Inside Ukraine: A Family's Story Of Fleeing Kyiv, Living With 'Air Raid Alerts Every Day'

Valentyna Zakharchuk is a Ukrainian citizen who will provide daily on-the-ground updates of the Russian invasion for Benzinga.

A friend of my family told me his story.

My name is Vitalii. I have a wife and a 9-year-old son. We are all Christians. We live in the capital of Ukraine — Kyiv. I am the director of a real estate agency. My wife is a property manager. Our son is a football player.

A few days before the war, we took our son to the village of the Poltava region in northeast Ukraine to visit his grandmother, as there was a possibility of hostilities in Ukraine.

Living In A Country At War: The measured way of life ended on Feb. 24. We woke up around 5 a.m. because of the explosions in the street. It was very scary. From the news, we learned that at that time rocket strikes began in different parts of Ukraine.

The first thing we saw in the window of our house was kilometer-long traffic jams. Physically, we heard explosions, and morally we felt panic and fear. We quickly took the necessary things with documents and ran to the shelter.

On the first day of the war, due to warnings about the threat of missile attacks, we had to hide many times. For the first two days, we barely slept or ate.

The news came around the clock. We were watching it in the house or on the phone if we were hiding in a shelter. Every day there were fewer people and cars in the city. Food in stores began to run out, gas stations were empty and it was impossible to buy fuel in the city.

Leaving Kyiv: All this forced us to make a decision to leave Kyiv. By this time, it became clear that the Poltava region was a safer place. Plus, my mom lives there. Instead of the three hours that we usually spend on the road, it took us as many as eight. We drove around safe places and passed an unthinkable number of checkpoints. The only thing that made us very happy was that we took the child out of Kyiv earlier and he did not experience this anxious time with us.

Work has stopped. Our child's competitions in Kharkov were canceled. At the moment, part of Kyiv is completely destroyed. We had to think about how to live further in the conditions of war.

A New Normal: There is no military activity in the new place, but there are air raid alerts every day and almost every night. For maximum safety and my peace of mind, it was decided to send my family to Europe. Their journey took four days.

I moved to Poltava. There are no jobs in this city. Many of those who lived in this city lost their jobs. I began to help ministers in the church, who every day provide housing and food for those in need. We feed people at train stations who wait for trains for many hours without food and communicate with them. We pray and care for those who need it.

At this time, God took care of my work. God gave me the wisdom to set up the work process, I began to earn money in the real estate industry that was close to me. During the war, making money on real estate was amazing. And I thought that everything was lost and I was terribly burned out. But it's not like that. Friends call my results supernatural. I don't deny it. I just tell them Who is behind this — God.

Many thanks to those who have provided assistance to us since the beginning of the war. I believe that we can also be useful to other people.