Talina (66)

March 21, 2022, Bratislava. Day 25 of the war.

Interviews with the older generation are especially rewarding for me. These are people who have experienced and seen a lot. They know the history and the context. There is a piece of wisdom of life in their words. However, this knowledge and understanding does not make the situation any easier for them, on the contrary. Living with lack of knowledge is easy. It is very difficult to live with the knowledge that a senseless war is raging in your homeland. It is just incomprehensible.

“I am longing for home very much, even though we have been received here so well. I've always wanted to travel, but when you travel like this, you want to go home all the more. We are worried about what will happen at home, in Kiev, although the city is not yet as destroyed as Mariupol. We first fled Kiev to the countryside and from there to Uzhhorod, we crossed the border on March 12, 2022. My daughter Dasa has good friends here, with whom we stayed for 4 days. Tonight we will go to register with the foreign police and we will look for new housing, we want to stay here in Slovakia."

"What we are going through is very difficult. We manage somehow, but gradually it starts to hit us. At first we were just worried, now it's more about feelings of faith and concern for our loved ones, our cities, our homeland. It is in such situations that you begin to understand how important it is to have a home, a home country. That it is necessary to have a strong country that can protect you, that can take care of its people. Of course, we want it all to end as soon as possible so we can start restoring everything. Now we can only help ourselves, our child. The grandfather - my husband - stayed in Ukraine, we are very worried about him. I don't even know who's in a better position now. Still, he's home and we don't even have a home, we're on the run in a foreign country."

"We have known that war was raging in eastern Ukraine since 2014, but we were far enough from the front line. We couldn't believe it, we still felt safe. You rely on the fact that there are the same people as you living in Russia, that they think the same way like you. Even though we no longer have the friendships we used to have, we still used to be one state. On the other hand, when you read about their reactions, you understand how strong the propaganda is. Even if someone knows the truth, they are afraid. Then you begin to understand that even if you speak one language, you have nothing to talk about because you do not understand each other."

"What's next? That's hard to say because we didn't expect this. Great hatred is beginning to spread here. Especially when you see that there really are people in Russia who support all this. They shout that we deserve this, they say we are aggressors. If you don't stop it now by force... it's something you can't even understand with reason. We have already experienced the horrors of fascism, but this is different. They are people close enough, speaking the same language, many families are connected. This war has no goal. It is a real genocide. All we have to do is believe that we are right and that we will have enough strength for the truth to prevail." 

"We just want peace, we want the war to end quickly, we want to go home. We want life to be the same again. Although not completely, we want to live more consciously."