Oleksii: The Day "Normal" Died

On the morning of February 24, 2022, my brother arrived at my door and pierced the silence with a single, devastating sentence: “Wake up. The war has begun.” In that moment, everything I understood about normal life vanished. My family and I lived in Irpin, practically a stone’s throw from Bucha, only two kilometers away. By evening, we’d hastily stuffed our clothes and documents into suitcases and fled toward western Ukraine, heading for my relatives in Chernivtsi.

But on the night of February 25, I discovered just how futile our escape had been. The air raid siren—the first I’d ever heard—screamed into the darkness. Its shrill cry tore at my nerves, forcing me to confront the bitter truth: there was no hiding from the missiles. My wife and I scrambled for our most important papers, hands shaking, hearts pounding with the dread that bombs could tear open the sky at any moment.

We’d arrived in Chernivtsi only that morning, clueless about where to seek safety. Still trembling with fear, we wound our way down to the building’s basement and huddled there, waiting for the siren’s wail to subside.

At first light the next day, my brother and I ventured out to locate proper bomb shelters. Even now, I can’t forget the agony of that first alarm. It exposed how helpless and unprepared I truly was, revealing a new, terrifying world I never thought I would inhabit.