Photographer Andriy Dubchak talks about the first days of a full-scale invasion
Photographer Andrey Dubchak met the war on February 24 at the Mir Hotel in Severodonetsk in the Luhansk region. He recalls waking up from a phone call from his wife Lisa, who reported the beginning of the war.
“She was in Kharkov at the time. “War! We are being shot!” she shouted into the phone. To be honest, I took this news a little too calmly. I knew there was going to be an invasion. I knew that activation was inevitable. Because even at that moment, the front had already changed and the “OOSU” that I knew no longer existed. During the week “before the invasion”, I came under fire twice, the activity of which exceeded the standards of those “before” times. Everywhere there was movement of Ukrainian equipment and units,” Dubchak says.
The photographer explains that he did not imagine the scale of the invasion and did not believe that the Russian army would attack Kiev from the side of Belarus. He considered the Donbas, Kharkiv region and Mariupol to be the main theater of future hostilities.
“First we went to Kramatorsk to avoid the potential threat of cut roads and traffic jams in Severodonetsk. There he has already shot the first line at the military enlistment offices and confused military. The first refugees. Then came information about a column of Russian military equipment eighty kilometers long, moving to Kiev. Shock. In the capital, my three cats, relatives, friends,” explains Andrei.
Andriy adds that at that moment he decided to go to Dnipro, and from there to Kiev.
“On the way, we drove to the base to the volunteer medics from the “Hospitallers”, who were packing evacuees to go to the front. One of the doctors, Yuri Skrebets answered me a question about predictions: We will win. And who are we? We will win. Only at what price...” - says Dubchak and adds: “Then this moment passed me to tears.”
“We spent the night in Dnipro, and on the afternoon of the 25th, in a dense traffic of refugees, we reached Kropyvnytskyi. From there to Kiev the road was free along our lane. And in the opposite direction there was a complete traffic jam,” the photographer continues his story.
Dubchak says it looked like a panic escape: “And I was even a little surprised that everyone finally 'believed', and now finally people are calling everything that's been going on these years succinctly and understandably — 'war'.
Now, finally, people call everything that happened these years succinctly and understandably — “war”.
As the photographer recalls, Kyiv met him in empty streets and disarmed soldiers of the Territorial Defense, whom he immediately became afraid of more enemies due to not always adequate behavior.
On the same day, February 25, in Darnytsky district, a photographer took a photo of a woman who looked with a house destroyed by a rocket explosion, as well as the remains of a downed plane, which turned out to be Ukrainian. Its wreckage fell on private houses near the Dnieper.
“I also took pictures of refugees at the train station. Everyone, and everything around me, was completely unprepared for war. He was very worried about his family and tried to “expel” everyone from the city. He analyzed the news and rumors and was sure that the city had no chance to survive. That Kiev will soon be surrounded, and that there will be “Stalingrad”. I wanted to show it to the world. But it was really scary, because it was no longer a Joint Forces Operation in the East. It was the beginning of a truly “savage” war for my country's survival. And I knew that many of those I knew would die. And I might as well...”
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Read also:
9 Ukrainian Photographers Tell and Show How the Great Invasion Began
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