Everyday wartime life in Ukraine: "Every morning I air the blankets on the balcony and see if the houses are still standing"

The flight alarm goes off at five in the morning. Either we'll get the warning on the government's Telegram channel, or we'll hear it for ourselves when it goes off. My twenty-year-old son and I then go into the cloakroom and cover ourselves with clothes and blankets. There is a mattress in front of the door, the windows are taped shut and covered with towels. We wait there until it passes, sometimes it takes ten, sometimes thirty minutes.

Dad stays in his chair, we can't take him with us, I just hope that he survives. He's already ninety. Since he had Covid-19 he has been dependent on an electric oxygen machine, which is a huge thing. He can hardly make it to the kitchen or out of the shower on foot, his lungs can no longer cope.

The days go by so fast, two weeks feels like one day. If the flight alarm goes off or it gets loud, we drop everything and go into the closet. Sometimes I also say "Fuck off" and stay. I'm standing in the kitchen cooking pancakes for my two boys while the bombs are falling outside. We have enough to eat, I brought canned tuna and cheese fondue from Switzerland.

We ration our groceries and use food and water sparingly. In the last two weeks we have only left the house twice. My son always comes with me, he doesn't want to leave me alone, and the two of us can carry more. The last time the water ran out, we walked two kilometers to a spring. Each of us had filled up ten liters of water. Then something exploded loudly behind my ears, I thought death is coming, and we ran home. Fighting was probably going on in the large forest not far from the border with Russia.

This morning we went to the supermarket again, but we didn't get anything. The supermarkets are still open two hours a day, they only take cash. Sure 500 people stood in line today. Then a bomb hit nearby, we ran again.

I left Switzerland on February 20th. I took the last Swiss flight to Kyiv, from there to my hometown. My husband didn't want to let me go at first, he said: "Stay here, Natalia." But dad was in the hospital after a serious illness with Covid 19, the doctors said maybe he couldn't make it. At that time, nobody in Ukraine believed in war, everyone was afraid of Corona, but not of Putin. My relatives said: "We've been living like this for eight years, Putin just wants to scare us." Maybe something is happening in Donbass, but not here. They didn't want to believe it. Four days later there was war.

My husband and I met online eight years ago. I'm a city kid, he grew up in the countryside of Germany, but my family originally comes from the country. Our parents have a lot in common: same food, same traditions, except that he never had to live under Stalin repression and poverty. Sometimes I say to my husband: "That was just the Soviet Union, Guns'n'Roses didn't sing with us."

We met for the first time in the Crimea, which is no longer possible today either. I saw him and knew he was mine. When you see your person, you just know. We got married two years ago and I moved to Switzerland, to Bad Zurzach. My husband works there as a production manager in a pharmaceutical company. When the war started, he wanted to drive his car to get me, but I said, "Roman, that's crazy." He would first have to cross the whole of Ukraine to get to Kharkiv, but by then his car and petrol would have been stolen long ago.

We can't escape with the evacuation trains either. They only take women and old people. My twenty-year-old son has to stay here. He studied computer science, but actually he wants to be a psychotherapist, let's see. He is about to graduate and is still a student. He doesn't have to do military service, but if Zelensky decides to do so, that can change from one day to the next and he has to go to war. He can't kill. I don't want him to have to kill, nor any Russian soldiers, they're just doing their job because otherwise Putin will kill them.

Putin doesn't stop, he's gaga in the head. But our country won't capitulate, we're patriotic, fanatical, we'll fight to the last drop of blood, we don't give a shit.

So we're staying in the apartment for the time being, my son, dad and I. I grew up here, two rooms, 45 square meters with a balcony. Every morning I air the blankets on the balcony and see if the houses are still standing. One has no more windows, to be honest it looks awful. Then I call all relatives who are still alive. Some are in camps, others on evacuation trains, some at home, some in basements. Some are in the subway with a thousand other people, sleeping on the cold floor with only one toilet for everyone.

Papa got the apartment from the state forty years ago, from the Institute for Low Temperature Physics not far away. As an engineer, he was three times on a Soviet expedition to Antarctica, an incredible man, survived everything. Even now he wants to go out, look for something to eat, see the city that lies in ruins. But we live on the sixth floor, they turned off the elevator, my son would have to carry it down. Dad says he would like to come to Switzerland if he can fish there. But these are all just dreams.

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