Dmytro Yevtushenko lived in Kharkiv before the war. In the early days of the war, after several unsuccessful attempts, he and his wife managed to leave the city.

There was a premonition that something will happen

I was born in the city of Mohyliv-Podilsky, Vinnytsia region. Six months later, together with his parents, he moved to live in Armyansk, a small town in the north of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. When I was 7 years old, we went back to Mohyliv-Podilsky, where I lived until my 18th birthday. In 2012, I moved to Mykolaiv, where he studied at the College of Transport Infrastructure with a degree in Organization and Management of Railway Transport. I went to my relatives in Armyansk every weekend. Therefore, the annexation of Crimea was my first personal shock. Strange citizens of the country-occupier at the entrance to the city now decided — whether I have the right to enter, how long I can stay, etc.

In 2016, I entered the Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University, the Department of Computer Technology. After graduation, in September 2020, my wife and I moved to Kharkiv for permanent residence. Now, as before the war, I work for Torgsoft as a technical support specialist. Of course, the format of work has changed, now it is remote work. After the war, we completely broke off cooperation with all customers from Russia and Belarus.

A few weeks before the war began, there was a premonition that something was about to happen. The day before, I was constantly interested in news, I read various sources, or watched videos. Though till the last moment, I didn’t believe that hybrid war could move on so rapidly to the full-scale phase of hostilities. I believed that, probably, with some time our country will dissociate from CADLR and Crimea, leaving only the status of de jure occupied territories.

I couldn’t calm down for the first 10 minutes

On February 24, my wife woke me up after her colleague woke her up. She informed me about the outbreak of war. I couldn’t calm down for the first 10 minutes. I cursed out the aggressor country and their famous “leader”. After a while, we set out for the street, where people already lined up in the ATM queue. We got some water and went back to the apartment. In the evening, for the first time, we heard very strong explosions, and we decided to go to the subway, which was near us. We were shocked, I couldn’t accept the fact that we would leave our city for an indefinite time.

We hardly took anything with us — winter things, documents, and that’s almost it.

There were two attempts to leave the city. During the first time, on 25 February, our train was cancelled. The man on duty at the station and at the person at the Info Desk told us so but they didn’t provide any additional information.

For the second time, on February, 28 we were only able to call a taxi to the station an hour later. Arrived at the station at 12 o’clock, our train was scheduled to arrive at 20:15, but this time there were also delays on the schedule. We didn’t come back as the last time.

Due to the fact that during the war there were many evacuation trains as well as scheduled trains, which you could take for free. We spent the night at the station and only at 4:30 in the morning the train in the western direction arrived, which we successfully got on and left for Vinnytsia.

Kharkiv is our city, we want to live there

We left Kharkiv in complete darkness. Few people got on our train until Kyiv. There were a lot of people in the capital, the train cars were almost full of people, some passengers were in the passage of our car. From the words of some passengers who were traveling with us, we learned that they were heading for Western Ukraine. At the same time, they didn’t know where exactly. If only I could escape from the war, saving the family. Our road went smoothly from beginning to end.

Now I am in my native Mohilev-Podilsky, my wife and I stayed with my family. We work together remotely. I work in my company, and my wife works on the volunteer platform Kharkiv-Help, which was opened in March.

All my relatives who lived in Kharkiv also managed to leave. The last of them were evacuated only in April. Of course, I follow the news about Kharkiv, because for me the fate of my city is important. After the war, I plan to go back there. This is our city, and we wish to live there in the future. After the occupation of Crimea, I changed my mind about “brotherly nations” forever. Ukraine is the united independent country, and I am its citizen. At the beginning of the annexation, relatives from Crimea offered me to stay. I was categorically against making myself an occupier’s passport.

I believe that Ukraine after the war  is an independent successful EU country, which will have territorial integrity as it did within 1991.