‘I’m not ready to part with them’

These four Ukrainian families hoped to return home one day. Now all they have left of their homes is their keys.

In the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, over 14 million people — nearly one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population — were forced to flee their homes. For many of those hoping to someday return, however, Moscow’s war of aggression has left them without a home to go back to. In addition to homes now under Russian occupation, approximately 250,000 buildings in Ukraine (the majority of which were residential) have been completely destroyed. Meduza spoke to four Ukrainian families who once dreamed of the day they could finally return home. Today, all that remains of their homes can fit in the palm of their hands: their keys.

The following accounts have been edited and abridged for length and clarity.

Anna’s family

Anna, 43, homemaker. Before the war, Anna, her husband, and their four children (ages 16, 15, 14, and nine) lived in a private home in the town of Bobrovytsia in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region.

Why don’t we throw away our keys? Because we can’t just throw away 11 years of our lives.

After our third child was born, my husband and I decided to move out of our Kyiv apartment and find something more spacious. After a long search, we finally narrowed in on the region of Chernihiv, which is just an hour and a half outside of Kyiv. Although it was a bit out of our price range, we immediately fell in love with a house in Bobrovytsia and moved in in 2010. I loved everything about our new area: there was a school nearby, music groups, a forest, a river, and we had our own yard.

The only drawback was that it was perpetually under construction. The house itself had some architectural hiccups, so we began reconstruction from the moment we moved in. We wanted this home to be our sanctuary, so we decided to invest a considerable amount of time and money to build it just the way we wanted it. We splurged on good quality materials so that they would last. To cut costs, we opted to do everything ourselves. So while my husband was at work, I stayed home with the kids and worked on projects around the house, like painting or replacing the windows.

For the next decade, we lived each day in anticipation of the next, thinking: “Once we finish this next little thing, we’ll be done, and then we can just relax and enjoy ourselves.” By February 2022, we’d finished nearly everything; all that was left was installing one bit of insulation above the garage.

On March 11, 2022, Russian forces began shelling Bobrovytsia. Just that morning, my husband and I had discussed what we would do in the event of an attack, and we’d agreed we would stay put and weather the storm at home if it came to it. But then the shelling began, and my neighbor’s garage exploded right before my eyes. We knew then and there that we had to leave.

We managed to squeeze everyone into one car: me, my husband, our four kids, my mother-in-law, our sheepdog, two cats, and our guinea pigs. As we drove to my mother’s house, I clung to an old Bible as I cried, tears silently running down my face. It was terrifying.

We returned to the house the next day to retrieve our third cat, Lucky, who had run away amidst the chaos. When we told the officers at the military checkpoint where we were headed, they were completely taken aback:

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“What ‘home’? Everyone here is leaving, but you — you’re coming…”

Driving around the outskirts of Chernihiv was pure madness. Due to the constant shelling, we had to park the car a kilometer away, and then we reached the house on foot. Thankfully, Lucky was waiting for us right at the front door. I quickly put her in her carrier to run back to the car, but as we were leaving, we noticed that the gunfire had subsided. We used the opportunity to run into the house and grab a few essentials that we’d left behind during our initial evacuation.

After gathering some blankets and pillows, I ran to the bookshelf and pulled out two big family photo albums to bring with us. My husband called out: “What are you doing? The car could get blown up at any moment, and you’re searching for photo albums!” But how could I not? They’re photos of our girls! I quickly grabbed the albums and we left. Our house was struck by a missile the next morning.

The missile fell on the corner of our house and left behind a crater deeper than the height of a person. Official assessments indicated that the roof was 100% destroyed, and the house itself about 50% destroyed.

As it turns out, an elderly couple across the street had saved our home from complete ruin. Using the water they’d been stockpiling — bottle by bottle — they managed to put out the flames that had engulfed our garage after the missile exploded. Several other houses on our street were also hit by bombs but weren’t so lucky — many burned to the ground.

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Even after witnessing the destruction with our own eyes after the town’s liberation in April, we still couldn’t process what had happened. I was in such shock, I couldn’t even cry. My husband also had a difficult time reconciling the home he had built with his own hands and our new reality. For the past 11 years, he’d never allowed himself even a moment’s rest; he was always either working at the office or working on our home.

We had put so much into that house! Now you walk through the rubble and just see the remnants of your family’s life all strewn about: one of the girl’s highlighters, an old trophy, my husband’s watch. Several times my husband and I have returned with the intention of sorting through the rubble, only to be overcome with grief and have to leave after five minutes. Since then, all our life’s worth has fit into our car.

