3 years of war.

I clearly remember the daydreaming state I was in while waiting to pick up my son, Emile, from primary school in Kharkiv, Ukraine, just three days before the full-scale invasion in February 2022. I was observing the young parents who, like me, were staring at the stairs, hoping to spot their child and go home. There were fewer people than usual, and it had been that way for the past two to three weeks. As I watched them, digressing on the cycle of life, I couldn’t help but think that they too may have been one of those kids coming down those same stairs not so long ago.

This school seemed to have been there forever, and it felt like it would last forever. Who would want to destroy this? Who would want to kill any of those children?

Russia did. Three days later, on February 24, 2022, we woke up to the loudness and shaking of explosions. Putin had given the word, and Russia was coming to Ukraine to destroy and kill.

My spouse and I held each other and comforted our children. We were terrified and filled with sadness. Three hours later, at 7:03 AM, as the rockets kept passing above us and the smell of burnt explosives and whatever else finally reached us, we took one last look at our family home, closed the gate, and started a ten-day journey toward France.

We were blessed—we knew where we were going. But what about the others?

Three years after the start of this war, we talk about peace—a forced peace. But who wants a forced peace if your family has been killed, your home has been burned or taken, and the life you were building for your family has been destroyed forever?

#Ukraine needs justice! A just peace. Russia kills, Putin is a dictator.

Some photos of our last days in Ukraine in 2022, our exode, and the rally for Ukraine in hashtag#Valence, hashtag#France on the 23rd of February 2025.