Finding our way home

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I don't understand the world. It doesn't make sense to me how some people get to live, and others get to die. How someone's life can be completely ruined while another's life turns to the best it's ever been. Why does one country fight another? Sometimes I think world leaders have nothing better to do. I think that's why Putin is exhorting to violence to get him Ukraine. That evil man. If I could get my hands on him you wouldn't see what I would do to him because it would happen so fast, and there would be none of him left afterwards.

I was in a car with my father, and my  mother was in another car behind us. We were just gong home after a trip to see our family friends, when all of a sudden our car got machine gunned. Me and my father sped off the road and ducked, and my mother drove past as fast as she could. I thought she had left me. I thought that was it, that me and my father were going to die then and there. a Russian officer walked up to the car and kept asking where the Ukrainian soldiers were. He said he didn't know. The Russian soldier was getting angrier and angrier but my father said he didn't know. Suddenly, I saw my mother's car zoom down the road and stop abruptly. The Russian soldier noticed her, and as soon as she got out of the car... I can still hear the bullet shots. six went into her body all at once. Then she was lying in a puddle of blood. I think I was screaming, but my father got out of the car while the soldier was distracted, picked me up and ran into the woods. We were rescued by some Ukrainian soldiers and asked them to check on my mother. Of course, she was dead.

I remember the day my family realized we had to leave Odessa. Well, me and Marko had to. We packed up ready to go, and I turned round to realize that father and Krystian hadn't packed a suitcase. 45 and 17. They had to go and fight for Ukraine. I begged them many times, but they couldn't go. They said they would stay in touch and not to worry if they don't speak for a while, but I could hear in their voices that if they didn't speak for a while, it would mean they were... 

Me and Marko travelled to Iviv. this was better than my ruined Odessa, but we couldn't stay long if we wanted to make it to Krakow, which would then be able to take us to the UK. At 14, and Marko at 5, I didn't realize how much this meant. leaving Ukraine for a long long time. Not forever. Never forever. The Ukrainian soldiers are fighting back. They will win, I can feel it. And who was going to look after us? I heard there's host families in the UK, but which families would take two depressed children? I hoped that many would. I was right.