Fleeing Ukraine, Toddlers in Tow
Refugees flee Russia's invasion of Ukraine on a bus in Lviv, Ukraine on March 13. [Pavlo Palamarchuk/Reuters]
By Samantha Grasso, as told to Allison Vosloh
Olesya Solomina packed her small car with a few bags of her toddlers’ things, and told them they were leaving their home in Lyutizh and going on a super cool trip. When their shelter in Kyiv shook from Russian bombs, Solomina told them that “giants” were “farting.” Now evacuated to Romania, Solomina’s daughter hosts a daily birthday celebration for a sheep, a dog toy that brought her comfort during the first week of the war in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, Solomina spoke with AJ+ producer Allison Vosloh from Romania, sharing the difficulties of trying to protect her children while longing to support her country. Here is her story.
Solomina’s story has been edited for length and clarity.
A week before the war started, my sister called me every day from Israel, telling me that there was going to be war in Ukraine, and that I should take the kids and come stay with her. The day before it happened, my sister called and was almost screaming at me. I thought, are you crazy? It's impossible. But I was quite stressed.
The next morning, my friend called me screaming, “It's war, it's war, it's war.” I tried to take control of my emotions. I went to the market and grabbed some food. And I went to the gas station because I hadn’t filled my tank like my sister had recommended a week before. I waited in this horrible line for an hour and a half. The gasoline I usually buy ran out two cars before mine. I used another kind, and the gas pump ran out after my car.
When I came home, my nannies and I started discussing what we were going to do. We decided the war would last two or three days. I called my landlord and I asked if we had enough gasoline in the generator. He said we had one week’s worth, but I was so stressed, so all day I packed my car in case we needed to run. My car is super small. But my nannies packed one bag with my kids’ toys, one bag with kids’ clothes, and one bag with kids’ medicine.
That evening, my ex-husband called and told us that we needed to run. My two nannies, two kids, my cat, and my partner — all of us jumped in the car. I took just one sweater and one skirt, and the clothes I was wearing. I don’t know why, but I took perfume and all my skin care cosmetics.
My ex-husband’s parents were waiting for us at an office, and we decided to go to Poland that day. My nannies stayed in Kyiv to take the train to their families. When we got stuck in traffic, I decided to go to my best friend's house, which was 10 minutes away from where we were stuck. I thought that being in a house with a bomb shelter would be safer than being in traffic, especially since gas stations were empty, and my kids could be in danger because people were panicking on the road. The kids and I planned to spend the night there and then decide what to do. My partner, my kids, our cat, my friend and I slept on the floor, and then we spent the next five days in her house, with 10 people, two dogs and three cats.
Just before the war the kids and I had planned to go to Cyprus, to the sea, for two weeks, and after that we were going to go to Kyiv and plant trees. We had spoken about this a lot. When we packed the car, I told the kids that our super special trip was starting now. I said that nothing was going to be normal; everything was going to be cool and special, and everything was going to be new. We were going to go to this super cool place, and we needed to be friends with all the people and dogs and cats we met along the way.
In this house, I decided to just play with my kids and make them safe and happy. We had our daily routine: We brushed our teeth, washed our faces, ate, went back to bed, ran around the house and slept for two hours.
I told them that when we heard loud noises, we needed to get dressed super quick and sit together in the bomb shelter because “giants are farting.” The bomb shelter was two meters from the door of the house. And actually giants farted often — there was bombing every day and night, and the house shook every time.
But my kids were super chill. They’d say, “Oh, it's giants, they’re farting. They need to change their diet. Maybe they need to eat more vegetables, mama. Why are they farting so hard, mama?” I brought the toy my son sleeps with because he's 2 years old, but I didn't bring the toy my daughter sleeps with because she’s 3, so she slept with a dog toy instead. We brought the dog toy to Romania, because she said it was her baby sheep, and she couldn’t leave it because the sheep had a birthday. Every day the sheep has a birthday, and we always celebrate it.
I try to keep their lives happy and regular, but for two days we were in the car escaping Kyiv. I’m the only one who can drive, so I just drove day by day. My kids still think that we are on this cool journey and they're super happy because there aren’t any nannies, just mama. Usually they have their own rooms, and every night before this they wanted to sleep with me. Now they do, and they wake me up and kiss me and say, “You're not asleep anymore? Now you're finished sleeping?”
I still do not want to leave my country. When the war started, I decided that if it did not finish in four or five days, I’d take the kids and go to Europe, because I'm a mom and I need to save my babies. You think that if you have two small kids in the war, and if you’re a woman, they will not touch you, because soldiers are fighting soldiers, and you are not in the military. But I understand that in this situation, they can just shoot my car. They can just bomb my house. They’re bombing kindergartens, you see?
I can't help my country by sitting in the bomb shelter. I can't leave my kids alone somewhere and go onto the street and fight. But I can help on the internet by collecting money, or buying medical supplies for our fighters, our army, to help them. That's what I’m doing.
Just today we bought body armor. It was a victory because it's impossible to buy something like this in Europe now, but today we found it. These guys fighting in Ukraine, they are fighting for our homes, for our kids. And I have to help them because only these guys can let us go home again. Only these guys can bring us back to Ukraine.
I don't know how I’m doing. Last night I had a dream that I was in a botanical garden in Kyiv. My daughter jumped in the freshly planted flowers and this lady screamed at us, “Ahh, you shouldn’t do this!” I woke up and started crying because I’m away from my home. I try to not think about this because when I start thinking about my own life, it feels like it was taken away.
I’m used to controlling my emotions. In moments where I wanted to cry, I used to go to the bathroom and cry alone. Now I try to hustle as much as I can to help others, because when I stop hustling, I start thinking and then I start crying, and I shouldn't cry now because I just shouldn't.
People in Russia should go to the streets. You must do this because if you don’t, it will be your kids next. These Russian soldiers who are in Ukraine, they're kids. They’re 19, 20 years old, they don't know how to fight. And mothers in Russia need to understand that their kids are going to die. Russians should understand that they’re responsible and can change things.
Watch Vosloh’s interview with Solomina here.
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