Escape from Ukraine: Refugees and what they left behind

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (KIFI) - For Ukrainian natives Eva, Lena and Kateryna, life forever changed on Feb. 24.

"The 23rd was so normal. It was like, you do your daily things, you make plans for tomorrow, and then at 5 a.m., we just started hearing the sirens and the bombs and the rockets," Eva Malezhyk said. "So we started to grab all the pillows and tape it to the windows so if like something falls and the glass breaks, it doesn’t harm us." 

Eva's dad witnessed a plane shot down in their neighborhood in Kyiv that destroyed a nearby home.

"That's when we knew that it was not safe to stay in the house anymore, so we had to leave," she said.

On Feb. 25, the second day of war, Eva grabbed what she could. "I only brought like two pairs of jeans and three pairs of shoes."

What is typically an eight-hour trip to Chernivtsi — in the western part of Ukraine — took 25 hours.

They left behind loved ones, including Eva's parents, and Lena's son, who is there fighting.

Kateryna, Lena's daughter, who goes to Brigham Young University, said they lost contact with their family for an entire month.

"They couldn't leave anywhere, they didn't have electricity . . . and the Russians were taking everybody's phones and laptops," she said.

The future is uncertain — while they have finally talked to family, there's no timeline for returning home. But they're safe, and are currently staying with family friends in Salt Lake City.

And they have joined the fight. They've been translating asylum applications from English to Ukrainian, helping others find refuge as they have.

"It's hard to express how loved we feel here and how grateful we are," Lena said.