We continued to make trips back and forth throughout that summer, but we haven’t been back since the fall of 2022. By that time, it had become painstakingly clear that we wouldn’t be able to salvage the house. For starters, the war was still ongoing; the threat of another shelling still loomed large. There was also nothing to salvage. It would have been easier to just demolish everything and build a new house from scratch, but for that we had neither the money nor the strength. I just couldn’t physically bring myself to begin yet another 10-year construction project.

After the shelling first began in March, a friend of ours called: “Where are you? I’ll help.” He connected us with some friends of his in Kyiv, and they offered us an entire floor of their house. We’ve lived with these kind people since then, and they later gave us their empty apartment as well. They’ve refused to let us pay them.

It seems to me that home is wherever a person feels comfortable. It’s not the walls; it’s our cats — they’re our home. Yes, of course I’m upset. I’m still in shock and haven’t fully processed everything. But in this there’s also peace: I am alive, my husband and children are alive, our pets are with us. So, we will get another house. Wherever we live, the important thing is that we’re together.

Anastasiia’s Family

Anastasiia, 42, primary school teacher. Anastasiia was on maternity leave when the war started. Her husband and three children (ages 19, 10, and eight months) lived together in a dormitory room in Irpin, just an hour outside of Kyiv.

When I was tidying up my mother’s apartment recently, I asked her to throw out the keys to our old place. But, as it turns out, she never did; my husband said it wouldn’t be necessary.

Our home in Irpin was handed down to us from my father-in-law, who had acquired it in the early 2000s. Sure, it was quite cramped: one 30-square-meter (320-square-foot) room for the five of us. But it was home, and it still remains in our hearts today. It was conveniently located for my husband and I to get to work, my oldest daughter studied and worked in nearby Kyiv, and my youngest went to school in the neighboring town of Bucha. That’s how we lived.

We’d been living there for three years when the war broke out on February 24, 2022. I’d had a feeling the war was coming, so I packed some emergency bags and gathered our important documents about a week beforehand. But we really didn’t expect the fighting to reach Irpin — the day it all began, my daughter and my husband were planning on going to work. At about six that morning, my mom called and told us to come to her in a village outside of Kyiv; we thought we’d be safer in a rural town than in a city. As we were leaving and I closed the door to the apartment, something told me it was the last time I would ever be there.

The fighting made its way to a village next to my mother’s. Ukrainian forces launched missiles from a nearby forest, and Russians sent their “responses” right back. Thankfully, my mom’s house was spared — just some shattered glass from an upstairs window. My eldest daughter said: “Mom, we need to leave.” I replied: “And go where? Everything will be fine, we just need to wait it out.”

My ex-husband’s father lived in a nearby town. When an oil tanker exploded 200 meters (about 220 yards) away from his house, he was hit by the blast wave and got a concussion. Their family came to us, frightened, and said: “Have you gone completely mad? There are missiles and war planes here. Why are you still sitting around?!”

With tears rolling down my cheeks, I gathered our things, and we left. By some miracle, we made it to Lviv, and we left for Poland a few days later. My husband had to remain in Ukraine for military service, but my children and I crossed the border into Poland on March 5th, with no idea of where we were going or how we would get there. On March 22nd, our home in Irpin was destroyed.

Our neighborhood had come under heavy shelling. I don’t know the exact circumstances, but my husband said that something struck the second story of our building, and it completely burned down. The building is still standing, but the city plans to demolish it.

My children and I lived in Poland for six months. It was peaceful and quiet. But I couldn’t get the thought out of my head: “How are my people in Ukraine?” I decided to go back and build a future with my husband — even if there was nowhere for us to live.

My husband had a small plot of land in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha that he’d begun developing about 10 or so years earlier. It was bare-bones, really: he put up some walls, filled in the floors of a few rooms, and that was it. We’d long wanted to finish building it before the war, but we weren’t able to. Now, we had no other choice — my children and I returned from Poland near the end of August 2022. At first we stayed with my mom, but then we moved to the Bucha property to help my husband with construction.

It is not yet fully livable, but we’ve got a fairly well-built corridor and two rooms; in one room we bathe, cook, do laundry and sleep, while the other is just bare concrete walls with a piece of linoleum on the floor. Kind people have helped — the kitchen set, microwave, dishes were all donated and crowd-funded. My husband built a stove so there’s heating.

Of course, it’s been a difficult adjustment. Our life here is completely different than it was in the city. It’s been financially difficult as well. But humility came quickly — after all, there’s nowhere else to go. We just have to keep going.

