Natalia
The fifth in a new series of first person interviews with Ukrainians now living in Austria. For privacy reasons, names are often changed, as is this case in this interview, per Natalia's request.
Natalia (45) reached out to me, and offered to share her story, explaining she is not a public person, and she thought a lot about this before coming forward. She believes it is important for people in Austria (and beyond) to know what many Ukrainians are going through right now. She was very clear: no family photos and first names must be changed to protect her family’s privacy. Her son is serving in the Ukrainian armed forces, and not in an ordinary capacity. At the tender age of 25, with his law degree, he is involved in work she likened to the FBI — on the ground intelligence gathering.
Natalia lives now with her 15 year old daughter Vika in Wolkersdorf, a town in Lower Austria within commuting distance to Vienna. But her story starts in the very center of Kharkiv, and the first thing she shows me as we sit down to chat at an outdoor table of an overpriced bakery in Vienna’s 3rd district is this map. “You see Kharkiv, you see how close we are to the Russian border.” I nod. I know the map, but a reminder is always useful.
Natalia was born and raised in Kharkiv. She is married to Oleksii. They are both lawyers. They have two children: Vika, 15, and Denis, 25, who also studied law, and is now serving in the Ukrainian armed forces in intelligence (he speaks English fluently and some Arabic). Vika speaks English very well and had some German in school in Kharkiv before the war began. Natalia and Oleksii also attended a school which taught some German, decades ago, and this definitely helped her when she arrived in Austria.
In late January 2022, Denis came to visit his parents, and said bluntly he thinks Russia will invade. He was taking the threat seriously. The family, however, didn’t really. They went on holiday to Egypt in early February as planned. They continued with their daily lives. Natalia’s mother was living in Kharkiv oblast, 10-15 kilometres from the border to Russia. When Natalia visited her, her mother said she had heard from some local women in the village that Russia was planning to attack. Natalia argued back that surely won’t happen because if Russia were to do that, America would immediately block Russia’s access to the global financial payment system.
On February 23, 2022, Natalia and Oleksii went to bed late. She was in a bad mood. At 4am the next morning, she awoke from her husband taking a call on his mobile phone. As a lawyer, he had contacts everywhere. It was the owner of a car repair body shop in a village just near the Russian border. “Oleksii,” he said, “there are Russian tanks standing here.” The man saw ten armoured personnel carriers lined up. He hid, started calling local police and everyone he could think of. Natalia overheard all this, and still didn’t believe it was war.
Fifteen minutes later, their son Denis called. “The Russians are on the border. We are all being called in. Pack your documents.” Natalia just stood frozen in the kitchen for about ten minutes. The phone rang again. It was another contact, someone who works in agriculture near a border crossing. “There are tanks here, huge columns of cars, Ural trucks, armoured personnel carriers.” Within thirty minutes after that phone call, that particular village was occupied entirely by the Russians. Natalia tells me many men died defending those border crossings. From there, it was only 40 kilometres to the centre of Kharkiv. Two and a half hours later, the Russians tried to enter Kharkiv from four different directions. By 7-8am, they had stopped at the entrance points to the city.
Denis was at work, destroying documents in the event of a Russian occupation. He advised his family to delete all the photos on their phones with him in uniform. Natalia explains she wasn’t afraid even at this point. She comes from a military family, much of her husband’s family served in the armed forces. Denis then came to see them, brought one helmet and one bulletproof vest, and gave it to Vika.
Natalia’s apartment in Kharkiv is located in the absolute city centre. She says the Russians were confronted by semi-private army groups who took the first hit defending the city. By 10-11am, they could hear explosions. At 11am, they looked out their windows, and saw Russian tanks heading towards the centre. There were street fights. When the Russians encountered Ukrainians fighting back, they separated them into small groups and killed them, Natalia says. They were in their apartment, following all of this watching videos and photos on Telegram.
