ONE year on from the outbreak of war in her home country of Ukraine, following the invasion by Russia, 18-year-old Yana Mytsko, is now living with her adopted family in Warrington, still twitching with fear at sudden noises.
When she sees a plane in the sky she doesn’t think of holidays, she thinks of military planes flying so low you can see their undercarriage.
Her fear stems from the Russian invasion of her home city Kyiv, where she hid in a bathtub with her younger sister, armed with a gun left by her father, while he ventured outside to investigate unusual noises. When asked how war has changed her life – she simply says it has “ruined it!”
Taking up her story Yana, aged 18, who was training to be an international journalist when war broke out, said: “The story of me coming to England begins a year ago. In the capital city of Ukraine. Kyiv.
“When first explosions could be heard, and when I woke up to the sound of windows shaking and walls trembling under a huge power of the crashes. Never in my life have I seen my dad looking more scared, more confused, and more like us. Like a pure little child, not knowing what to do next. He was left alone with us, my sister and me, to deal with everything that was going on, whilst my mum was in Austria, more than a thousand kilometres away.
“On that very day, we packed our stuff and moved to our house in a suburban area around Kyiv. It was such a weird thing to realise that all details of your life, the house and the memories, the most important ones would be left behind, and you don’t even know whether you’ll see them again. My sister, as a nine-year-old child, performed the best discipline I could ever witness before—quietly packing a few toys, following all instructions and was obediently hiding with me in the bath when the first sirens could be heard.
I will always remember those messages in group chats from my friends. ‘Just in case, guys, I love you all, it was an honour to work with you,’ my friend Tymur said back then.
“We prepared a few boxes of food, packed our German shepherd in the boot of car, and quite successfully moved to the basement of our house which took us few hours through block posts and huge queues. Called mum and warned her about what happened. She has already known, surely. We covered all windows with tape and cling film and began to wait. My dad didn’t hide the weapon away. We were sleeping in turns on the beds which were left by our builders. Often we weren’t even undressing. He was sleeping under the windows, keeping the gun closer to himself. I was taught to use it more than seven years ago and could never think that I would need this knowledge- Until the one day”
“The day was chaotic, loud, we were hiding under stairs in the basement. My mum still was abroad, nervous, and almost ready to come back. We didn’t know how we would spend this night. And then we heard noise outside. It was vivid, distinct noise. That could be anything, and my dad decided to take our neighbour and go to check. He left me with my sister and a gun, told me what to do if he doesn’t come back in fifteen minutes or if I hear shooting. And I started to wait. Five, ten minutes. Time was endless. The noise was more vivid, I heard the knock on the door and without hesitation raised the long heavy trunk of the gun.
“Like my father taught me.
‘Who’s there?’ I asked as firmly as I could, but I’m sure, my voice was trembling, yet my hands weren’t. I have already collected all money and documents into my backpack, the car key was warming the pocket of my jeans, the trigger of the gun was cooling my fingers. I made my sister hide under the stairs and not go out, until I let her.
‘That’s me! Open!’ I heard from the outside. My dad came back. I slowly lowered the gun, only then realising how fast my heart beats. He came in and calmed us down.
“Meanwhile Russians were trying to take Kyiv from all possible sides, killing everyone who was trying to get out and shooting the whole lines with cars down.
“In a few weeks, when my mum returned, the question of going away was the most difficult. Most of news was convincing, yet not enough for my parents to decide quickly. Every minute was important, but the main problem was the petrol. You could spend half a day, just waiting for few litres. And that was stopping us from the fleeing. The last thing that persuaded my parents in less than five minutes, was the fact that Russian tanks came to Stoyanka, which is less than thirty KM away from where we were located. We packed our suitcases in less than fifteen minutes and fled to the west part of Ukraine to our relatives and spent there almost a month. Month which introduced me to lovely, and absolutely tremendous people. People who are more than just acquaintances now. People that are literally became one of my closest.
“I heard of the Ukrainian Scheme from friend. And decided to apply. Almost immediately I was contacted by Kate and her family, and we called each other. That was the beginning. My English, as I could reckon back then, wasn’t too bad, yet I was absolutely terrified, and that’s the thing that I understand only now. It took us more than five months of calls, waiting, and tries to make the process quicker, for me to arrive.
My mum and I left Ukraine in summer. Both tired and exhausted we needed to go to Austria and take care of my great-grandfather. He was ninety. Asked us to bring him back to the Motherland. And we agreed. These three months were one of the hardest periods. When you try to help, but you are not trusted. When you wake up at the dead of the night because he’s just bored and doesn’t understand that we need some rest in order to help him. When he hides away the documents, because he thinks that we’re going to leave him alone, and when he accuses you in the worst things, telling others that we don’t take care of him. Yet at the end of the day, we managed this. We took him back to Ukraine by car. Two nights and three days, and we were back in Kyiv.
“The question remained. Since I was seventeen when I applied for permission to go to the UK, I was waiting all this time to get the letter, and as soon as I turned eighteen I received a permission-letter. To say that I was over the moon, is to say nothing.
“As soon as we got back to Ukraine, I started searching for tickets. The way promised to be hard, my mum wanted to follow me straight to the airport. We decided to go through Austria and stay there until it’s time for me to go. We left Ukraine at the beginning of September, were travelling by bus, through Hungary. Spent almost a week in Austria, after which on 23rd of September I went to airport.
“These were the longest six hours in my life. First was the tickets matter, staff have never seen the permission letter instead if visa before and it took me a while to explain everything. “When the staff saw my passport they asked whether it would be better to speak to me in Russian, to which I said that I can speak Russian, yet after that I could not reply, and switched to English anyway. After that I gave them my suitcase, waved to my mum and grandad and left them.
“This was the first time when I was travelling alone, especially by plane. I was counting hours, minutes, and seconds. I was checking whether I got everything I needed, tried to distract myself, but nothing can help you under such circumstances. The only thing that was calming me down was the fact that I’ll be away from war, will try to get settled in a new life and the fact that people who are waiting for me there are more than worthy my trust.
“It was almost night when we met each other. Never could I hope for such a warm greeting. I was accepted and cared for completely. There was a very vivid feeling that I’ve met these people before, yet on the other hand, I started understanding that I am much more nervous and anxious that I thought I was.
“This was a common thing for me—to realise the scale of what was going on much later. Almost all free time I spent sleeping. All other time I was keeping on studying International Journalism at Ukrainian University.
“Later, after few months Kate helped me to find a job, and I felt a bit more important. Work is always a good thing, keeps the mind clean and hands busy. My boss turned out to be one of the most understanding bosses I’ve ever happened to know in my life. The people, I met here, have completely changed my life and the comprehension of some vital things in less than half a year. “They slowly taught me to plan again, to trust people and live a normal, calm life. And I am endlessly grateful for every chance and possibility that was given to me. Even the smallest and the slightest one. Because when you stand at the edge of losing the most important things and people in your life, you start to value them even more, and becomes almost an obsessive fear—to lose someone or something again.
“If people asked me how war changed my life, I would answer that it just ruins it. There are a huge number of reasons why wars happen in our world, there is no one simple reason which can be solved in one day or one month. But it ruins lives, it kills people, destroys families, takes away the ability to plan your life and to come back to the normal reality. Even now, when I hear the plane in the sky, I don’t think of holidays, I think of military planes which were flying so low that you could see the bottom the plane. Even now I twitch when I hear sudden scream or shouting, and even now I am afraid of making mistakes, because when you make mistakes there everything is simple—you lose a lot, if not everything.”
