KYIV, Ukraine — When Katerina Mischenko looks out the window of her 14th-floor apartment in an older, somewhat rundown neighbourhood in Kyiv, she doesn't see the graffiti on buildings across the street or the old woman rummaging through a garbage bin below.
Instead, she focuses on laughing children playing tag in a playground and the thought that she is safe and free.
Mischenko has made a new life, sharing a home with her sister and her husband, after fleeing Russia's bloody invasion of Mariupol, a port city some 740 kilometres southeast of the capital.
The tiny elevator comes to a sudden stop with a clunk and, when the door to Mischenko's apartment opens, a cacophony of complaints comes from her hungry kitten, Sonyi.
As she finds a bottle to feed the tiny feline, Mischenko recounts what happened in her home city before she left.
"When the war started with the invasion from Russia, Mariupol was fired on by Russians who got into the city. It was very scary. There was air bombardment all around the city. The ground was trembling," she says through an interpreter.
Mischenko says her family lived through the siege for two months. They spent nights underground, with little food and cooking on open fires.
"The Russians were laughing at us. We were very upset because we couldn't help each other. The Russian troops said there was no Kyiv, only the western Ukraine was left. I got in contact with my sister," she says.
"I wasn't afraid of them."
Mischenko and her mother eventually made it out of the city, but her father remained and was working with the Russians.
"I don't speak to him because he's on the Russians' side."
She is now 18 and says she has no reason to go back, even if the war was to end.
"I just wanted to get out from there. I don't know what could hold me there," Mischenko says.
"I always wanted to live in Kyiv, but I didn't expect to get here this way."
In the city of Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv, the devastation from Russia's temporary occupation is everywhere. Shopping centres are flattened, houses burned, an apartment building gutted. A sign says the community is destined "For Recovery".
A small car in a parking lot has no windows, its side riddled with bullets.
Dima Niekazakov is glad his sister Julia, along with her husband and children, fled the first week of the invasion and are now living in Toronto.
"I can see by photos and video it's another world, huge buildings, huge speed of life. They still didn't get how to deal with it," he says during an interview at his business, which sells coffee and pet food.
"At least there's no rocket attacks and they have two small children. I think they did right."
Niekazakov, a 36-year-old graphic designer, has spent the last 15 months doing charity work in the area. He says he wouldn't leave, even if he was allowed. At the beginning of the invasion, most Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 were barred from leaving in case they were called on to fight.
"I don't want to leave anyway. I stayed here during the occupation. We moved people to safe places. It was a great journey," says Niekazakov.
"We gave electric generators to the people, water, humanitarian aid, food and clothes."
His focus now is helping members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He's worried about the long-term mental effects of the war, but there's an even more urgent problem right now: making sure soldiers have body armour, helmets and weapons.
"I've bought by myself about five body armours and about two or three helmets and then again food to soldiers. In some battlefields, it's a very big difference," he says.
Niekazakov says fundraising to buy protection and even guns for Ukrainian soldiers is common and those from poor families don't have an opportunity to get help.
"Everyday they can lose their lives but they're not afraid and, to give my respect to them, I want to make bigger projects for them."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2023.
Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press
