No homes left

One evening in 2014 Tanja’s 14-year-old daughter Anna said at a dinner table, “I’m not going to die”.

Tanja, Anna, Tanja’s husband Viktor and Tanja’s mother Tetiana lived in Eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian forces. Tetiana lived her whole life in Donetsk, where everyone lived in peace and life went on as normal.

The family had a big house built just two years prior and everything was looking good with the family-owned company. The family was making their dreams a reality until Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula and parts of Eastern Ukraine. The life of dreams was about to turn into a nightmare.

That very evening Tanja’s family decided to flee from their home. They had to sell their dream house at a bargain, take everything they could with them and travel to the next town over since the railway to west was cut off.

The family found their new house in Irpin in 2018. The house had pretty much nothing and they were out of money to refurbish their house. With the help of YouTube the family learned to renovate their new house into a new home. They could start building their dreams again.

In 2022 the nightmare that the family fled from Eastern Ukraine, returned.

Russia’s full-scale attack brought the horror all over Ukraine and Irpin was soon the frontline for the war. On one side of the city the Russian invaders gathered their forces. On the other side Ukrainian defense forces got ready to drive away the attackers.

Tanja and her family found themselves in the middle of all the carnage. Many of the houses next door were burned down and there was gunfire from both sides. When the Ukrainian forces took back areas, the Russians soon took them over again and the Ukrainians had to retreat.

In the beginning of March, the family had had enough. They would have to flee again. Viktor and Tanja went around the neighbourhood looking for others but found no one.

At home the family packed one rucksack each. In them fit only their important documents and one set of spare clothes. If that.

The only way out of the frontline was a bridge destroyed by the Ukrainian forces. The way over a makeshift bridge was the fastest way out, so the family took their chance crossing it. As Tetiana was on the bridge, she fell five meters and hit the bridge’s concrete foundation. She had an open fracture on her thigh, and she was taken to a field hospital by the Ukrainian forces. The same day she was operated on and the next day the family continued their journey.

When Russia attacked, Tanja’s daughter Anna was vacationing in Northern Finland with her own family. In four days, Tanja, Viktor and Tetiana traveled to Helsinki. During the whole journey up north, the family was starving. On the train they got to experience great sympathy as locals went and bought them food.

Tanja, Tetiana and Viktor found themselves a home and jobs in Oulu. Even if the family’s new life would seem a normal suburban life, all the dreams they had are now in ruins. They haven’t let themselves dream again.

“We had everything...

...suddenly we have nothing.”

“We got this heart from the Finns who had furnished our house. It was here when we moved in.”

“They destroyed everything. Not one house was left untouched.”