Kyiv, April 24, 2025. At 1:30, the sky tore open for us into “before” and “after.” Not thunder, not rain — disaster. Quiet, without warning. Without a siren. Perhaps it was sounding, but we didn’t hear it. The soul had long forgotten how to wake up to the sound of fear. It became a habit for us, a daily ritual — like the first cup of coffee in the morning.
We were sleeping. Me, my husband, and my little daughter — the three of us, curled into a common ball of exhaustion, like three embers smoldering after a long day. I didn’t wake up with my body — I woke up with some internal restlessness. It flared up in me suddenly, instinctively, like a flash of lightning in the dark. Blind, animalistic — not a thought, not a sound, but pure panic. My whole being screamed in a silent command: get up!
And in that same instant, the sky was torn by the metallic cry of air defense — piercing, predatory. And then — an explosion. A strike so deep that the soul shuddered, as if someone had taken it out and squeezed it in their fist. The walls of the house trembled, groaned. The bed tossed me into the air — as if I were not a human, but a soft doll in the hands of a wild wind.
Without thinking, I grabbed a blanket in one hand, my little daughter in the other — warm, still sleepy, like a fledgling.
— Run, faster! — I shouted, though it felt as if a hot, living noose had grown in my throat — it coiled and tightened like a snake crawling inside and suffocating me.
The world “after”
We ran out into the hallway — and the world became heavy, almost viscous. The air thickened like cold jelly, saturated with anxiety, soot, and fine dust hanging in the air like ash over a fire site. In the light breaking through from behind, every speck of dust had a shadow — tiny, prickly, like a shard of glass in the eye.
Everything was happening as if in slow motion: I look back — my husband is behind. His face is gray from dust, his eyes glint, wide open, like those of a hunted animal. He breathes through his mouth, heavily, as if the air is damp and prickly.
And then — a flash. Behind his back — an explosion of light. But it wasn’t the light of lamps. It was a distorted, red-orange glow in which there was no life. It trembles, breaks on shards of glass, runs across the walls, washes the colors from everything that falls under its gaze. The corridor constricts. Shadows leap like black birds. Somewhere deep inside — a crackle, similar to a branch breaking. In this sound — the walls, the memory, and time.
The house shuddered. A web of cracks raced across the ceiling. Glass shattered — thin, crisp, almost brittle, like an eggshell breaking, only a hundred times louder. Concrete convulsed like a body in agony, and its cry was heavy, silent, slow.
We managed to fall under the doorway. Everything in motion slowed down — as if someone had pressed pause and given us a few seconds to survive. The little one didn’t cry or scream, but let out a sound in which all the horrors of her short life were frozen; it still rings in my ears sometimes. The door thudded against our backs. Sharply. Painfully. But it held. Dust crawled from every crack. It was everywhere. Settling on eyelashes, creeping into the mouth, pouring onto shoulders.
I saw nothing. But the body acted — like a machine programmed by fear.
— Clothes! Documents! The dog! Where is the cage?! Daughter — the hamster!
The voice was raspy, abrupt, but persistent. It was saving us. Command after command — like a pulse, like life.
The pressure spiked wildly — I could barely stand on my feet. I open the door — and the world afterwards washes over us, hitting us like a truck at high speed.
The vestibule was gone. It simply — did not exist. It was as if it had been torn out of reality, like a page from a book that wasn’t meant to be read. Everything around is trembling in the grip of dust. Gray, colorless, blurred — as if someone filmed the world on old film and didn’t have time to develop it, and now every frame crumbles from the screen like ash. From the upper floors, people are running down, and all of them have a defocused gaze.
The elevator shaft — an open wound in the body of the building. Inside — a charred metal box, hanging like a coffin ripped open by vandals. The stairs — another trap: glass, shards, concrete crumbs. People don’t walk. They slide. Fall. Crawl. Cling to the railings, to the walls, to each other — to life itself, slipping through their fingers.
I feel a man’s hand on my shoulder. Firm. Tense. The fingers squeeze as if trying to press me into himself, to save me. I feel more than just fear in this touch. It is a final faith. He has one task left. Only one — to lead us out. His girls. And nothing else around matters anymore.
Metro: the final frontier
Outside, under the shriek of a swarm of Shaheds in the sky, we run, mindless with fear, like terrified wild animals driven into a corner searching for shelter. Everything is blurred. The world has become different.
The metro — the final frontier, a cold, damp cave, but real. Here, the air smells of iron, sweat, and silence. People — shadows. Sitting, lying, huddling together like fragments that haven’t been gathered back together yet.
And here — they are.
Almost at the same time as us, a couple runs in. A burly man — black from ash, as if he emerged from the flames. In his hands — a blanket, clutched convulsively but very gently, like something fragile, sacred. He is holding his child. An infant, defenseless, with skin white as parchment. A small ray of faith. An innocent little angel, dropped, for reasons unknown, into the very heart of hell.
Behind him — a woman. His wife, it seemed to me right away. Her clothes — torn; a bandage, like some clumsy plaster, barely holds back the blood on her forehead. But she stood her ground, her eyes empty, but she — she survived.
And I think: “It’s a miracle!”
We are here. They — here. The children are alive. The night has torn the world to shreds — but we still hold its edges in our fingers.
The next morning
The next morning — a news post on FB — she died. The woman from the metro. The mother. Now she is gone. Only he and the child are left.
I wanted to scream. To tear the pain out of myself, the cry, everything that was lurking inside.
On April 24, a missile hit a house nearby. Out of 15 people, only 2 survived. Thirteen became figures, names in news feeds. Thirteen flew to the sky. Forever.
That day, only one thought was spinning in my head, quiet and childishly naive:
“What for? And why were we luckier than others?”
I still haven’t given myself an answer to this question; however, I can write, take notes, and state the facts. Because memory is all we have left. It is our only shield. And we will not forget.
Never.
The material was prepared by Svitlana Kosenko within the project “Strengthening Civil Society Resilience for Justice and Accountability,” implemented with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).