By evening, the tanks had retreated to the outskirts of Kharkiv. Around 3pm, they heard loud explosions again. Some of the worst fighting was in the northern suburb of Saltivka. The Russians were already in nearby villages such as Tsyrkuny and Lyptsi. Local village residents were running to the forest to escape. One woman grabbed her daughter and ran to hide for a few hours until her father could somehow get there by car. No one knew where to go. Natalia recalls even at this point she still thought it would all be over in a day or two.
On that first day, the bombing came in the afternoon. They hit the city centre, Saltivka, university square. Natalia and her family went to what they believed was the safest place in the apartment — the bathroom. They put the vest and helmet on Vika. The Russians, Natalia recalls, hit the opera, philharmonic, university buildings. The bombings were intense and relentless.
Natalia and her family stayed in their apartment until March 14. They did not go like many others to the subway, as the entrance to the nearest subway to them had been blocked by an explosion. Their upstairs’ neighbor discovered an unexploded bomb in his balcony. Natalia shows me a photo.
Natalia had been afraid to leave by car because she remembered stories from 2014 of families who fled Donbas by car and died while trying to escape. But after there were explosions in the courtyard of their apartment building, she decided it was finally time. The family packed little: phones, laptops, some clothes, money. They left at 6am using both cars. As they walked to the cars, they saw there was not an unbroken window on their street. Everything was shattered, so many cars were blown up. They were lucky that both their cards, parked in a neighbouring courtyard, were ok.
They were a group of nine people and five cats (one of Natalia’s relatives was the cat lady). Natalia drove one car, Oleksii the other. Both cars luckily had full tanks of gas, and two tanks — they run on both gasoline and CNG. There were no other cars on the road, only ambulances and fire trucks. They heard explosions on the outskirts of Kharkiv, near one of the airports. So many burned out cars. They passed warehouses used for fuel storage and a giant Nova Poshta that had been bombed. It took them two hours to reach Poltava. Denis had arranged for his fiancé to stay in a safe place in central Ukraine. He advised them all to leave Kharkiv.
There was a line of cars three to four kilometres long as they approached bridges going over the Dnieper River. Every car was being checked. There was fear of sabotage. That first day the family drove 14 hours non-stop to cover only 300 kilometres. Natalia recalls many cars stranded on the side of the road which had run out of gas. They spend the night in a kindergarten in a village in Kirovhrad region. Denis had made the arrangements. They were nine people, five cats, could bathe and were fed, and slept on the floor. It was cold, -15C outside, and the kindergarten was not heated at night. The inside temperature dropped to +5-7C. They left some money in the morning to say thank you and continued onwards.
The next day they drove 500-600km to Ternopil, where they were hosted by a young family of IT professionals who had opened up their home. 40 people were sleeping in one house. They and the cats slept on the floor, had some breakfast, left some money, and kept driving west. In western Ukraine, they were finally able to buy 20 litres of gas. They stopped to see friends in Rivne region. A friend called Natalia who had managed to get on an evacuation train from Kharkiv with her four children. She was heading to Lower Austria, to an acquaintance who had once studied under her father’s supervision. They would head to Austria via Poland.
Natalia had no clear plan at this point other than to reach safety in western Ukraine. They had some cash with them. She had also grabbed some jewellery she could sell, just in case. “Like what the grandmothers always told us,” I say. She nods in understanding. She changed some USD into Euros and Zloty. She spoke with her husband. He could not leave, but urged her to take Vika and go to Europe. Natalia had never “driven” to Europe before. But she was confident in the way a mom is when she knows she must protect her family. I will figure it out, she said to him.
Natalia quickly crossed the border into Poland, and there they were met by volunteers, they bought local SIM cards, and had to decide where to go next. Natalia called a distant cousin who had long since emigrated to Germany. He had already taken in three families and had no more space. So she decided to try Austria, and follow in her friend’s footsteps, to ask for help from the local community in Lower Austria. They slept a night in Poland and then drove to Austria, where a local priest met them and offered to help them find housing. The priest was in touch with local families who had empty spaces. Natalia and Vika were given half a house (two rooms) to share with her friend and her friend’s 17 year old son who had come with them.
