Iryna: So this is our first time in Kyiv. We go there on a volunteer mission, and we exit the train station. We leave all the backpacks, all our belongings, at the train station, because we still had a few hours before we could check into our hotel room. And we’re like, “Yeah, let’s go for a walk”. We are- as we’re opening the front doors of the train station, we hear explosions. And I’m like, “Henry, are those explosions?” He’s like, “no, no, that’s probably construction” <laughs> like doing construction somewhere here. And then we see like, two or three missiles flying above us. And I was like “that was clearly an explosion”, and they all hit, like, the back of the train station. And we are running. Everybody’s running. They lock up the train station, they don’t let anybody in, but they let people out.
Henry: Don’t forget about the Russian jet.
Iryna: The Russian jet? I didn’t see the Russian jet.
Henry: So as we were exiting the train station, the explosions go off. And I mean, I’m ex-military, so I’m able to listen and identify and locate this, this jet. And I just see this Russian jet just banking off to go back to Russia. Like, “Oh, that- this is real”. And mind you, this is my first time in Kyiv.
Iryna: This was my legitimate first time in Kyiv too, because I never actually went to Kyiv to, like, you know, go for a walk or something, to look around.
Henry: And then so after that, we- things settled down a little bit. I tried to go back into the train station to grab my IFAK [Individual First Aid Kit], but they wouldn’t let me. And so then the alarm is still active, and we go walking.
Iryna: We go walking. We decided to go to the safest part of the town, which was by the president’s office. Obviously the air defence there should work and all of that. Spoiler, it didn’t. <laughs> We are now in the city centre, and I told Henry, there is this glass bridge, you can see, you know, the major part of Kyiv from that bridge, so let’s go and check it out. We’ll still have time. And we go there. We are, like, 100 meters away from that bridge at that point, and we drank some coffee. So Henry’s buddy called him, and we had to look for a bathroom. So we had to- we didn’t make it to the bridge. As we were walking away from the bridge, it gets hit.
Vic: I think I saw the video of that.
Iryna: Yes!
Vic: It was, like, an old guy on it.
Iryna: Yeah! There was somebody on it while it got hit. And we were walking away from it. It was so crazy, like we could have been there on that bridge at the moment of it being hit. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, no, we gotta go”. We stayed in the, you know, Metro for probably, like, 40 minutes, and waited and waited, and then Henry’s like, “Okay, we probably need to go back to the train station. It’s not gonna hit twice”. Of course. Who would hit it twice in a row, right? And he wanted to get his IFAK because he wanted to help all these wounded people. As we’re in the Uber going back to the train station. We are getting closer to this huge Samsung building. It probably has like 50 stories or something.
Vic: Yeah, I’ve seen it. It got hit.
Iryna: It got hit as we were approaching! <laughs> It got hit right in front of us. Can you imagine that? And there was a lot of people who got injured. And, you know, somehow there was our mutual friend there also. And he started applying first aid, you know, to all these civilians who- some people lost their eyes, some people lost their lives. And he was trying to help everybody before the ambulances showed up, but we didn’t know about him and him being there at the time. We got to the train station. Obviously they didn’t let us in, but somehow we managed to get inside. <laughs> I don’t remember how, everything is blurred at this point. We somehow got in the train station. We probably walked in the underground tunnel and got inside. We weren’t supposed to get through. We got Henry’s IFAK, and our friend texted Henry saying, “Hey, I’m here”. And Henry’s like, “Oh, we’re here too. Let’s meet up”. And we met up next to that building. We were sitting there talking because the ambulances showed up and obviously they didn’t need any help anymore.
So the air alarm died off. We went to check into our hotel room. There was a whole story with that so we ended up finding a different hotel, which was right next to the location where it hit first time <laughs> And it was already, like, closer to probably 6 or 7pm so we were like, “Okay, we’re exhausted at this point. Let’s go get some drinks with a friend of ours”. We got a couple beers, and on our way back, we’re like, “wow, we survived all these missile attacks”. They were like, literally so close to us, and we survived it all. And we see this scooter. One scooter, not two scooters. And we decided for some ungodly known reason to ride that scooter. <laughs> Together. I still have that video. As I am filming us, Henry is driving. I’m in the back, holding him like that, filming us together. And I’m like, “Do you know how to stop?” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, I know how to stop. Look, we’re cruising”. And as he says he knows how to stop. We get off the pavement, we fly up and hit this big old van, the van that was in front of us. It was dark. We didn’t see it <laughs>. And then the next thing you know, I’m dragging Henry from underneath of the van. He’s dragging the scooter from underneath. Henry’s like, “wow, the missiles didn’t hit us, but that’s how we’re gonna die, on a scooter in Ukraine”. <laughs> Oh, it’s so ridiculous. God was like, “Okay, you idiots, I try to save you. But of course, sure, scooter, that’s the way to go” <laughs>.
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