This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation through the Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Katya Babych’s life changed in a moment. Russian jets flew overhead, tanks advanced and enemy troops slaughtered civilians in the suburbs surrounding her home city of Kyiv. 

“When it happened, we just woke up, grabbed our kids, a couple suitcases and ran,” Babych said. 

Babych and her husband, Yevhenii, have a daughter, Diana, who was 5 at the time, and a son, Nazar, who was 11. The decision to flee was simple, but not easy. She wanted to keep her children safe, but leaving their homeland still pains her three years later. 

The Babych family is among millions whose lives were upended by Russia’s invasion. The Cap Times met with some of those families in Ukraine in February, as well as loved ones and friends who now live in Wisconsin. 

One father, wounded in battle, hasn’t seen his wife and sons in more than three years. A mother works to comfort her daughters through nightly air raids. An aunt in Wisconsin fears for her nephew in Kyiv. 

Their lives have taken different paths but their goal remains the same, to keep their families safe and someday see an end to the brutal war destroying their homeland.

The night of the invasion, Babych and her husband packed what belongings they could, buckled their children into the family car and began to drive toward Poland. The drive from Kyiv to the Polish border typically takes about seven hours. This time, as thousands of other Ukrainians also fled, the journey took two days. 

They first crossed into Poland and then the Czech Republic, unsure how long the war would last. 

“But in May (2022) we understood it would not be a short story, but a very long story,” Babych said of the ongoing war.

The story of the Russian invasion has lasted over 1,100 days, and the family now lives in Stoughton. Babych works as a nurse at Stoughton Hospital, and their two children attend public school.

In Poland and the Czech Republic, her kids thought the family was on a vacation. But after arriving in Wisconsin and realizing their displacement was more permanent, they began to miss home and friends.

At first, they cried every day.

“It’s really hard because we didn’t have a plan to move, to start a new life across the ocean,” Babych said. 

At a cafe outside Madison, Babych sipped a cappuccino and gingerly held her pregnant belly as she recalled fleeing her Kyiv home. She and her husband are expecting their third child in April. 

“We’re lucky, because around us are really kind, nice people and they really support us,” Babych said. 

Her family received help from the Stoughton Resettlement Agency. The local nonprofit has helped more than a dozen immigrant families from Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere who fled war-torn countries and arrived in the southeast Dane County city of 13,000.

“For now, I have a job, my kids go to school. I mean, it’s kind of like normal life. Now my brother and sister-in-law and my parents are here,” Babych said. 

Babych doesn’t know how long she and her family will be allowed to stay in Stoughton now that President Donald Trump has ended humanitarian parole — the immigration channel that tens of thousands of Ukrainians have used since the beginning of the invasion to flee to the United States. 

“Every day you wake up and check like ‘OK, what about today,’” Babych said of the uncertainty. “Right now, I can’t imagine how we can go back to Ukraine.”

‘Because life stopped, our family got closer’ 

When Babych and her family fled the invasion, their apartment in Kyiv lay empty. 

Meanwhile, in the village of Troieshchyna on the outskirts of Kyiv, Babych’s friend Marta Jarrell constantly feared for the safety of her family. 

“We have four children. It was important for us to keep them safe, but we never wanted to panic,” Jarrell said, reflecting on why she and her husband chose not to evacuate Ukraine.

Jarrell and her family moved back to the Kyiv area from the United States just six months before the invasion began. She and her husband met in America; they and their four daughters have dual citizenship. She wanted to bring her family back to Ukraine to show them her homeland. Then the war started. 

Jarrell remembers the sounds of artillery shells as Russian troops surrounded the capital city. 

“It was very loud,” she said. “We could hear gunshots. It was getting really close.”

Before the war, Babych and Jarrell worked together at a private Christian school in Kyiv. Babych offered for her friend to move her family into the empty apartment closer to the city, farther from the violence that ravaged suburbs like Irpin and Bucha.