“But what about the five cats?” I ask. Natalia smiles and tells me that was a different solution. She had written in a Facebook group and had managed to find a Russian speaker who was living in Austria for a long time. This person promised to help find the cats a home. After hours of texting, a connection was made with an Austrian family of four, also in Lower Austria, who already owned lots of animals, who agreed to take the woman in and her five cats. They lived together for a year and a half. She only recently moved out, and rented her own apartment. The family really helped Natalia’s relative, finding her a job in a local hotel.
Natalia, Vika and the other mother and son shared part of a home owned by an elderly couple whose children had moved away. They had hosted refugees in the past. Eventually, Natalia and Vika moved out and rented their own apartment. The other mother and son are still there, but may also leave soon. He wants to apply to university and that might mean a move beyond Austria.
I ask about Oleskii, who could not leave. He moved to Kyiv, into a rented apartment, and began work again as a lawyer. He told Natalia about the roads dug up from tanks rolling over them in the bedroom communities near Kyiv, about the blown-up bridges. His rented apartment was near the river, near a hydro-electric station which was hit several times.
Natalia says her Austrian hosts helped them settle in, helped find a school for Vika, helped her to go through the initial bureaucracy. Natalia very quickly wanted to work. First, she and her friend found unofficial work as gardeners for a wealthy local family. They worked six hour shifts, side by side, for which they were paid €8 per hour cash in hand. I roll my eyes and say to Natalia, “but you know that is ridiculously low pay for garden work!”. Yes, she nods, she knows that now. But at the time it was money. The two women drove Natalia’s car to that job, and the first two hours they only worked for gas money. The family grandmother, whom everyone in the town was afraid of, even spoke a few words of Russian to Natalia. She remembers the Soviet occupation in post-war Lower Austria.
Then, Natalia heard about AMS (state job office), and made an appointment with them. AMS offered her three jobs: two in hotels and one in a dry cleaner. She chose the dry cleaner. It was 40 hours per week, the boss was kind, and it paid €1600 before taxes, about €1300 per month after taxes. She then lost her state social payments, but was happy for the work and to be busy. Natalia recalls she lost 30 kilograms over those first three months in Austria. Despite working 40 hours per week Monday to Friday, Natalia then looked for an extra weekend job. She answered an advertisement about kitchen help in a Gasthaus in a nearby town. Twelve hours a day, Saturday and Sunday, cash in hand. The boss explained if she was already employed, a second job would only “lead to more taxes”. So she agreed. For a twelve hour kitchen shift she was paid €120 per day. In cash.
Natalia was good at the kitchen work, but the kitchen manager lady got jealous. She clearly didn’t like being upstaged. She told Natalia “We don’t need people like you here.” Natalia explained she had no career ambitions, she just wanted to earn some extra money to buy her daughter clothes for school. One day, the manager lady raised her arm as if she wanted to hit Natalia, and Natalia reacted in an instant, grabbing the woman by her wrist. She then let go, took a step back, took off her apron, and left. She took her things, got in her car, and called the boss, explaining the manager lady had tried to hit her. He apologised and met her at a separate location to pay her her wages. “It’s so hard to find people,” was his excuse for keeping such a person on staff.
All this time Natalia was sharing an eight square meter room with Vika, and the other mother and son were sharing a ten square meter room, through which Natalia and Vika had to walk to get to the kitchen and bathroom. So she began, with her wages, to look for an apartment to rent. She found one. €650 per month for two rooms. Housing in the countryside is not cheap because apartments are in short supply, particularly those for rent, and there are many looking to rent.
