They escaped the Russian occupation and thought they were going to die: this is the story of Anastasiia and Olha’s escape, to read and listen to

Look, Borodko is 28 years old and lives in Kiev with his sister, Anastasiia, 21. It’s just the two of them. The mother and the grandmother, who is actually the mother’s aunt who they call grandmother because the grandmother actually lives in Russia and doesn’t believe there is an invasion, still live under occupation, in the coastal city of Berdyansk, on the Sea of ​​Azov, which was occupied in just three days. When March 2022 arrived, there were already hundreds of Russian troops everywhere.

In the first few days, Olha – which reads “Ólia” – and his friends gathered in demonstrations that lasted all day. But more and more soldiers arrived, people disappeared into vans with tinted windows, and machine gun fire began to disperse the protests. The radio waves were occupied by Russian stations, the authorities imposed by Russia began to take part of the fishermen’s daily catch, medicines became scarce because the supply networks with Zaporizhia, the largest city in the region, were cut. The Ukrainian cell phone network died and, little by little, people were no longer able to pay with hryvnias, the Ukrainian currency, in which they received their salaries and pensions.