Oleksandra Verovkina and her son, Danylo, would stroll half a block through the back alley behind their apartment to a large forest. They would walk hand in hand beneath the tall trees, the air filled with the scent of pine resin, until the three-year-old lost steam, and then return home. The bright orange dining room […]
Posted: Mar. 26, 2023 9:14AMOleksandra Verovkina is shown outside her home in Ottawa, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023.
Oleksandra, 36, had dreamt of leaving Ukraine for Canada since 2014 when separatist forces first seized the Donbas region where she lived at the time. But she put that idea aside in 2020 when she and her husband bought the relatively newly built apartment in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. It was the first home they owned together.
Before they pulled out of the parking lot, Oleksandra ran back inside to take out the trash; she didn’t want the house to smell by the time they returned.Now, on a day just a year after the Russian invasion began, the scent of pine from the nearby forest mingles with that of burnt metal and dust.The sand in the playground where Oleksandra pushed Danylo on the swings is still scattered with broken glass.
She hated the thought of splitting up her family to travel across the world, but the longer the conflict dragged on, the clearer it became that they would not be able to go home any time soon. “We have nothing to come back to. We have nothing in Ukraine,” she said, sitting in the sunny living room of the rental house in Ottawa.
Damage to the building next door was mostly limited to blasted-out windows, which have since been repaired. Neighbours come and go, stepping over the sharp rubble scattered around Oleksandra’s apartment building on their way in and out.Oksana Kucheryna, an older woman who lives in a nearby building, walked by on her way to the shop on a day in late February, plastic bag in hand. She says she often stops to take a long look at the crumbling building as she passes by.
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