In the beginning, Jarrell’s youngest daughter — who was 3 at the time — slept through the air alarms. Jarrell used fans at night to mask the noise of the war.

“She’s 7 now, she starts waking up from explosions. It’s really taking a toll on her,” Jarrell said. 

After three years of war, your nervous system gets worn out. But Jarrell and her husband work to stay calm as an example for their daughters. They made the choice to stay, and even though daily life is hard and she is constantly afraid for her family’s safety, she doesn’t regret the choice to remain in Kyiv.

The war has been hard in so many ways, but Jarrell has tried to find unexpected benefits to stay positive.

“Because life stopped, our family got even closer,” she remembered. 

In the early days of the invasion, Jarrell set her daily routine around what would help her daughters cope with the uncertainty and fear.

“We did what the girls wanted to do. We baked a lot because stores were closed; there wasn’t much food at first,” she said. “We colored. We read. We danced. We spent a lot of quality time together, and that’s really helped.”

The three-bedroom apartment is a tight fit, and the four girls have to share rooms. 

“It’s challenging, but it’s cozy,” she said.

When asked how it feels to live in someone else’s home, Jarrell smiled softly. 

“My home is where my husband and my kids are,” she said.

‘The flowers have already died’

Before the war, Oleksandr Turchanov and his wife, Galyna Turchanova, took family vacations with their two sons by the sea in Odesa and in the Carpathian Mountains in southwestern Ukraine.

They began to build a house in the countryside outside of their hometown of Kropyvnytskyi on family land that belonged to Oleksandr’s grandparents. Galyna planted trees and flowers and strawberries. 

Now, it has been three years since the couple have seen each other. When asked what he misses most about his wife and sons, Oleksandr simply says being together.

“When there was a family, and everyone was together,” he said.

Galyna lives in Madison with their sons while her husband remains in Kropyvnytskyi. She works in the floral department of Metcalfe’s Market. Their younger son, Tymofii, is 15. He attends Memorial High School and plays volleyball.

Their 28-year-old son, Mykhailo, lived in Madison before the invasion began. He came here through a work study program with a university in Poland where he attended. In 2016, he became gravely ill with meningitis, and Galyna traveled to Madison to help him. 

“For two years we were fighting for his life here,” she said. After his recovery, she returned home.

Mykhailo has since graduated from a software engineering program at Madison Area Technical College and works as a programmer for the Madison Metropolitan School District. 

Oleksandr said he is proud of his sons for pursuing education and supporting their mother.

In Ukraine, Galyna worked as an insurance broker, but transferring professional licenses to the United States remains difficult, so she was unable to continue that work after settling in Madison. Working with plants at Metcalfe’s soothes her, though. 

“I like flowers and plants, and in Ukraine we have a big garden, so for me, it’s also like relaxation maybe,” Galyna said. 

These days Oleksandr lives in the countryside outside of Kropyvnytskyi with his elderly father, who suffers from dementia. Oleksandr said he is trying to keep his wife’s garden alive but it’s difficult on his own.

“The flowers have already died,” he said. “The ones that are alive, I somehow take care of them, chrysanthemums, I trim those. The ones that grow like weeds and do not need much care.”

Oleksandr is a serious man with clear blue eyes and a kind, but somber, demeanor. He sipped strong black coffee with sugar as he gazed out the kitchen window of an apartment he used to share with his family. In the living room, a bare wall held framed photos of his wife and sons when they were young boys. Boxed board games were stacked in the corner. 

Before the invasion in 2022, he and his family were nearly ready to install gas and water lines for the home they were building on the property. But when Russia’s invasion forced Galyna and their younger son to flee the country, the project came to a heartbreaking halt. 

“There is no longer a desire to build, just no desire,” Oleksandr said. Not without his family to share it with.

Oleksandr, a lawyer, was unable to flee with his family. The Ukrainian government banned men ages 18-60 from leaving the country in an effort to bolster its limited military reserves. On Feb. 26, 2022 — two days after the invasion began — Oleksandr drove to the conscription office to file his paperwork. On March 8, he was called to war. 

