At 5:07am on February 24 2022, Masha Masliuk woke up in shock.
She’d already had trouble falling asleep that night, as if she was subconsciously expecting disaster, and now her brief night’s rest had been brutally ended by the sound of violence.
‘My windows were shaking, and I could hear bombs,’ recalls the 20-year-old student. ‘They were being dropped on Boryspil airport, which is right next to my home.’
Masha’s family was panicked and confused. Like most people they knew, the group hadn’t seriously expected Russia to invade their country, despite some tentative warnings put out by the Ukrainian Government: ‘People thought “War? In the 21st Century? No, it can’t happen”,’ Masha says.
However, as bombs began to shower down, she and her family had to act quickly. ‘We started to pack up all the stuff we might need and brought it to our cellar, Masha recalls. ‘I then went to the pharmacy to buy medication, and the queue outside was already 50 people long.
‘Everyone was preparing for the worst, because no one knew what would happen tomorrow.’
In the space of just a few hours Masha’s life and hopes for the future had evaporated, along with those of so many other young Ukrainians on the cusp of adulthood.
Within the first few days of the war, much of Kyiv was ravaged by missile damage (Picture: Pierre Crom/Getty Images)
Their education has been heavily disrupted, while many of their jobs have simply ceased to exist. Maintaining friendships has also become almost impossible, while family life is defined by the constant stress of survival.
Since the conflict began a year ago, a huge number of Ukrainian young adults have been forced to flee their home country and travel across Europe, becoming members of the over 8 million refugees recorded by the United Nations. They’ve had to find new jobs and careers, and support themselves in foreign environments they never expected to live in.
These refugees tend to be women, as Ukraine has issued a travel ban that keeps most men aged between 18 and 60 in the country, in case they are called up to fight.
They continue trying to live everyday lives, but normal existence is hard when punctuated by the screech of air raid sirens and the terrifying sounds of missiles and explosions.
It’s fair to say that no matter where they now call home, in the 12 months since the conflict started, young Ukrainians have had to say a bitter goodbye to their youth.
When the war began, Masha was a student at the University of Kyiv. She’d lived all her life in Ukraine, and enjoyed a childhood spent playing in huge forests and exploring dramatic mountains. Back then, her home country was ‘tranquil and peaceful, but also modern and technologically advanced’, she remembers.
Masha remembers Ukraine as tranquil but modern (Picture: Supplied)
Masha was bright and considered a number of careers when growing up: ‘I wanted to be a doctor, then a dentist, or an artist, but finally I found that my passion was in finance and business, and I started studying at the University of Kyiv.’
Her time as a student had already been disrupted by the Coronavirus pandemic, which had meant that all but one term of her first three years at university had been completed online.
As soon as the war began, the University of Kyiv suspended its services. It was unclear when they would resume.
Masha and her thirteen-year-old brother travelled to Gdańsk, while her parents remained at home. Their stay in Poland was supposed to be brief, and the siblings applied for refuge in the UK. But the application process took two months, as they tried to get around a terrible problem: Masha could be granted asylum in the UK, but legal complications meant that her brother could not go with her.
Agonisingly, she had to leave him behind, and he returned to Ukraine shortly after.
‘It was very stressful for me, because since the start of the war it had been just us, together, for three months. I’d pretended to be his mother and looked after him. When I left, he was really sad. Not because I left and he did not, but because it was like: “When will I see you again?”.
Seeking work, Masha and her brother left their home country (Picture: Supplied)
‘When I left to go to London, he had tears on his face, which was strange for me because he’d never been so sensitive in the past. I saw this and I started to cry too. He’s my brother, and we’d lived with each other for thirteen years, seeing his face every day.’
Masha arrived in London ‘alone and scared’. She moved in with a host family in Kensington: ‘They are such great people, I’m very grateful to them – everything was OK because of them.’
