The explosions lit the early morning sky. And pushed Olya Khrystoliubova to leave Kyiv.
Within 15 minutes, she packed her luggage with necessary documents, food for her cat and clothes for herself, then embarked on a days-long journey with her mother, Svitlana.
Khrystoliubova, 36, is among millions of Ukrainians who left their homes in fear as Russia invaded. Figuring out what to bring was a matter of necessity and a surrender to the fact that the pieces of the lives they built couldn’t fit in a backpack. The Washington Post spoke with some Ukrainians about what they brought — and what they left.
Here’s what they carried.
After watching war burn outside her Kyiv window on Feb. 24, Khrystoliubova saw her neighbors and fellow Ukrainians in their winter coats in the streets with their luggage. Her cat, Simba, his cat food, and important documents were the most integral parts of what she would bring, Khrystoliubova said, but nothing else was obvious.
She and her mother gathered Simba and their luggage, then turned toward Belgium, where Khrystoliubova’s partner lives. They would later have to abandon bags because the car they were traveling in couldn’t accommodate five people and three pets.
“We didn’t think to leave keys to somebody,” Khrystoliubova told The Post. “Nobody expected it will happen like this. I opened my luggage [to pack] on the 24th but cannot organize myself. I still didn’t want to believe.”
She and her mother got to Brussels nearly a week after they left their Kyiv home.
“When we reached [Belgium], it was painful. Your body was in a lot of punishment,” she said, adding that physical fatigue lasted about a week. “It was very hard emotionally. I still have very often bad dreams, and sometimes in my dreams I hear these explosions.”
Khrystoliubova had doubted that war was imminent, but fellow Kyiv resident Oleksandra Osypova-Safronova and her husband planned what they would bring in early February, she said.
She and her husband have grandmothers who lived through World War II and instructed them to leave for the sake of their 6-year-old son, though both matriarchs stayed in Ukraine.
Osypova-Safronova, 37, and her husband packed three bags with her laptop, tablet, chargers and medicine. Canned food, two pairs of shoes and a backpack to carry their cat.
“Half of your life passed during these moments,” she said.
Ukrainian refugees vow to return home — even if it’s never the same
For her son, she took a child’s camera she had purchased to document Germany before the pandemic restrictions preempted that trip. She brought only one children’s book from her expansive library, a point of pride at the home she and her husband bought two years ago — any other reading material could be downloaded, she figured.
For herself, Osypova-Safronova took sheets of paper, watercolor palettes, pens and brushes to stay busy during the trip to Saarland, a state in southwestern Germany.
Her husband drove them, her close friend and her friend’s two children to the border with Poland and turned around, staying behind like many Ukrainian men ages 18 to 60.
Filmmaker Olga Gdulia knew she had to take her laptop and external hard drives, and her two once-stray cats she had found at the entrance of her mother’s apartment years ago.
She packed a couple of T-shirts, one sweater and a small clutch with passports and money that she kept under her long winter coat before heading out of Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv that has been devastated by Russian shelling.
Alongside the essentials came items to remind her of her personhood.
“I also took one of my perfumes, just the smallest one,” she said from her new residence in Berlin. “The red lipstick — I am a woman, after all. My skin care creams so I can look like a woman after all these things.”
When she left her home, she had a small pack on her back, a tote on her right shoulder, the clutch under her coat and the case carrying her cats, Luna and Joy.
The nonreligious Gdulia also toted a picture of the Great Martyr Paraskeva with the caption “And love each other” — a gift her mother gave her before they said goodbye — and a pin that says “The world is magic and bricks.”
Like many Ukrainians, these women are committed to returning to their homeland and rebuilding their nation.
“Ukraine is not lost for me,” Khrystoliubova said. “I didn’t abandon it. I still care about it.”