In the early days of the war, Galyna and her son lived in the countryside with her father-in-law. They would hide in the root cellar during air raids.

“It was just terrible. And my son, he was 12 at this time. He cried and he asked, ‘Can we please leave?’ Because it was so scary,” she said.

They soon left with friends to Hungary — five people in one car with only enough space for one backpack each.

After suffering a shrapnel injury to his stomach while fighting, Oleksandr was released from the military. Galyna learned her husband had been injured as she and her youngest son awaited a plane to travel from Hungary to Wisconsin. 

“We were ready for the flight to Madison, but I couldn’t leave my son and help my husband,” she said. 

Galyna feels welcome in Madison and said the Ukrainian community has become tightly knit during the war. She speaks with her husband on the phone as often as possible. 

“I try to speak every day with my husband and my parents, and every morning I call them and I’m afraid if they will answer or not because every day I read the news from Ukraine,” Galyna said.

Oleksandr speaks with his sons on the weekends. He said he doesn’t want his calls to interrupt their school and work. The family does not know when they will be together next. 

“In Ukraine, it’s still dangerous,” Galyna said. “Just the other day I was thinking, what country I can move to if, for example, (Trump) decided to deport all Ukrainians. I don’t know if I am ready for that. I just know that we can’t go back to Ukraine right now.”

‘Our new reality has become just war’

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dmytro Komar spoke to his aunt at a frequency typical of relatives who live in different countries — on birthdays and holidays, like Christmas and Easter. 

“From the beginning of the war, we started to text each other and call, I think, almost every day,” he said. “After every rocket or drone attack, she would check in.”

Komar, 33, lives in Kyiv. His aunt, Ruslana Westerlund, lives in Mazomanie, a small Wisconsin town about 23 miles west of Madison. 

Westerlund is president of the nonprofit Friends of Ukraine, Madison, a group that works to help Ukrainians feel a sense of community and welcoming in Dane County. 

The organization holds educational events, cultural workshops, gatherings with traditional Ukrainian food, informational sessions on immigration and, last month, a rally at the Capitol to mark the third anniversary of the invasion.

Beyond welcoming Ukrainians now living in the Madison area, Westerlund said the nonprofit educates Americans who may have misunderstandings about Ukraine’s culture and independence. The work helps her feel connected to her home.

“I hear so often ‘Oh, you must be Russian. Tell me about the Russian language.’ No, we speak Ukrainian and we have Ukrainian culture,” Westerlund said. “We’re not Russians or former Russians or former Soviets. We’re just Ukrainians.” 

Westerlund was born in Buzhanka, in the Cherkasy region of central Ukraine. After graduating from Cherkasy State Pedagogical University, she moved to the United States. First to Minnesota and later to Wisconsin. 

It has been many years since she has been able to visit her home. Travel in and out of Ukraine is dangerous and limited because of Russia’s invasion. Komar hasn’t seen his aunt since 2017.

Westerlund is the sister of Komar’s mother, who died when he was 9. His father died just three years ago. “So I’m his kind of second mom,” Westerlund said, fondly. 

She is proud of her nephew but concerned for his safety. As a man in his 30s, he is not allowed to leave the country and could be conscripted into the army at any moment.This scares Westerlund. She affectionately calls him by his nickname, Dima. He is an artist and knows nothing of fighting, she worries. 

“I have his art in my house,” Westerlund said. 

His paintings hang on the walls of her home as a stained glass Ukrainian flag glows from sunlight in the window nearby.

“She is my main buyer,” Komar joked back in Kyiv. His art hangs on the walls of his own living room also.

Komar’s apartment — where he lives with his girlfriend, Tetiana Vazhka, and their cat, Maya — is bright with large windows that look out over the rest of the apartment complex and a nearby park. 