Her new family helped her sort out paperwork, and introduced Masha to their friends. ‘They tried to make me feel like here is my second home,’ she adds. ‘In the UK, there are a lot of people from different countries, so it’s easy to meet new people. There are a lot of Ukrainians, too.’
A year on from the conflict beginning, Masha has found a job at a beauty clinic in the local area, and resumed her education now that Kyiv University has restarted online. ‘Because of time difference, I have my lessons very early, but what I can do – it’s my problem that I’m here’, she explains.
Masha enjoys life in the UK, and the multiculturalism of London (Picture: Supplied)
There are still problems with her teaching, though. Masha describes how ‘every time there is no light or an air raid in Kyiv, classes are cancelled, so you have to study more on your own, and teachers speed up the program, because even with such conditions we have to do everything on time.
‘It’s kind of strange to see your classmates, because for four years of study, we didn’t even make friends normally – first because of the Covid, and then the war – so they are like strangers to me.’
Although moving to the UK has allowed Masha to regain a semblance of normality, she’s well aware of the experiences she’s missed out on. ‘Everyone talks about the student years being the best,’ she says. ‘But I had Covid and then the war in my country, so they haven’t been so good.’
Masha lives with constant concerns about her parents and brother, despite being in close communication with them. ‘I see news that Ukraine is being hit by rockets and doesn’t have electricity, and is becoming very cold, and I worry about them,’ Masha admits. ‘It’s especially hard when they can’t even text me when the power goes away. I really hope the war will finish soon.’
Stefaniia is a graduate of Kyiv Academy and the University of Leeds (Picture: Supplied)
25-year-old Stefaniia Konovalova tells Metro.co.uk that she had a very happy childhood, living in Irpin, a city that would go on to be bombed heavily by the Russians.
She graduated from Kyiv Academy in 2018 and did a Master’s degree at the University of Leeds the following year, before devoting herself to PR for public service campaigns back in Ukraine. ‘I learned from being a child that you need to build both yourself and your country,’ she says. ‘When I was young, I saw a really bright future in front of me.’
Stefaniia was working at her agency back in Irpin until the day before the conflict started. ‘No one took the warnings about the war seriously,’ she remembers. Yet within a few days of it beginning, Stefaniia suddenly found she had ‘no job, no safe place and no career plan to speak of’.
During the first week of the war, Stefaniia and her family rarely left their home. ‘We couldn’t because we always heard the rocket shelling,’ she remembers.
The family were desperate to escape Irpin for somewhere safer, but the only way out of the city was across its badly damaged bridge, so they were trapped.
‘One day I realised there were Russian tanks on my street,’ remembers Stefaniia. ‘This was one of the worst periods as we couldn’t escape. We had no electricity or gas and were cooking food on logs lying in the street. It was very scary and shocking.’
Stefaniia’s street in Irpin was devastated by the war (Picture: Supplied)
Homes had been badly damaged (Picture: Supplied)
The windows of Stefaniia’s house were smashed by nearby explosions (Picture: Supplied)
Eventually the citizens of Irpin constructed a makeshift bridge from debris and Stefaniia’s family braved the crossing to Kyiv. From their newfound relative safety, she started looking for jobs around Europe, being mindful of the need to go and provide money for her family. (Her father is being kept in Ukraine by its travel ban, and her mother has chosen to stay with him.)
Finally taken in by a host family in London, Stefaniia found a PR job and gradually settled in. But the move was very difficult. ‘It’s hard to speak about – I only left because I thought it was the most helpful thing to do,’ she remembers. ‘All of my friends left too, and not being able to see your friends again really hurts.’
‘I can’t plan anything anymore because I don’t know what’s going to happen even tomorrow. But eventually I would like to go back. I am really grateful to be under a safe sky here in the UK and I really like it as a country. But I just want to be in my homeland – this is my mission for the future. One day I’m determined to go back and be with my family.’
Stefaniia has temporarily settled in the UK, is keen to return to her home (Picture: Supplied)
The ruling that keeps Stefanniia’s parents in Ukraine also prevents 21-year-old Max Bakovetskyi from leaving the country.
