I’ve covered the brutal realities of Ukraine’s war on its eastern front lines since the Russian invasion of 2022, but my home on the other side of the country remained largely untouched by violence.
In September, the conflict reached my family in an unexpected way.
Our car and the apartment we live in were hit by a Russian missile while I was away on assignment, and while my wife and daughter were visiting family elsewhere. Even though none of us were at home when the missile struck, it was a jarring reminder that there are no truly safe places in Ukraine.
For almost three years, war has split Ukraine into two realities. One is near the combat zones, where Russian ballistic missiles and guided bombs are an ever-present threat. The other is in places where life carries on relatively normally, with most of the trappings of peace — but with the ominous sense that this can change at any moment.
The events of September occurred as I straddled those two worlds.
I was in Poltava, a city of about 300,000 people in central Ukraine, on one of its darkest days since Russia’s invasion. On Sept. 3, two ballistic missiles struck a military academy there, killing 59 people and injuring over 270.
Among the survivors was a 25-year-old who gave his name only as Markiyan. Sitting on a curb near a rescue tent, where emergency workers handed out food and water, he looked shaken and confused. His clothes were dirty and his skin scratched — clear signs that he had narrowly escaped the deadly blast. “The first explosion threw me under the stairs. When I tried to get up and reach the shelter, the second blast hit,” he said, his voice catching.
My team and I were gathering information for a story just outside the academy’s grounds, because entry was restricted. Rescuers were still digging through rubble, recovering bodies and evacuating the wounded. Each time the air-raid siren sounded, the rescue efforts would stop, and everyone would run away from the site, mindful that Russia often launches follow-up strikes during emergency operations.
Watching all of this, I felt a quiet relief that my family was far from this horror. Our apartment is in Lviv, about 500 miles to the west, out of range of frontline weapons and not often a target for Russia’s long-range missiles. My daughter, Emilia, could safely go to kindergarten and play on the playground without the fear of a Russian guided bomb falling from the sky. Air-raid sirens rarely sound in Lviv, and even when they do, there is usually enough time to get to safety. In Poltava, the cadets and staff at the academy did not have that luck.
That evening, I had a video call with my wife and daughter. Emilia excitedly told me about her day at preschool, and how she and her classmates had built a metal detector and searched for coins in the sandbox. My wife, packing for a trip to visit a friend in Germany, was planning to take Emilia to stay with her grandparents in the suburbs of Lviv, while I remained on assignment.
Between the night of Sept. 3 and the morning of the following day, Russia launched a major airstrike, deploying nearly 30 Iranian-made Shahed drones and 13 missiles, according to the Ukrainian military. Our reporting team headed back to the site of the previous day’s attack in Poltava to continue working on our story. While driving, I checked the news and saw that several strikes had hit Lviv. At first, it was unclear exactly where, but soon I began seeing the name of my street in the updates.
Even so, I remained calm, knowing my wife and daughter had left the previous evening to stay at my parents’ house. The odds of a missile landing right near our apartment in a large city hundreds of miles from the front seemed minuscule.
Then a call came in from my friend Anatoliy, a local journalist who lives just a few blocks from me. He told me that a missile had exploded in my neighborhood.
Suddenly, I was having to report on my own street, about my own family, where I used to spend quiet mornings conducting my daily routine. Now, it was on fire, with houses on the street and cars parked nearby engulfed in flames. I tried calling my downstairs neighbor but he did not answer.
News reports kept talking about damage to civilian buildings and casualties in Lviv. Later, my mother called to tell me that two missiles had flown over their house, and Emilia had told her grandmother she was scared and wanted to be held.
The first images of the attack began circulating online, and I realized one of the explosions had occurred near my home. Anatoliy sent me a video from a nearby rooftop. I held my breath as I watched, seeing the wreckage of buildings just 50 meters from my apartment. Our building had survived, though its windows were blown out and the facade was damaged.
A few hours later, Anatoliy sent a photo of the parking lot outside our building. Three cars had been completely destroyed. One of them was mine.
Physically, I was in Poltava, but my thoughts were in Lviv. For nearly three years, the war had always felt close, yet far from my family. But that night, everything changed.
According to the head of the Lviv Regional Military Administration, Maksym Kozytskyi, seven people were killed and 66 injured in the attack.
Now, when I am in Lviv and walk my daughter to preschool, I see the wreckage the attack left behind — a reminder that the war has reached my doorstep.
Even 500 miles from the front, the war can find you when you least expect it. How much longer will this last?
The post How My War Came Home appeared first on New York Times.
