‘I had a heart attack while trying to protect my five-year-old daughter’

Tetyana came close to death as she sheltered from Russian attacks with her young daughter Alisa (Picture: Tetyana Yablonska)

Tetyana Yablonska’s most vivid memory from her heart attack isn’t the pain. It’s the memory of her daughter Alisa’s ‘big eyes’ wide with terror as she watched a doctor try to find a vein on her mother’s arm.

The five-year-old had witnessed warplanes fly overhead, walked through bombed out streets and hidden in cold bunkers. But nothing scared her more than the thought of losing her mother.

Tetyana and her daughter’s lives had become ‘hell within a hell’ after Russia invaded on February 24, 2022.

In Kyiv, where Tetyana was born and educated, she was aware danger was brewing; but hoped to have some time to prepare. ‘Ukraine was wounded with war for eight years before the “Big Intervention”, Tetyana, 41, tells Metro.co.uk.

‘Vladimir Putin is very charismatic. As a KGB man, he knows how to make people believe any nonsense and manipulate the facts. As Ukrainians, we saw what was happening with the Wagner Group. If you are a “peaceful” country then why would you need to engage in war?’

Tetyana had been a filmmaker in Kyiv and was working as assistant director on, ironically, a war film in the months before Russia invaded. She had no car and just a few notes of cash in her pocket when Kremlin tanks rolled into Ukraine.

Servicemen of the Ukrainian National Guard take positions in central Kyiv on February 25, 2022(Picture: Reuters)

Alisa would draw pictures or play with toys while her mother co-ordinated evacuations for Ukrainians (Picture: Tetyana Yablonska)

She adds: ‘On the morning of February 24 I woke up to a call from my colleague. She was crying and saying “I hear very loud explosions, what should I do?”’

‘I helped her to calm down and then called my producer. “The war has started,” I said. “We need to cancel the shoot.” My phone was ringing off the hook. I was giving instructions while trying to dress my sleepy and scared daughter.

‘I was very convincing in reassuring others, but when I hung up, I realised that my hands were shaking.’ 

With a backpack stocked with biscuits, couscous and sausages, Tetyana and Alisa nervously left the flat hand-in-hand. Their first stop was the cash point, where a large queue of people trailed down the street as planes flew by overhead. They then found a friend in Kyiv who agreed to house the mother and daughter.

‘It was on this day I noticed my heart had slowed down a little bit’, Tetyana remembers. 

Tetyana would set out cups of tea to create a sense of normality among the chaos (Picture: Tetyana Yablonska)

‘I tried to make things normal for my daughter so she was not scared. We helped each other not to fall into fear, even set up the table for meals.’

Tetyana and her friends did what they could from their small flat, trying to help friends who were on the occupied territories. In total, the group helped evacuate more than 100 people.

It emerged that a major shortage of medication was putting people at risk, in particular insulin for diabetics. Tetyana wrote emails to people she knew across Europe and pleaded that they send medicine to Ukraine. 

‘I couldn’t fight myself because I had a small daughter and I was the only family for her’ Tetyana adds. ‘But I did what I could to help. I felt it was my duty to do something – I couldn’t leave the country.’

In mid-March, Tetyana and her daughter were taken 290 miles away to the city of Lviv as the situation in Kyiv had become too dangerous. But the day they moved, the missiles started to fall.

Tetyana and Alisa pictured at their home in London ahead of the Day of the Nightingale campaign (Picture: Jack Lathaml)

People watch as smoke rises after an airstrike in Lviv, Ukraine March 26, 2022 (Picture: Reuters)

‘My daughter was very scared,’ Tetyana says. ‘She was screaming “I won’t go anywhere, no, I will stay at home. There are zombies everywhere, we can’t go outside.”’

Eventually, after Kyiv was liberated in April 2022, Tetyana returned to her home with Alisa. But, once there, her landlord explained they must leave. Again, the pair reached out to friends for sanctuary.

Tetyana adds: ‘People started to mention that I looked grey in my face and that my voice sounded different. I thought, I am just tired, because of stress. But one day I couldn’t stand up due to the pain.

‘I was swallowing air, it felt I couldn’t breathe. My friends could not feel a heartbeat so they called the emergency services. I was given medication to raise my pulse as my heart was about to stop, I came very close to death. It wasn’t the Russian missiles, but my own heart that nearly killed me.’

As Tetyana lay in her hospital bed after heart surgery, all she could think of was her daughter.

Tetyana in hospital after her heart surgery. On her arm is a tattoo which shows the map of Ukraine with soldier slang ‘450’ – which means ‘all is quiet’ (Picture: Tetyana Yablonska)

She adds: ‘It had been the scariest moment, worse than the attacks, to see my daughter’s face when I had my heart attack. Her big eyes looked up at me, she was terrified. 

‘I thought “what am I doing?” That was the moment I decided to leave Ukraine.’

Once she was out hospital, Tetyana applied for Britain’s sponsorship scheme and within five days had an emergency visa. She accepted their first offer of a home in the UK, which was in Penryn, Cornwall.

Tetyana later found a job in a London museum and had a friend agree to be a guarantor for a small flat in the peaceful neighbourhood of Maida Vale.

The capital was her daughter’s chance to recover from the trauma she experienced in the war. Her dark drawings of shadows and towering buildings transformed into sweet doodles of rainbows and sunshine.

Alisa and Tetyana spent the first month of war between Kyiv and Lviv (Picture: Tetyana Yablonska)

Brave Alisa spent time in bunkers, friends’ flats and in car parks (Picture: Tetyana Yablonska)

Tetyana is still haunted by the horrors in Ukraine and the stories of death, brutality and human suffering to come out of her home country.

But she also has hope. Tetyana wants to find a way back into the film industry, if she can, and tell stories to the world. 

‘Thank God my daughter is alive, Thank God I am alive,’ she says. ‘Alisa used to say to me “mummy, will we die?” but she is now settling into this new life and opportunity. 

‘We haven’t been to Stonehenge or visited Harry Potter world, those places are quite expensive.

‘We go to parks, museums and art galleries to find some peace. I went to the Tate Modern when we first came to London, that was very special to me. Art has the potential to heal you.

Tetyana has shared her story as part of a new campaign by Yasha Estraikh, a Ukrainian in London who runs Solovey (Picture: Jack Latham for Solovey)

The mother and daughter feature in the new campaign by Solovey and JCDecaux (Picture: Daniel Castro Garcia/@foreignerdigital)

‘We have been friends with lots of people like us. Not only Ukrainians. My daughter had a teacher who escaped from Somalia when she was young. My dentist is from Iraq. The world is on fire, it’s not just Ukrainians escaping war. 

‘But I believe in life. Every minute you have in life, you should live to the full. Say thank you, help others and appreciate your friends and family. We can move forward if we understand that we are all connected.’

Tetyana has shared her story as part of a new campaign by Yasha Estraikh, a Ukrainian living in London who created his own brand of vodka in the wake of the war.

The ‘Day of the Nightingale‘ campaign will see Solovey vodka served in a number of hospitality venues to raise money for War Child. To find out more click here or follow @soloveyspirit on Instagram to hear more stories like Tetyana’s.

If you can support Tetyana in her dream of returning to the film industry, please email kirsten.robertson@metro.co.uk and we can pass on your details.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

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