VLADISLAVA is a video editor from Bucha who escaped to the safer region of Transcarpathia. She’s eight months’ pregnant with her first child.
I was told about the war from a colleague who called me in the morning. We work in the media, so the first thing I did was ask my husband to pack up, and then I went to work thinking we wouldn’t need to leave straight away. I thought we were only on the verge of a clash in [the disputed] Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The news of war was totally unexpected because I couldn’t believe this is possible in the 21st century.
I live in Bucha, a beautiful town on the outskirts of Kyiv, where constant shelling had been going on since the first day because there are military facilities in and around the city. Despite the bombing, we stayed for a few days because we didn’t know which roads were safe and whether there would be enough fuel for our journey out of there. We were also afraid of being under
