Andriy (23), Roma (15)

Saturday, March 5, 2022, Zilina

I have never seen such despair in a young man's eyes. He had to grow up very early. He is now in charge of his younger brother. His world no longer revolves around Thai boxing and girls. He shows me photos from Odessa, his hometown. And he has endless sadness in his eyes.

"We left Ukraine because there is a state of war at home. Russia has invaded our country and is demanding an exchange of political leadership. We kept listening to the sound of sirens and explosions at home. They are even shooting civilians in Kiev and Kharkov. That's why I decided to take my younger brother and run away. He shouldn't grow up seeing something like that. People in Russia think we are all nationalists here, but they are wrong. We are ordinary people, just like me. We are a good and peaceful nation, a beautiful country. I don't understand why they attacked us."

"Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin, if you still have some brains left, if you are using your head at all... you are the president of a large state after all. Because of you, your citizens will suffer. You may survive hiding somewhere in a bunker, but the nation will face economic, military and other problems. The whole world is with Ukraine and you are alone! Remember that!"

"Both mom and dad died 3 years ago. It had a very bad effect on my younger brother's wellbeing. And now this war happened. I had to take him away and protect him. He can't be seeing it! We will try to wait through it all and then we'll see. They are taking very good care of us here, they feed us, give us clothes, even the money when needed. I want to recommend everyone to come here to Slovakia."

"We came to Slovakia two days ago. The trip took us about 2 days. It took longer due to the checkpoints where they checked our documents. They caused me problems at 3 out of 4 of those because I am over 18 and they didn't believe me that Roma is my brother. They thought I wanted to run away. We waited at the border for about 4 hours. They have helped us there and told us where to go and what to do."

"I worked on construction sites at home in Odessa. I painted, did stucco, quality renovations, all my customers were satisfied. This year, I wanted to start a business with my friend, we tried it last year and we were quite successful. Unfortunately, the Russians came and we had to flee."

"My brother is a student, he is a freshman at the Marine School, he succeeded there. He was about to finish his first year, then two more, and he could throw himself into life. But you see, everything went wrong and now ... the future is unclear."