I ask about Vika. At first, Vika had attended a local school, which the priest helped organise. She was accepted because of her excellent English (C1). The class welcomed her, and the teacher even asked her to help the others with English, acknowledging that Vika’s English was better than that of the Austrian students. Vika also continued with Ukrainian school online. Now, Vika attends a privately-organised school for Ukrainian teens in Vienna which was started by a Ukrainian who has lived in Austria for a while. It seems to operate in a gray zone in that older teens do not under Austrian law have to attend school past the age of 15, and this school is teaching a Ukrainian curriculum for older teens while providing extra German. I was not able to find a website, to me this sounds like a project that lost some rent subsidies and now continues to operate privately. It has a monthly tuition which was €175 per month and is now €350. I assume the family is able to afford this because Oleksii is working in Ukraine. It is good because Vika is able to socialise with other teens from Ukraine in a classroom setting. She also continues with some extra subjects online in Ukraine.
I ask about Denis. He returned to Kharkiv and for a while lived in the family apartment until the windows were blown out. His own apartment building was hit as it is near a military hospital. Natalia sends me photos. The giant crater was in front of the entrance to the family apartment building.
Denis continues to work in military intelligence. He works from 7am to 8pm in towns on the border. From Natalia’s description, I interpret these to be territories that were occupied by Russia which Ukraine took back. Kupiansk, Izyum, Volchansk. He was once in a terrible car accident at work but luckily everyone was wearing seat belts and he came out unscathed.
Natalia has been able to meet Oleksii in Lviv, and due to his work as a lawyer, he is able to leave Ukraine for brief trips. I ask her if he thinks it is time for she and Vika to come home. No, it is too early. On one visit she recalls she went to the kitchen in his rented flat in Kyiv and a rocket whizzed by the window.
Natalia tells me more about Denis. The things he has seen and heard. The horrible things that happened in the border villages. Many local residents did want the Russians to come, they had some kind of fantastical image of “Russian World” in their heads. After everything played out, many of the men who collaborated with the Russians fled to Russia, but the women, they stayed. Natalia describes the woman as small business owners: cafes, restaurants, they helped the Russians not because they got some kind of huge payouts but simply because they thought life under Russia would somehow be better. Natalia is exasperated by this, explaining that anyone who wanted to work in Ukraine could build a good life for him/herself.
The Russians made payments: €11 for one photo, one phone call with info. €20 to tell them who worked for the police or the army. She says Kupiansk had its own rules, so close to Russia. The Russians went after the wives of Ukrainian police and army personnel. The town, along with Volchansk and Izyum and others, was liberated in June 2022. They found many bodies. Women who had been murdered with their hands tied up. The forests are all mined. The Russian laid 6-7 mines per square meter, Natalia explains. There are some of these collaborator women sitting in jails now. They will collect testimony.
Natalia’s father died in January 2023. And then her brother was killed fighting on the front that same month. She could not go back for either funeral. She also could not continue working full time. She was overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted. She quit her job at the dry cleaner and went back on the state benefits for Ukrainians. She explains, “I have two university degrees and I want to do more. I found a program that will allow me to train for a job in the social sector and I will take a special German class for this.” Natalia found this program via Tralalobe, and will begin her education in the fall. In the meantime, she is working a bit in an unofficial capacity, cooking and cleaning for a local woman. Oleksii is still working in Kyiv and he can help them a bit financially. He tells his wife and daughter it is too early for them to come back to Ukraine.
I ask about Vika, how is she handling all of this? At first she was very sad, they fought, she didn’t talk a lot with her mom, she was really upset and wanted to go home. Now she understands better why they left. She recently met some friends from Ukraine in Poland, and they showed her photos from Kharkiv, and the reality of what happened to her hometown hit her. Denis tells Vika to stay with Natalia in Austria for now. “You can always come home. We can fix the windows and the roof to the building.” Vika saw a photo of how a bomb hit 100 meters from her school in Kharkiv. The crater at the entrance to their apartment buildling. Natalia thinks then the reality sunk in. Vika saw the photos from Denis. She was in shock.
