One day last week as it was getting light, I was standing outside the Przemysl train station in East Poland waiting for my mother to arrive from war-torn Ukraine to bring her to my family’s home in the UK. Her phone was long dead after 22 hours on a train that in peacetime took only two and a half. There was no connection, so I just stood there, freezing, looking at every face, hoping it was hers.

Hundreds of exhausted, weary people were getting off the trains. Mothers, children, grandmothers. Some bringing their disabled relatives, others – terrified pets. Their men – left behind. All looking into an uncertain future.

Only two weeks ago these people – my people – had jobs, ran businesses, their children went to school, they ate at cafés and went to cinemas. They had hopes and dreams and plans. And now it is all gone.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was on the cards for some time. Why would he amass hundreds of thousands of troops on the border otherwise? But very few, me included, expected it to be a full-scale war with shelling of cities and tanks in villages.

It is not the first time Russia has attacked my country.

In 2014 after the toppling of a corrupt pro-Russian then-President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, Putin annexed the Crimea and invaded East Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Back then he wasn’t as brazen. Russian troops fighting in the East pretended to be “volunteers”, who came to defend the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.

I am that Russian-speaking population. I grew up in a port city of Mariupol in Eastern Ukraine, everyone around me spoke Russian. I went to a Russian school and then to a Ukrainian university.

Back then and still now, speaking Russian in Ukraine has never been an issue. There was no linguistic or cultural tension and yet, it was used as an excuse to invade my country then and again now.

Except now they are not hiding the fact that it is the Russian army invading Ukraine. But other lies continue.

Russian politicians tell everyone that Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent a war: Ukraine got too friendly with NATO and was about to invade them; Ukraine was developing nuclear and chemical weapons; Ukraine was ruled by a clique of drug-addicted Nazis and needed a “denazification”!
Every single word is a lie. An Orwellian “War is peace. Freedom is slavery.”

For 30 years since its independence in 1991, Ukraine hasn’t attacked or invaded anyone once. Russia on the other hand fought in Georgia, Moldova, sent troops to Syria, and invaded Ukraine twice. I don’t even know what’s worse, being attacked or being told it was your fault.

This is how rape victims must feel. They are overpowered, beaten, raped and then told it was their fault all along. Shouldn’t have gone out at night. Shouldn’t have worn that dress.

I feel angry. No, scrap that, I feel enraged! How dare they do it to my country, my people?!
Yet, just like a rape victim, I feel utterly powerless too. They are just too strong, there are too many of them and their president doesn’t care if his own soldiers get killed. It’s like David and Goliath with no guarantee that David would win.

But the Ukrainians are fighting. And better than anyone expected. Better than I expected.

No one quite knows what Putin’s plan was at the beginning, but judging by how quickly they are shutting down all social media in Russia, closing all independent media, restricting access to the international media and introducing a 15-year prison sentence for even mentioning the word “war” when describing Russia’s “military operation” in Ukraine, things have not gone to plan.
Not that that makes it any better for the people on the ground.

As I write this, my dear school friend remains in Kyiv. She lives in one of the high rises on the East bank of the river Dnipro (Dnieper). Her mother had a stroke and is paralysed. She can’t even go to a shelter. My friend won’t leave her to the mercy of the Russian rockets, so their whole family is staying in their flat, air raids or not.

Most of her neighbours have left.

Far worse, my hometown of Mariupol is under the Russian siege. There is no water, heat, electricity, food supply or mobile connection. We haven’t heard from any of our friends and family there for days. I cannot even imagine what is happening to the people. The Russians are boasting they are going to turn it into another Grozny. If you remember, the Chechen capital Grozny was raised to the ground by the Russian troops in 2000.

All of us just wait and hope. Hope is all there is left sometimes. For despite all of the international help, it is not enough. At the end of the day, Ukraine is fighting this war alone.

Mum and I are experiencing survivors’ guilt. She is safe, but so many people we hold dear are not. Our country is being ruined bit by bit.

They are trying to take away everything we hold dear: our way of life, our pride, our identity. Russia is set to destroy it. Claiming that Ukrainians are not a nation. We are just the same as Russians, but with a funny way of speaking.

What makes it hurt even more is that only 80 years ago Ukrainians and Russians fought side by side against Hitler’s Germany. We shared a common aim to defend our motherland against the Nazis (or fascists as they were referred to in the former Soviet Union).

As we were driving my mum to safety, it didn’t escape me that her mother, my grandmother, was a victim of war. In 1941 she was taken to Germany as a slave labourer and was liberated by the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.

Now my mother, her daughter, is a refugee, running away from the Russian bombs. Granny would have never imagined it in her worst nightmares.

Marina Suponina-Calland, March 2022

Dear reader, tell us what you think in the comments below, and please donate what you can to Marina’s preferred charity on the ground in Ukraine, Svoyi, and/or The Irish Emergency Alliance, which is a collaborative initiative comprised of seven separate charities who are combining their logistics and expertise.

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