Карапет (Давід) Гарібян Karapet (David) Garibyan

My dad worked in Russia, from there he helped as much as he could, he visited as much as he could and left. My mom worked there, making flour from grain, there was a factory. And I remember that my mother told me the first thing I heard about Ukraine. It was when my mother told me that good grain came from Ukraine and we would make flour from it, and it made good flour, because we bought flour by the sacks and made bread from flour at home. That is why my first impressions about Ukraine from these years were that grain from Ukraine is very good and tasty.

We got there, I got there at a time when the church was still half-built, a small church next door, a big one was being built. And they were holding services in a wagon, in an iron wagon. The community gathered there, the community life was just beginning anew, because after the Soviet Union this period was a construction period. In different cities everyone organized the construction of churches, community buildings, you could say, where people gathered. Such an area, where a school could be organized, and so on. The community life was lessons, Sunday schools of Armenian language, Armenian traditions, youth organizations, MOKAO [from Russian - Youth Organization of the Armenian Community of Kyiv] was the name of the youth organization of Kyiv at that time. We organized different events on different holidays, church festivals, and built a church together. The community made a very big contribution to the construction of the church. There is a chapel of Srbots Nahatakats [Holy Great Martyrs], it is named after the victims of the Armenian Genocide, who were declared saints by the Armenian Church in 2015, who gave their lives for the Motherland and their Armenian Apostolic faith. There is a chapel named after them and a large church is being built next to it, which, at the moment, construction has stopped for the time being because of the war.

I was in Russia at my father's, even in Chelyabinsk and so on. I was a child, of course, the last time I was in the eighth grade and also in [20]19. There's a clear difference there in understanding. I don't compare countries in this way, of course: belittling someone, elevating another. It's not in that sense. But I'm talking about what I felt. There, the difference is clearly visible. You are black - so you are not Slavic, so to speak. You are not ours. The difference, the discrimination you feel because you are considered as someone who is not one of us, that's putting it mildly. I didn't feel it here, I don't feel it in Lviv especially. I still can't talk completely in Ukrainian, there were never any remarks even about the Russian language. People understood that, and they understand that it is necessary to give a person an opportunity to learn gradually. Because if you haven't learned it, it's a new language for you and so on. Especially when you speak Russian, you know that it is a little bit difficult for you to switch over, because you are drawn there again. You think, very similar words, and you think if you start talking, you will look ridiculous. So it's a little bit difficult, but I have never felt any discrimination even about that. Even my father told me, “Oh, you should be careful there,” — there is Russian propaganda, TV. He watches this TV and sometimes he says, “There are Banderites, be careful”. And I came to visit him and I said, “Actually, I haven't seen any such Banderites, bald men walking around with a stick, beating people because they speak Russian”. So there was no such thing, especially against me, against my family, there was no such thing against me.

On February 10th, [20]22, we went to Armenia with two of my friends, we decided to [spend] a week or two there, both to do some business and as a vacation. The family was here in Lviv. We went to Armenia, and the return ticket was for the morning of February 27th, we were supposed to take off at 10 in the morning. We were talking that it was going to begin now, and so on, we were in Armenia, traveling across the mountains, visiting friends, houses, and so on, the usual things, cooking shashlyk, relaxing. And on the 24th, at 10 or 9:30 in the morning, we were supposed to take off. All this began at night. Well, in the morning, we wake up, they are calling, saying, “This and that [has happened].” We wake up and still can’t believe it. Come on, what war? We call the airline, it was UIA [Ukraine International Airlines] back then, the UIA airline, which was flying, or SkyUP, SkyUp, the SkyUp airline was supposed to be flying. I remember the conversation, I directly called the airline, and said, “Is the flight happening or not? Because you said, we are watching the news that Ukrainian airspace is closed, planes aren’t flying, they will not fly.” And the young woman on the phone says, “Mister, what flight, don’t you understand what is going on? There is war here.” And that airline employee is crying on the phone. Then, we definitely understood that that was it. We started looking for ways [to return] on our own. All three of us have families, my friend does and I have a family here, and the third friend has a family in Kharkiv itself, he saw the photos that APCs and so on were already driving near his house. He was going already going insane there. And… And we are citizens of Armenia by passports. If there were no direct flights to Ukraine, there were flights through… through Europe, Poland and so on. And we need a visa, they won’t let us in just like that. And you can’t get a multivisa or a transit visa in two days to come there. And it happened so that in the first months of the war the three of us stayed there, while our families were here. We were looking for ways to come here because it wasn’t possible to do it through Moldova or through Turkey, there were no direct flights from Armenia to Moldova. It wasn’t possible to [travel to Ukraine] from Belarus, too, it was impossible [to get to] Minsk. Everything else was already Europe. We didn’t have a visa, and with the help of our ambassador here, through the church diocese, the ambassador helped us get a transit visa in the Polish consulate in Armenia and come to Poland a month after the war began. We flew to Poland and then entered Ukraine. All this time, [our] families were here, [we] wanted to get my wife and children out [of the country]. But my wife didn’t want to, she remained here. She is still here, she hasn’t left since the beginning of the war.