‘I just need to run to save my life’
Her story is familiar to 2.8 million other Ukrainians who have been forced to flee following Russia’s brutal invasion, but Slava Soloviova, now safe in the German city of Stuttgart, remains hopeful she can return home.
Ms Soloviova, who fled her comfortable life in Kyiv after the shelling began, was captured in a viral video expressing her bewilderment, shock and sorrow at the reality of her new life.
Speaking to PM’s Nick Grimm, she said she now feared for those who remained back in her country and her life changed literally overnight after the invasion began.
“I was so scared, I didn’t have much time to think of it,” she said adding she tried to pack an emergency bag.
“But then I understood I don’t have time for this, I just need to run to save my life.”
She said most of her colleagues have left, but her mum was in Ukraine because she didn’t want to leave.
“We just need help, we are trying out best we don’t want to surrender, we also don’t want to die and that’s not the easiest thing to explain,” Ms Soloviova said.
“Two weeks ago I wasn’t understanding war as well and I now don’t feel like I can expect from others, especially like people in Australia and people far away from it, to understand the situation we are dealing with right now in Ukraine. The Russian army just kills civilians, it just bombs civilian objects, schools, kindergartens… I absolutely want it to stop and this close the sky thing would help, I believe there is no other option, otherwise, the whole world would witness the destruction, the mass killing of the whole nation – a whole independent country.”
Ms Soloviova said she and others had a right to live in their own country without Russians, and warned if Ukraine wasn’t safe, nowhere was.
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