To mark the anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Lera Burlakova, Media and Campaigns Coordinator at Amnesty International Ukraine, reflects on living, working, and raising a child during wartime — and on the human rights work that cannot be outsourced to safer places.
Long before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, its military intervention in Ukraine began. Back then, in 2014, I quit a journalism job I loved and joined the Ukrainian army. I did it out of guilt. During the Euromaydan, people were shot on Kyiv’s streets. Some were not even 18. They stood for freedom. I had built my life declaring that I stood for freedom too, but suddenly words felt insufficient. Teens died, and I stayed alive. Joining the army was the only way I knew to live with that guilt, the only way I could meet my own gaze in the mirror.
I served on the frontlines for three years and left with a disability. I carried the war home from the East. When I spoke about envisioning bombs falling on central Kyiv, my psychotherapist suggested anxiety or post-traumatic stress. To me, it was neither. It was a forecast.
And yet life moved forward in what were then peaceful Ukrainian cities. Mine did too. My son was born.
We sensed the invasion was close
But by early 2022, already many Ukrainians sensed the invasion was close. They just did not want to believe it.
A few weeks before the full-scale invasion began, I was on a work trip in Frankfurt, scheduled to fly home to Kyiv that evening. Lufthansa cancelled the flight. Their crews would no longer stay overnight in Ukraine.
My child was in Kyiv.
I knew what war looked like: no connection, ruins, fire. I had seen it before. I had already lost my fiancé to the war. I remember holding his cold hand, wearing his blood-stained jacket at the front line, sleeping in it.
My parents called that morning to say goodbye. Thankfully, they survived
Death was not abstract. It had names. I was terrified Kyiv airport would become another Donetsk airport overnight — one day flights exist, the next they don’t. One day life was still pulsing there, the next it abruptly stopped under the ruins.
My morning flight still operated. I flew home, packed quickly, put my child in the car, and we left Ukraine the same day, weeks before the invasion began. So on 24 February, I was abroad. My parents called that morning to say goodbye. Thankfully, they survived.
What terrified me was not bombardment. I had seen Russians up close. I had seen how they treat civilians and prisoners of war. I knew what occupation meant. Bucha was not a shock. So I came back the same year.
Survival meant compromise
I came back with my child, who was four. The first time he heard the air raid siren, he cried. I told him: the siren is not there to scare you. It is there to warn you, so you can be careful. That framing stayed with us. Like everyone here, we learned to adapt to things no one should ever adapt to.
In the first months, and often still, survival meant compromise. We do not have a bomb shelter in our building. The nearest one is a metro station. If you run to shelter five times a day and often through the night, carrying a child and dogs, you stop functioning. Children stop learning. Adults stop working. Sometimes it is more dangerous to run — ballistic missiles fly faster than you can reach safety. So you calculate. You choose when to ignore the siren. You choose when to stay.
Four years on, life in Ukraine is survival layered with stubborn normality. This winter has been the hardest. Since mid-January, our building has had no heating. Temperatures dropped brutally low. We moved into one room. I remembered Donbas — destroyed buildings, windows covered with blankets, sleeping in beanies — and used everything I knew. Survival mode narrows life. Your horizon becomes seasonal. We live until spring.
You cannot evacuate three million people from Kyiv
People ask why we do not leave. You cannot evacuate three million people from Kyiv. And more importantly: Russia wants panic. Russia wants us to leave. That is precisely why we do not.
My partner is in the military. I barely see him — perhaps two weeks over the past year. I have already lost someone I loved to this war, so fear sometimes tightens into something hard to breathe through. What hurts most is stolen time. This is the only life we have, measured in short visits and uncertain returns.
We sleep in the hallway — no windows. Nothing saves you from a direct hit, but walls protect you from shattered glass
My son is a happy, curious boy. He loves waffles, Lego and Star Wars. He believes good overcomes evil in the end. We try to live by that belief, even when we are tired.
Most nights there is an air attack. We sleep on a mattress in the hallway — no windows. Nothing saves you from a direct hit, but walls protect you from shattered glass. A typical day begins by checking for an air alert. If there is one, school starts an hour after it ends. Schools operate only if they have shelters. Children continue studying underground when needed.
There is no heating, often no electricity, sometimes no water
I mostly work from home or in the field. My team and I work with both foreign and Ukrainian media, run exhibitions to raise awareness and tell stories, and collect a large number of testimonies and hundreds of personal stories. There is no heating, often no electricity, sometimes no water. At the same time, cafés stay open because of gasoline and roaring generators. You can charge your laptop anywhere. The bakery across the road opens every morning with warm cinnamon rolls. People help each other constantly. Solidarity is not a slogan here. It is infrastructure.
Working like this is hard. But this is exactly why we must be here. Human rights work cannot be outsourced to safer countries. It requires living under the same conditions as the people whose testimonies you record. Talking to people who have lost everything feels like a strange form of home — our experiences overlap. We understand each other without long explanations. We hug.
Even parents who lost children to Russian airstrikes still speak publicly. They name their child’s favourite fruit, their favourite word — not because it is easy, but because they want to stop the next death.
Our hopes are simple
I work with families of prisoners of war. One woman, terminally ill with cancer, waited more than three years for her husband, held incommunicado. When he was finally exchanged, she posted a photo of them kissing. The caption said: “We won.”
That is how I understand victory: remaining ourselves under the harshest conditions. Not letting anyone change who we are, what we love, or where we live.
We do not plan far ahead. Our hopes are simple — to survive this winter, to keep the people we love alive, to see justice, even if it takes time.
Amnesty gives us a hope, that sooner or later all the suffering of innocent people who were killed in this war of aggression will be honoured with justice
For us, Amnesty International is a gateway to the world, a way to speak about what we experience, even when global attention shifts elsewhere. We are not a passing story. We are people. We have rights.
Amnesty gives us a platform, support, institutional weight, and the trust it carries in its name. It allows our testimonies to travel beyond our borders, to reach decision-makers, journalists, and ordinary people who might otherwise never hear them.
Amnesty gives us a hope, that sooner or later all the suffering of innocent people who were killed in this war of aggression will be honoured with justice. But I hope it’s sooner, as we all want to witness it.