Max grew up in Vinnytsia, a medieval city in central Ukraine infamous for acts of brutal violence during the twentieth century – Stalin ordered a massacre there in the 1930s, and nearly all of the Jews living in Vinnytsia were killed in the Holocaust.
Yet by the time Max was living there, the city appeared to have moved past its traumatic history. ‘There was beautiful nature and a small mountain, and I used to ride my bike and listen to birdsong – it was really cool,’ he remembers.
‘Like a lot of kids, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was growing up. And then later, I got into finance.’ He went to the University of Kyiv, before starting a job at a bank.
On the morning of February 24, Max woke to news that Russia had invaded his country, and soon came across evidence of the conlfict himself. ‘In the morning I could hear fighter jets outside my home,’ he remembers.
Not that the noise depressed him. In fact, the jets reassured Max: ‘I understood that they were definitely our planes, so it gave me hope, and even now the sounds of planes or helicopters give me hope that we will win.’
With Max and his family living near Hostomel and Bucha, they quickly realised that they were ‘about to be on the frontline’.
Max was an intelligent and ambitious young student (Picture: Supplied)
‘We decided to leave our home and go to stay with my grandparents, at least for a period,’ he explains.
Later that month the two sites became among the most infamous of the war so far. Hostomel airport was attacked by the Russians on the first day of the conflict, and its mayor was killed in the subsequent month’s bloody fighting. Bucha was invaded on 27 February and became the site of a horrendous massacre of the civilian population.
Once the Russians had been fought out of the area around Max’s home, he and his family decided to move back to the property.
Though their house was remarkably undamaged, the surrounding area had been devastated. ‘Literally a few miles away it was like in war movies,’ Max remembers. ‘But the truth is even more shocking because it’s reality. There were houses in ruins – people lived there, but many of them Russians killed or destroyed houses along whole streets.’
Max had agreed with his bank that he could resume work there once the war was over, but with little short-term prospect of this he resolved to use his time as effectively as possible, and began a Master’s Degree.
Having the war unfold around him while he continued his education was surreal but strangely invigorating, he admits. ‘I understand that the acquired knowledge will be useful in the reconstruction of the country and the economy – this is the main motivation to continue studying now. Therefore war motivates me to be better in studies.’
Like Masha’s undergraduate degree, his Master’s is being taught entirely online, despite recurrent blackouts and power shortages.
‘You cannot trust your day here,’ Max says. ‘Sometimes the lights go off and there can be no working internet. The heat in the apartment disappears and you have to wear an additional hoodie. You just wait for it to return and spend the time with your family, playing some games or just speaking.’
Max is prepared to fight for his country if conscripted (Picture: Supplied)
However, Max is determined not to be distracted from educating himself: ‘When the power goes out, I read books and I teach myself English’.
And Max still has a social life of sorts, as he works hard to keep in contact with friends. ‘It’s normal, with some changes,’ he explains. ‘For example, in the summer there are special underground cafes you can meet up at.’
These places provide automatic shelter from missile and bomb assaults, which are still depressingly regular occurrences, according to Max. ‘A few days ago, there was another attack,’ he mentions, with quietly shocking matter-of-factness .
As an adult male, Max knows he could be conscripted to fight at any moment, but shows no sign of fear. ‘I will defend my country if needed, it’s not a problem,’ he says defiantly.
His bravery is incredible, and rooted in a deep love for his family and his nation. ‘They’re the only things I have left,’ he admits. Masha and Stefaniia express similar sentiments.
Like countless other Ukrainian young adults, they’ve had their youths snatched away from them, and faced shocking tragedy and displacement. Yet they share a remarkable sense of optimism and the firm belief that their generation can lead Ukraine’s reconstruction one day.
Thousands of miles away, in a strange foreign country, with her future derailed and unknowable, Masha still dares to hope: ‘Maybe one day, hopefully soon, everything will be good in Ukraine again – and I can come home.’
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