At the beginning of the war, the two rented a different flat in a nearby high-rise. It was through those windows the couple watched Russia attack their city. 

“We were sleeping,” Komar said. As the assault began, he and Vazhka watched out the window, unsure of what to do. 

“We saw people starting to run with their stuff, their pets, kids and cars,” Komar remembered. 

Between bombings, the couple went to a supermarket to buy food. 

Shelves were already beginning to empty. On the way home, another big explosion scared the couple, and they decided to flee to Zgurivka, where Vazhka’s mother lived. The village is closer to Russia but farther from main cities they thought would be the target of Russian attacks.

Instead, they lived for two and a half months through regular artillery shelling before returning to Kyiv that April.

While many others fled the country, the couple remained. 

“Today, sometimes I regret it,” Komar said of their decision to stay. 

Like many others, he thought the war would be over by now.

“I thought like, ‘OK, three days, a few weeks, maybe a month, and somehow it will end, and we will see a new reality,’” Komar said. “But our new reality has become just war.”

Before the invasion, Komar thought of war like it is depicted in movies — constant action, terrifying but predictable. 

“But the reality is that is 1% of war, and the rest of time is just a silent time when you know that war is going on and you see the impact, but it’s so slow. It’s so, so slow. Like slowly dying.”

At least the first few months of the invasion, when Kyiv underwent more intense bombardment from Russia, the war felt real, he said. 

“It was a period of real feeling of danger like in a movie,” Komar said. “But now for three years, it’s danger like cancer.”

Ukrainians at home and in Madison reflect on separation and war is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation through its initiative Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines, in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

The entrance to the Ukrainian city of Irpin holds a harsh reminder of the trauma suffered just three years ago.

Next to a newly built structure crossing the icy Irpin River lies the mangled remains of the Romanovsky Bridge that Ukrainian forces intentionally destroyed to block Russian soldiers from advancing to the capital of Kyiv. 

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24, 2022. Oleksandr Markushyn remembers the moment clearly. 

The mayor of Irpin, a Milwaukee sister city, says he received a text on the messaging platform WhatsApp from the Russian military, informing him it would soon invade his town. Markushyn had two choices, according to the text: He could either surrender his city to Russia and remain mayor, or the Russian military would take Irpin by force. 

He hugged his 4-year-old son, Mark, close to him during an interview with the Cap Times as he recalled the Russian military threatening to harm his child if he did not surrender.

Markushyn refused their menacing proposal. 

“And I wrote, ‘Try to destroy (us),’” he said, proudly. 

Russian forces occupied the city for one horrifying month, during which close to 300 civilians were killed, thousands of homes were demolished and 70% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed.

“Why was Irpin such a key city for the Russians? Because Irpin is only 5 kilometers from Kyiv,” Markushyn said.

If Russian troops had advanced to Kyiv, the country likely would have fallen into Russian control altogether. To keep that from happening, Ukrainian troops blew up the only bridge out of Irpin. 

The self-destruction might have saved the country, but it meant thousands of civilians had to evacuate through winter mud and the frigid river. Some were able to evacuate by train in the first days of the invasion, but Russia quickly bombed the railways civilians were using to flee and continued to shell the area of the river while civilians escaped on foot.

Markushyn evacuated his own son and thousands of others but stayed back to defend Irpin. In addition to serving as the city’s mayor, he also led the area’s territorial defense squadron. 

“When I was appointed as the head of our territorial defense, I had two main decisions,” he said. “The first was to build defensive lines, defensive fortifications for our city, and the second was the evacuation of the population.”

Down the road from Irpin, the neighboring town of Bucha suffered what much of the world considers war crimes. Unarmed civilians were raped and murdered in cold blood. Images of their bodies lining the streets were broadcast around the globe.

Exploding teddy bears

In Irpin, as they retreated at the end of March 2022, occupying Russian soldiers rigged land mines in the rubble of decimated homes and nearby playgrounds. They planted children’s teddy bears with grenades hidden inside, Markushyn said. 

