“My name is Tatyana, and this is my family. We are refugees from Ukraine. Many often ask me, “How did you find the strength to leave everything behind and move from your country, where you were born, raised, and lived for 32 years?”
When you live in a region half of which has been occupied by a neighboring country since 2014, there is no sense of safety and stability. On the morning of February 24, 2022, Russia launched dozens of missiles across different regions of Ukraine while everyone was still asleep and seized the region. My city was not spared.
Were we scared? Very! The first minutes after the explosions were filled with confusion — what’s next, what to do, where to go? But we had to save the children; they had to be safe.
The decision to leave the country was made a month later, and that’s how we ended up in Slovakia, a country that became our second home.”
~ Tatyana