia’s invasion.
“Some buildings were on fire …. There were a lot of dead bodies,” Cherniavskyi recalls now. “And every second house was destroyed.”
He saw some areas in which residents had used makeshift signs and other means to plead for help: “There were messages written on the fences: ‘Peaceful people here. Please don’t shoot.’ And some had only fence left. There was no house.”
The conflict, now in its second month, has already killed or wounded more than 3,000 civilians and displaced millions, the United Nations says.
‘They were all aiming at the airport’
Cherniavskyi’s life prior to the war was somewhat typical of a 26-year-old living in coastal Odesa — where he organized workshops for Ukrainian actors and teachers from the U.S., the U.K. and other parts of the world.
In early February, he traveled to Hostomel, outside the capital of Kyiv, where he stayed after undergoing a planned kidney surgery. He spent the days and weeks recovering at his family’s home, where his 17-year-old sister, Violetta, mom Victoria and his stepdad, Serhiy, all live.
Vlad Cherniavskyi (second from right) and his family.Courtesy Vlad Cherniavskyi
Vlad Cherniavskyi.Courtesy Vlad Cherniavskyi
“I checked with my American friends on Instagram and they were writing, ‘It started,’ " he says.
He saw some of it unfold.
“My mom and sister hid in the basement and me and my stepdad stood near the garage. We were observing for maybe 30 seconds or so when we saw a fighter jet open fire at the airport,” he says. “The helicopters, jets — they were all aiming at the airport.”
But the temperature in the house, which ran on electricity, kept dropping.
“Some days, it was minus 10 Celsius [about 14 degrees Fahrenheit]. It’s kind of tricky — it actually helped us to keep the food in a good condition for longer,” Cherniavskyi says, though he adds it was challenging to sleep or to feel comfortable post-kidney surgery, due to the temperatures.
His family did have a fuel generator in their garage, which they used to make food and charge their phones, also allowing neighbors to use it to charge their own phones and power banks.
Soon though, they were interrupted.
Vlad Cherniavskyi with friends.Courtesy Vlad Cherniavskyi
A visit from Russian soldiers: ‘It happened really fast’
“It happened really fast; we weren’t expecting that,” he says. In anticipation of their own visit, the family found four old phones to turn over to the soldiers if asked and hid their current devices throughout their house.
“As soon as we did it, almost immediately we heard somebody knocking,” Cherniavskyi says.
His mom and stepdad looked out the window to see a group of Russian soldiers who told them, he says: “You have three seconds to get out, otherwise we will open fire.”
“They asked them, ‘How many people are here?’ " Cherniavskyi recalls, “and they told them there were four of us. So me and my sister came out as well.”
A couple of the soldiers came inside, threw the family’s belongings around — Cherniavskyi believes they were looking for Ukrainian fighters — and found the family’s four old phones and smashed them, a common Russian tactic to cut off the flow of information.
Then, they told the family to gather their things and leave. Immediately.
Harrowing as that sounds, in the moment Cherniavskyi and his relatives were paralyzed with fear.
“It’s hard to explain. When it happened for real — it’s something different than all the movies. Nobody was crying. We just didn’t know what was going to happen next,” he says. “Any stupid movement and you’re dead.”
But he grows emotional recounting the situation weeks later, telling PEOPLE it was especially painful to watch his sister frantically trying to find the family cat, Cleopatri, as they gathered their belongings.
“My sister starting crying,” he says. “She loves that cat so much. And I was looking at her … it was so painful to watch her. She said, ‘I don’t want to leave without him.’ But we had to.”
While packing a few items of clothing to take with him, Cherniavskyi came across an old pair of white pants he had worn in a school play. On the way out the door, he hastily tied the pants to the family’s fence — “an improvised white flag,” he says, “just for them not to shoot us.”
“They led us back and closed the door,” Cherniavskyi says.
His family stayed in the basement all day, in case the Russians were still inside elsewhere in the home. “We just didn’t know if they left, or if they were coming back. It was really cold — my sister [was] starting to sneeze. Because of my kidney, I was really cold also. It was hard to recover in those conditions.”
‘Immediately we heard a scream’
One day after the Russian soldiers came to their home, Cherniavskyi and his family got another knock on the door: This time, it was friendly. One of the neighbors — who had been using their generator — ventured over to get his phone back.
“My stepdad gave him his phone and power bank, he led him to the front gate of our yard, and closed the door. Then he came through the front door of our house, and closed that door,” Cherniavskyi says. “As soon as he came to the room where we were hiding, we heard a shot. After the shot, immediately we heard a scream.”
Then another shot. Then total quiet.
The neighbor, Cherniavskyi says, had been fatally struck while leaving their house, phone bank still in hand. “They shot him for nothing. He was crossing the road from our house to his house.”
Eventually, the neighbor’s brother was able to take the body back to his house, where they made a temporary grave in the yard.
Violence was never far over the next several days, Cherniavskyi says, including a night when the bombing became so intense his family hid under their staircase.
Fourteen days after the invasion began — and “hundreds of explosions” later — the family determined they had to leave. One attack had blown the windows out of their house and created a “bowling-ball sized hole” in the garage, with smaller holes visible in one of their cars.
“It was worth the risk to leave,” Cherniavskyi says. “We had to try.”
The first attempt — and a full view of horrors of the war
Cherniavskyi says his family first set out on foot, walking 45 minutes to an evacuation site, meandering through neighbor’s backyards and a cemetery just to avoid the main roads.
Cherniavskyi says it “was the first time we really saw what had happened.”
“They had a fireplace. When we got into that house, it was the first time we had felt warmth,” he says.
After a day of rest, Cherniavskyi’s mom and stepdad went back to their home to get their car, loading it up with just a few belongings (and their cat, Cleopatri, who finally managed to come out of hiding).
Vlad Cherniavskyi’s mom and stepdad.Courtesy Vlad Cherniavskyi
“They got out and were shooting at some area in the distance,” Cherniavskyi says. “It lasted maybe one hour and a half. We were all quiet. Only my sister was saying what we were all thinking: ‘We’re going to die. We’re going to die.’ "
A Ukrainian government car soon arrived on the scene. Within 15 minutes, during which the officials showed the soldiers some sort of paperwork, traffic was able to proceed.
“Cars started to move, and we started to follow them. Then we could see that all of the town was destroyed. All the places we know, my parents' businesses — just to ruins,” Cherniavskyi says. “It was so surreal. Like a computer game.”
A new, temporary life, but ‘relief can’t come’
The next day, they made their way to a distant relative’s home in the western part of Ukraine — away from the dangers of daily explosions — where they have remained for the past couple of weeks.
“I walked to a park and I could just freely walk. Just freely walk! I heard birds, not explosions,” Cherniavskyi says. “At the same time, relief can’t come. Some of my friends are still back home.”
While he has tried to convince his mom and sister to head out of the country — to find a more certain kind of safety — that would also mean being separated from him and his stepfather, because of amilitary mobilization orderaffecting most Ukrainian men.
“My mom and sister said, ‘We don’t want to leave without you. We survived together. We will stick together ‘til the end.’ "
source: people.com
