A long month

At 5:15 in the morning of the 24th of February, I and my wife were woken up by three distant explosions. Later we learned that it was a Russian guided missile strike on a military airbase nearby. We knew the war had begun even before we checked the news. We gathered out papers, took a bottle of water, and ran to the basement which was marked as a bomb shelter.

The shelter was closed. Random people were running out of the building with bags, quickly getting in cars and driving away. One other family joined us next to a locked shelter door. We tried to call people who were responsible for the shelter keys but there were no results.

After about an hour there were no other explosions so we went back into the apartment. Moved the hamster cage further from the windows where it's safer(-ish) and hid in the bathroom where we started reading news about what was going on. The initial news was scary. My wife's PTSD from 2014 fired up and she's, feeling how everything could get worse (again), bought train tickets to Lviv just in case.

The next three days were stressful. Every morning we woke up to explosions so it was hard to have any rest. We tried to donate blood but as it turned out both of us have pathologies that don't allow us to donate. The territorial defense was only taking people with combat experience. So being unable to help and unable to work due to our workplaces being too close to windows (dangerous during shelling) we decided not to return train tickets and move to Lviv. We hoped to rent an apartment and keep working and donating to the army. Then my bank accounts got suspended which made things more difficult since the family's entire income was going through that account. We lost a significant part of our savings but managed to find alternative ways to get money. Good thing not all our savings were on that account.

The train to Lviv was even more stressful. The train we bought tickets to was redesignated as an evacuation train so it was overcrowded. 2-3 people per place. We spend the night sitting in an awkward position while the train turned off all lights and lowered the speed to get through a "hot zone". There we saw the giant fire from burning oil storage facility.

When we arrived at Lviv's train station it was overcrowded and chaotic. It took us almost an hour to just get out of there. Too many people and too little order. We stayed at a friend of a friend's house. While we were trying to find an apartment to rent out hamster (2 years old at a time) got really sick. We visited a vet and she suggested a treatment. The treatment didn't help and in a couple of days, the hamster died. At this point, it was clear that it was impossible to rent an apartment in Lviv or in the region.

A friend from Italy suggested moving to his house for a while so we started looking for a way to Italy. It was hard to find transport since the system was overloaded by thousands of refugees but we managed to find expensive bus tickets to Warsaw. After almost two weeks in Lviv, we were finally able to move. The problem was - I got sick. At the time I thought it was a common cold. But we weren't able to stay so we had to go. After many hours we got through customs and were in Poland. There were a few people in Discord who gathered to help us to get to Italy. One of them was an American with Russian ancestry who treated it as almost personal. Her help was invaluable. The group helped us in Poland and over the rest of the way.

In the hotel, we made covid tests and I got two positive results while my wife got two negatives. Turned out it wasn't just a common cold and considering how many refugees were coughing, I expect an outbreak. We self-isolated in the hotel room for a week before continuing our journey. After a week the tests were negative. We got to Vienna by a train, spent the whole day on foot. Then two more trains and we got to our friend in Italy. 

Two whole days to get papers fixed and to get vaccinated to get a green pass. So only now after almost a month, we could get back to work properly. During that time we were only able to work for less than 10 hours so now both my and my wife's drawing skills got rusty.

The plan, for now, is to finish the last two commissions and to open a new batch. I don't know how long the war will last so I have no idea how long will we have to live in Italy, which is much more expensive than Ukraine. I'm not sure if I'll be able to work on the cartoon while I'm here but I'll at least will try to finish animatics for the last arc.

My family's position right now is really unstable and it won't get better while there is a war going on so your support means a lot to me. Thank you all very much!