Natalia says “the men will decide when we should come back” meaning Oleksii and Denis. Vika seems to accept this, for now. She is 15 and going to school and Natalia is determined to keep her in education until she is 18 and can then decide for herself what she will do.
I ask Natalia how she herself is coping. She explains the jobs really helped her. She thinks it would have been much harder emotionally if she didn’t have that to focus on and keep her busy. She is very grateful to the priest who helped them so much initially. She says she was lucky in Austria that when she asked for help she received it. I added it is probably also because Natalia presents as someone willing to help herself. It is much easier to help such a person than someone who you fear will become helpless and dependent on the help of strangers. Natalia wholeheartedly agrees. She also tried to help others by offering rides. She is one of the few Ukrainians with a car.
Natalia looks back on her escape and wonders where she got her strength from. She drove for three days straight across Ukraine and then two days across Europe. Not knowing what would come next. She remembers arriving in the dark to Lower Austria and barely managing the last 15 kilometres. “I live in my memories, I listen to what my kids say.” And yet she does look to the future, but it is hard. When she worked full-time, 8am to 5:30pm, for seven months, she didn’t have the energy to do German courses on top. She tried to learn a bit on her own, and is excited to be a student again. She turns back to the war and Denis.
“Seven or eight bombs fall on Kharkiv each day. The Iranian drones. Some of them weigh up to 300 kilos. When they shoot them down, the debris falls out of the sky. Look at Kupiansk, if the Russians take it again, they will surely reach Kharkiv again.”
She talks about the collaborators in those border towns. She talks about the reality of the “Russian World” in the occupied territories of Donbas and Mariupol. How Central Asian workers are being lured with the promise of cheap housing. How property rights become meaningless.Natalia thinks it may take years for Ukraine to get these territories back. Many who lived in occupied territories are scared to talk. Even those in Austria. Their husbands and families are still there. She mentions a woman who died alone, without a funeral. Natalia tells me about a woman whose husband is a teacher in Melitopol. The Russians said they will kill him if he protests.
Denis has a friend from Kherson, from the same intelligence division as he. When the city was occupied in the early days of the war, his friend’s father ran, but his mother stayed. The Russians came and went through the whole apartment. They beat up his mother. They found his uniform. They left it on the bed with holes in it and a photo of her son with an X through it. “We will find him and kill him” they told her.
I shudder listening to all this. I ask Natalia how long she things the war will last. She gives me the same answer I keep hearing over and over from everyone I speak with. “A long time,” she says soberly.
Natalia estimates one-third of Kharkiv was destroyed. The Russians hit administrative buildings, theatres, universities, schools, hospitals. She would really like to go home but she stays here for her daughter. She talks about the difficult work with people from all walks of life (even drug addicts, etc) which Denis is performing now in his role. He was involved in a prisoner exchange which offered the Russians one person, a man of Chechen ethnicity, who was so valuable to them that the Russians traded back 180 Ukrainian POWs in return. I express my admiration for such an important negotiation. Natalia explains Denis was only disappointed they could not free more men with this trade.
Natalia is so proud of her son. She gets teary talking about him. And then angry, when she mentions the traitors he has told her about. She turns back to the “18 days we spent sleeping on the bathroom floor”, and then adds they aren’t even the people who “really suffered” in all this.
“Why are the Russians doing all this?” she asks me one of those questions there is no answer to.
She recalls a visit Putin paid to Kharkiv when he made a snide comment to the then governor “who knew Kharkiv lived so fatly?” meaning how dare you Ukrainians have a better life than us Russians. Natalia explains that Ukrainians worked hard for what they had. Both she and her husband worked two jobs. This is normal to her. You work hard and you can provide for your family. Now those who fled occupied territories have lost everything. New people moved into their apartments. Your ownership documents are meaningless. The Russians simply issued new ones. The Russians wanted to take what Ukraine had.
“I want Austrians and others to know what we are going through.”
I promise to do my best, I assure her, and give Natalia a warm hug as she walks off in the direction on the train station, back to Lower Austria.