I miss our life in Irpin. There was a nice park nearby I liked to walk to with my youngest. It was a calm, balanced, and carefree life. But if this is the hand we’ve been dealt, is there a better alternative? We’d always wanted more space and dreamed of building a house — now, look at us! At least we have a little plot of land with a roof over our heads. For others, it’s a lot worse.

Olha’s Family

Olha, 33, homemaker. Before the war, Olha, her husband, and their four children (ages four and two) lived in an apartment in Mariupol, just 35 miles from the Russian border.

My husband’s keys are the only set left from our apartment in Mariupol. We’ve decided to hold onto them as a keepsake. I really regret not grabbing my keychain; it was so special to me. We hadn’t planned on taking these keys with us, they just happened to be in a bag with all of our stuff when we left. But holding onto the keys makes it feel like the apartment still exists, so I’m not yet ready to part with them.

We had considered a variety of neighborhoods when looking for an apartment in 2014, but we really liked the location of this one — it was right near a park, just as we’d hoped for, and there were all kinds of shops around. Honestly, though, I really didn’t like the apartment itself in the beginning. It was poorly remodeled, and we moved in with the expectation that we’d need to redo everything. Within a few years, though, we finally started settling in, and it felt like home. Our apartment became a safe haven that I could return to each day: regardless of what had happened before walking in the door, I could relax and feel calm. Even when the shelling began, our apartment felt safer than anywhere else.

The morning of February 24, 2022, I was in such denial about what was going on that I still planned on keeping my massage appointment for later that day. But by the evening, the shock and denial had worn off, and the panic began to set in. My husband and I realized we wouldn’t be safe in our apartment and we needed to go and stay with my mom to wait it out.

When I was packing our bags to leave, I thought we would only be gone for a few days, so I only brought essentials like water and toiletries. We left our nice clothes, our keepsakes, our valuables — I even left my engagement ring behind. It seemed risky and foolish to bring anything expensive with us.

The last time I used our apartment keys was when we went back in early March to try to collect some more of our things. It was quite difficult to get to the apartment as there was still heavy shelling going on all around. When we got there, we found our home littered with shrapnel. We entered the apartment in such a state of shock that, for a moment, I’d completely forgotten why we’d come in the first place. My husband reminded me to start grabbing what I could: “Faster, faster!” I barely had enough time to grab the rest of our bottled water.

We tried coming back one more time about a week later, but by then it wasn’t even possible to get near our apartment. There was glass everywhere, exposed wires were scattered about, and the building was on fire.

We only learned about what ultimately happened to our apartment after we left Mariupol in late March. Once the city became occupied and the shelling stopped, my mom went to our place to assess the damage. She told us the balcony and stanza we had recently finished installing had completely burned down, and the fire had ripped through our bathroom as well. After the fire, looters managed to break into our apartment by breaking through our neighbor’s wall and climbing through. I remember feeling such disgust hearing my mom describe the apartment after the looters had prowled about our home — they’d even rifled through my underwear drawer. For a long time afterwards, I wondered: would I have felt better if I’d just learned about the fire and not the robbery? And then I learned that the building had been demolished anyhow — our apartment didn’t even exist anymore.

For a long time, I didn’t want to know about the fate of our home — it was just so painful. I’m really glad we didn’t have to see the damage in person — I want to remember it the way it was before the war. The memories are still there, even if the apartment isn’t.

Right now, I’m trying to find somewhere I can feel at home, but I don’t know how much time has to pass for it to get even a little easier. It’s especially hard because we didn’t leave on our accord — a huge part of our lives was simply ripped away from us.

I feel like I’m living on borrowed time in Portugal. Only recently have I been able to move on from everything that happened. But I still can’t escape the fear that we could be driven out of our home anywhere we go, just as we were driven from our apartment in Mariupol. The good thing is that there’s a lot of support here. But what pulls me back is the realization that if anything goes wrong here in Lisbon, we won’t have anywhere to return to. Our home, our lives in Mariupol — those don’t exist anymore. No matter where we go, it will never be the home we knew.

Anzhela’s Family

Anzhela, 32. Before the war, Anzhela worked as an advisor at the Illich Metallurgical Plant in Mariupol. She and her daughter lived in an apartment just a 10-minute drive from the Sea of Azov.

This key here — I used it to open the door to my apartment for my entire life. I’ve considered throwing them out, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I think I’ll hold onto them as a keepsake.

In 1992, my mom, dad, older sister, and I moved into a three-bedroom apartment in Mariupol provided by mom’s work. Six years later, my younger brother, Misha, was born.