“As soon as a child picked up the toy, it would explode,” he said.

Residents of Irpin wanted to return home as soon as the city was liberated, the mayor recalled, but the entire community first had to be carefully de-mined. Some homes could be repaired. Many required complete demolition before they could be rebuilt.

Irpin’s cultural center building still stands in ruin. Markushyn said the city hopes to rebuild it this year.

“It was, of course, very hard to see. It was burning, and you couldn’t do anything,” Markushyn said. “Because there was no electricity, no water, no firefighters, no services at all, nothing was working, and there were battles in the city.”

Lidiia Rodchenko, 72, and her husband, Viktor, had already experienced evacuation before they settled in Irpin.

They were forced to flee their hometown of Avdiivka near the Russian border in 2015, amid fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists.

They returned to Avdiivka in 2016, then fled again when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

But the war followed them to Irpin. They had to escape once more. 

“We had already gone through this in 2015. We knew what it was like,” Lidiia said.

The apartment they rented in Irpin was destroyed.

Once Irpin’s occupation had ended, they moved into a tiny home with their cat, Tomas. The group of homes had been donated by Poland as part of the country’s humanitarian aid to neighboring Ukraine. 

The home is small but it’s on the ground floor, so Lidiia is able to easily move Viktor’s wheelchair from room to room and take him on walks outside. Viktor, 70, lost both his legs to complications from advanced diabetes, leaving many of the chores to Lidiia.

“I planted 22 rose bushes here. We have a drive for life now,” Lidiia said. “We will wait for victory. We need victory. We want to live in a free Ukraine and think for ourselves.”

Inside a kindergarten bomb shelter

Down the street from the destroyed cultural center, a drive for life is overflowing among some of the city’s youngest residents. At the Ruta Kindergarten School, children ages 2-6 enjoy a newly rebuilt school after the original building was destroyed by Russian shelling three years prior. 

At recess time on a February school day, the children, donned in colorful snowsuits, hats and mittens, played in fresh snow.

Kseniia Katrych is the headmistress of the school. She proudly showed the bright classrooms — with large windows to let in natural sunlight — the kitchen where chefs prepare the students’ lunch of borscht and bread, and the school’s basement bomb shelter.

The school was rebuilt with donations from Lithuania. In front of the school, the Lithuanian flag flies next to the Ukrainian flag. 

“As a symbol of our friendship,” Katrych said.

The multi-room shelter has play areas with toys, books, tables and chairs.

“We are really proud of our shelter. It is about 800 square meters (more than 8,000 square feet), and we’ve got everything children need,” Katrych said.

The shelter has bathrooms, a kitchen area and small beds for children to nap. Some of the youngest children nap in the bunker each day so that teachers don’t have to wake them mid-sleep if the city is advised to shelter from a potential air strike.

The entire school — 300 students along with teachers and other staff — goes to the shelter each time the air raid sirens sound in the city. 

“It could be five times a day. It could be three hours,” Katrych said of the sirens. “There are some days without alerts. But we come every time, quickly.”

Many of the children are young enough that war is all they know. Most find the air raid sirens a normal part of life. 

Katrych was not in Irpin when the school was destroyed. She evacuated with her family the first day of the war. 

“I even crossed the bridge,” she said. “It was not destroyed (yet).”

She worked in a kindergarten in Poland for a year before returning to help run Ruta. 

“I love it. Kindergarten is my life,” she said. “You know children give you special energy. They are our hope.”

Markushyn feels that same sense of hope and pride with how the community has rebuilt and recovered with the help of sister cities like Milwaukee, which donated vehicles and humanitarian aid.  

“When the city was in ruins, completely destroyed, and there was only one street passable for cars, it was fear, it was horror, and it seemed to me that rebuilding the city would be almost impossible,” he said. “But there is a saying: ‘The eyes fear, but the hands do the work.’”

Milwaukee sister city in Ukraine works to rebuild from war with Russia is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.