There is a calendar in the room of the Ukrainian Alla Hoida (49). Today’s date – February 24, 2025 – is circled with a black marker. Exactly three years ago, Russia invaded her home country. She looks at the calendar with a sigh.
“It hurts very much. There is so much destroyed, there is nothing left at all. Only black land,” she says about where she comes from.
Hoida prefers to look at a large image that she has stuck at the door of the bedroom in the shelter in Papenvoort. On that plate are colorful photos of flowers, a large garden with a setting sun and a loving photo of her and her husband.
“This is my peaceful, beautiful life at home,” she says with a sob in her voice. She calls life good, the years before 24 February 2022. She herself has been working at an energy company until that date. But then the conscious Thursday of the invasion starts. In the morning the Russians bomb the city where Hoida lives.
“At 4.45 am the first bombs touch our city. We lived close to a military base, they bombarded. We woke up from the noise,” she looks back. What follows are confused hours. Calling friends worried, wondering if they are okay. In the meantime, they realize that there are bombing in several places in Ukraine.
“We realized: our lives are going to change.” Despite the increasing threat and a front line that is getting closer to her city of Borova, she is not thinking about moving. “It was our lives, which is very difficult to leave.”
Yet a day before her city is occupied, she takes the decision to leave. Together with her mother, she is looking for a safer place in Ukraine.
Alla Hoida and her mother finally arrive in the Netherlands, view her story here (text continues under video):