We had a great childhood in our yard, a happy one. My neighbors and I were always coming up with new games to play and painting things in the yard together: swings, benches. Every time our neighbor, Uncle Ihor, would go on a fishing trip, we’d call up to him on the 8th floor and beg him to toss down some dried fish. He’d throw them down and we tried to catch them in our mouths. It was so nice that all of the kids were all so close — we were like a little gang. Before new playgrounds started popping up, our yard was considered the coolest in the area: children from all around the neighborhood came to play on our swingset. One year, our yard was recognized as the best in the city — we even got a plaque.

As we grew older, I ended up living in the apartment by myself. My sister got married and moved in with her husband, our parents got divorced and moved out, and my mom took my brother with her. I then met my husband and we had our daughter, Ania.

When my husband and I split up in 2018, Ania and I remained in the apartment until Russia’s invasion in 2022. At the beginning of February 2022, my mom and my brother moved back into the apartment with Ania and I. Although it was nice to have my mom’s help watching Ania while I was at work, it became a bit cramped. I started dreaming of “running away” and thinking about how cool it would be if Ania and I moved to another country. Now, living in Germany, it seems like all my dreams came true: my daughter and I are living by ourselves in a foreign country in the apartment of our dreams. Well, bitch — you got your wish.

On the first few days of the invasion when the shelling began, I refused to go into the basement because of my claustrophobia. But when a projectile hit the apartment next to us in early March, we knew we couldn’t stay any longer. A friend of my mom’s, uncle Sasha, took us in after that, but we didn’t bring much with us besides some documents, food, toiletries, and a change of clothes.

It was a terrifying walk to uncle Sasha’s; it felt like it would never end. There was shrapnel everywhere as we walked past blown-up cars and apartment buildings that had been struck by missiles. And, all the while, I’m thinking: “God, if we get hit now, will I lose my child before my very eyes?”

On March 7, we went to live with my sister and her husband. Ten days later, Russian forces started shelling their yard, and then their house. We knew we had to leave Mariupol right away and find somewhere where there wasn’t any fighting.

Once we were able to return to Mariupol, we went back to our building to see our apartment and collect some more things. Our apartment hadn’t burned down, but almost the entire building had caught on fire. The apartment itself had been completely ransacked. My mom’s and brother’s expensive computers were gone, as was my laptop. I wanted to take literally everything with me; every speck of dust, every toy, and so on. I didn’t know where to begin — it was all so dear to me.

Our neighbors told us that, during the fighting, there were first Ukrainian soldiers stationed in our apartment, then soldiers from the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic.” There were shell casings strewn about the bed, hand grenade tubes all over the roof, and boxes of ammo and medical supplies scattered throughout the building and the yard.

I knew everything would be looted, but I still thought: “I want to see my home.” I’d heard that it had caught on fire — alright. But I still wanted to see it with my own eyes, and give it a proper “burial,” so to speak. And only then would I be able to get some closure.

Our old neighbor, Uncle Ihor, died during the war: when it all began in February 2022, he had just had surgery. I guess his heart just couldn’t take it. My sister and I now say that all the warmth of our home, our carefree childhood, died with him.

We’ve been in Germany since July 2022. Up until our last few days in Ukraine, I had no idea where to go or what to do next, but I knew I had to stay close to my sister. Her family managed to get help and move to Germany, so Ania and I followed.

I got my B1 German language certification in October 2023, but it’s not high enough to work here so I’ll keep studying. I try to live in the moment and appreciate what we have, but I keep getting these intrusive thoughts about all the different scenarios that might play out. It’s hard to build any long-term plans. We’d like to return to Mariupol, but it’s not possible right now.

It’s a strange feeling, but I don’t miss anything anymore. Usually when you leave somewhere, you know that you can come back; your city and your home will be waiting for you. You dream of walking along your favorite streets again. But what streets can I walk along now? Half of the city has been destroyed. Our apartment was demolished almost a year ago.

There’s a video of my building being torn down. For about four days, I was so overcome with grief, I just kept rewatching it and sobbing. I couldn’t come to my senses. And then I just snapped out of it: “Ok, that’s it. You’re done.”

I dream about our home often, but only as it was after the start of the war. I haven’t dreamt about any good memories there: either we’re being bombed, or we’re hiding from bombs, and planes are crashing into our apartment like the Twin Towers in 2001. Fuck, why can’t I dream of our home as it once was? Just once, I’d like to see it again.

Story by Irina Olegova. Edited by Yulia Leonkina.