Olga Hordiienko

Fleeing the war in Ukraine takes Olga Hordijenko on a journey that lasts a full seven days. Olga, a friend of hers, with her mother-in-law and their three children set out for Wolfenbüttel in Germany when the bombs start hitting Dnipro. All six of them cram into a car. There’s hardly any space, and because they are headed into the unknown in the midst of war, fear is almost always with them.

It’s about 2,000 kilometres from the town in Eastern Ukraine to Wolfenbüttel. It would take two days under normal circumstances. This time, however, the circumstances are anything but normal.

There’s massive congestion on the main roads.

Olga takes back roads and sometimes even dirt tracks to make good headway. Time and again, they have to stop at checkpoints. That’s really scary for the three women, especially at night. They don’t know if the men with rifles stopping them are Ukrainian or Russian soldiers – or even criminals intent on robbing them.

Despite all that, the 39-year-old can’t see an alternative to fleeing the country after the war has started. “Get your children to safety”, her sister from Bucha tells her on the phone. That’s when the six of them decide to do the road trip to escape the war. There’s chaos on the streets. On the first day they don’t even manage to leave Dnipro.

It’s raining the next day, and there’s less traffic on the roads. As Russian troops are advancing towards Dnipro from the south, the refugees try to keep north. In order to avoid traffic jams, they use back roads, but this also means they have to go through more checkpoints. Because they are traveling with children, the soldiers let them pass.

There’s a curfew at night, therefore they can’t drive after nightfall. They take the risk once and drive at night because progress during the day was too slow. “That was really dangerous. We could have been shot at”, Olga recounts later.

The next day they have to fill up the car.