The bunker is nothing but a cold and damp basement, with a yellowish and flickering light. There is also no secondary emergency exit or phone coverage. But just one air raid siren that rings three times and not twice, and thus signals that it is not an alert but an attack, so that your heart stops and you have to run there at any time, with what you are wearing and a blanket, if there is time. Obukhivabout 40 kilometers to the south of Kiev, is one of the many villages passing through in the incessant flight of thousands of terrified civilians by the Russian bombing, which in places like this spend just a few hours at night in roadside hotels on their way to western Ukraine. There where this flow of desperate believes that it will have a safe place.
Olga looks younger than the forty years she declares and wears the same dress she had on the morning when she made the decision to run away from Chernigov, one of the cities in the first battlefront due to its proximity to the Russian border. It is crammed together with a score of adults and as many children of various ages, lifelong friends and work colleagues who decided to hit the road just a few hours ago, and have come here after not finding a place in other hotels . And he wants it to be known. “Chernigov is defending Kiev from the front line, our people are resisting, but our city is being razed. They have attacked civilian neighborhoods, including a daycare”, he says standing in front of one of the old rectangular brown tables in the makeshift bunker.
“Under the Bombs”
“We didn’t want to leave, but we made the decision to put our children to safety,” continues the woman, a teacher by profession. “We were able to travel only because we got a seat in some friends’ car, but my parents, who don’t have a car either, they couldn’t and they’re still there, under the bombs”, he adds with a broken voice, when he is suddenly distracted by the shouting of another group.
It is that of Masha, from Kiev, who has brought a knitted cloth to the shelter and who, while the sirens continue to sound, is playing Durak with four other people, a Russian card game of attack and defense, popular since the time soviet “Who is winning? No one! We don’t want anyone to win. We just want peace,” she says, cackling as she looks at the cards in her hand. “Ohhh. I lost! Why do I always end up losing?”, she blurts out finally. “We have almost nothing, not even a car. That’s why we’ve been stranded here, the buses no longer run. But what are we going to do, at least that’s how we pass the time”, he explains.
However, 8-year-old Tatiana, whose name has been changed for security reasons, is not amused by the scene because she has entered the bunker with her drawing book and some white sheets with which she wants us to present help you learn to write in English. “How do you say ‘Privet, miña zavut Tatiana,'” he asks in Russian. “That, that. I want to know how to say ‘Hello, my name is Tatiana’, insists the child, armed with a pencil and a smile from ear to ear. “I’ll give you a drawing if you tell me”, she blackmails, when her mother, Irina, intervenes and asks her not to insist too much. “Ever since the war began, he doesn’t go to school anymore and she misses her friends”, she justifies, while Tatiana takes advantage of the attention she now has to show the photo of her best friend that she keeps on her mother’s phone.
roof to sleep under
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She, Irina, also with a fictitious name, the manager of the accommodation -together with her mother, her husband, and her brother-in-law-, is one of the angels of the place. She spends her days waiting for those who arrive from different parts of the country, and giving them not only a roof to sleep under, but also a smile, a hot coffee and shelter. “We do what we can. The problem is that we are also having a hard time supplying ourselves with food”, he says, listing the ingredients of the dishes on the last menu of the day, which already look like war cuisine, with abundance of potatoes, carrot and a little more.
So relieved by the passage of time, a small group finally decides that it is time to leave the shelter and, guided by one of the hosts, heads towards a staircase that leads to the upper floor. But the relief is short-lived. “A car has arrived, better stay downstairs a while longer,” someone says. The human mass backs up, while one of the children plays, dressed in ski clothes, with a Cocker spaniel black that does not stop moving and wags its tail. Others snort sadly and some reflect. “Weird people these Russians, they have a huge country and they want pieces of other countries.”
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.