Оксана Новікова Oksana Novikova

"In June 1986, my parents took me to Kyiv. It was the first time I left Crimea, by plane. Gosh, how sick I was... It was TU-34, an awful plane, I got so nauseous I thought I would die. But Kyiv made an impression, indeed... First of all, there were banners in Ukrainian there, and libraries, many people spoke Ukrainian, back in 1986. For me, after Crimea, it was all very strange. I had been learning Ukrainian since my second grade, I knew it — well, without communicating in it, — I could understand it. Kyiv was so interesting for me. We went to Lavra (Kyiv Pechersk Lavra), too. We spent a whole week there. It was all fun for me, but in fact my father went again to some central communist party committee to speak about our flat. Then, in 1986, we didn't know about Chornobyl yet. But I can clearly remember that there were mushrooms growing near Darnytsia, so big [shows the size of a mushroom]. Thank God, we didn't have space for cooking them, so we did not gather those mushrooms, because I can imagine the radiation level that would have hit us then. We got to know about Chornobyl only after we had managed to receive a flat — I have no idea, how on earth had it been possible, but we were given the worst flat in the house, a corner one, on the eighth floor and all that, but it was, first and foremost, large enough to fit us all, and secondly, half of the house was given to Prypyat citizens, who had been moved after the Chornobyl disaster.”

"When there was Vakarchuk's concert [on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) during the Revolution of Dignity] on December 16, we had not heard about any concert, we just came to meet each other and spend a weekend together. Myself, my husband, our friends from Crimea — we all were there together. So, we went to Maidan with some lemons and tea, and got into the tent with people from Vinnytsia. The main performer there was a guy from Odesa. He was so funny, Russian-speaking, but very cool. My friend and I started to cut sandwiches — I was not used to it, as I was a manager and my hands were not really made for manual work — so when we left in the evening, I had large calluses, like never before, but I also was so inspired that we finally had a chance. A real chance — as I had seen really valuable people. They fought for their future, for their children's future. There were people of absolutely wide range of ages. Very young and very not young at all. And they all tried to do something to change the country. This power of spirit, the concert... with this main idea... I have never seen such a high level of tolerance and respect towards each other. Among so many people, I mean. <...> I was so much afraid there would be a provocation, that people were going to crush one another, it was easy like this [shows with a gesture how easy it could turn into a massacre]. And everybody was very... I am sure I was not the only one to feel that way, because everyone was so cautious, precise, just in case... The inspiration was so huge it gave everyone energy for further fight."

"Outside my house — and we lived on the village outskirts — there was a car of the People's Self-Defence on duty. It became clear that it was very dangerous. Indeed, dangerous. These were not jokes. Therefore, together with our friends, we decided to send our children... We sent them to Lviv, to our friends. They lived at our partners' parents' house. My husband drove them there, and I moved to my friends to the city so as not to stay alone. I wouldn't have been found there. There were efforts to continue something, but with clear understanding these were probably the last few days. As the date of the referendum had been moved twice up until then, first to March 30, and then to March 16. It came to us we did not have the slightest chance. Everything was decided. And these were the last... Well, at least we had shown an example of a real protest. It was not just a singular action... It was indeed received, on the international arena as well. I remember I had a phone call from a journalist from Kyiv. I think it was on March 6. I was shocked by all of that... I went to a hairdresser's, and there was a Russian TV channel on, and all this dirt, this nonsense was being broadcasted, I simply had a nervous breakdown because of that. And then I received a phone call, I think these were representatives of Channel 5, or some other. Sieliezniov was still there at that time, and he was from Crimea, he was a journalist, and we had some mutual friends... For some reason he had shared my phone number with them, and they called. People in Kyiv were preparing for March 8, and we had a war. And I talked about that on air, I was sitting in my car and crying, screaming, I couldn't hold my emotions, that we were having a real war, that these were not jokes. It was not funny at all. It was real trash going on... And we all see no one was there to take the responsibility... Despite the fact that we knew that back in February there had been "Alfa" troops in Crimea, too, and there had been units representatives from outside Crimea... Though, the Crimean ones were on alert, too. If there had been a direct order to protect ourselves, to use weapons, most probably there would have been much more blood. But it would have given us enough time to see the war was going on, and to start protecting ourselves in Crimea, not in Donetsk."

"There were fourteen families in general, moving like a huge caravan. When we moved out, we stopped close to Chaplynka. We got out of our cars and saw a full moon. And really... How long had we been occupied? Not so long. But we really kissed our land. We cried like crazy. We got to Mykolayiv, slept a night there and went further — someone went to Lviv with me, because... Why we had chosen Lviv — because there were my partners who were ready to accept us — not just me, but a large number of people. Those who had relatives in Kyiv, went there. But most of them came with me <...>. It was early spring, we had awful roads in Ukraine back then. It was so hard to drive. Later, it turned out that PrivatBank had blocked our cards. Because we were Crimeans. It was good we had some cash. And not only PrivatBank cards, but others as well. We came to Lviv, somebody stayed there, and later we were taken to a recreation base next to the Polish border close to Novoyavorivsk. There were wooden houses there, empty at that time. We all moved in. The locals had been waiting for us — my God... Some of them probably thought we had not eaten for half a year. They brought some preserved food, some pans... And there was hardly any mobile signal there. The last hour of the ride on these roads — I was really having a mental breakdown, as I was worried I was not going to make it. And then there were them... And it was so relaxing. I said, ‘No one is going to find us here, for sure. No Moskals.’ As there was no signal there. These people were bringing us food: somebody was leaving, and the others coming. I told them, "Relax. We can't eat at the moment anyway." We lived there for two-three weeks. And then people started to move out, some went to live in Novoyavorivsk at their friends' friends' houses, and the others went to their colleagues' colleagues. Our children lived at our partner's mother's in Stryi. And we were placed in our other partner's mother's apartment here on Pekarska St. Mrs Tamara was like... She was born in 1939. She had outlived World War 2. She was such a natural Lviv lady, having lived through a lot, and she recollected her childhood memories about the war and said, ‘God, I would never have thought we were going to experience it again.’ This accepting yourself, it helped massively at the beginning. This human support helped us a lot. It helped us realize we were not alone, there were people with the same values next to us. That's why we decided to stay in Ukraine. We still hoped that... Once the war started — we were going to change the country. We wanted to be part of that, to have a chance to free Crimea. And we knew that once we left for abroad, most probably we would stay there."

"We now have numerous staff, more than fifty people. At the beginning, there were just six or seven people, everyone was getting up to work early in the morning, and it continued like that every day for the first year. It was very hard physically. But <...> the rhythm, it helped us not to think too much about what was happening in the country, about the things we didn't like. Now there is a full-scale war, and we have all these outcomes that could have been predicted back then. That's why we have what we have now. I am not sure whether I am thankful to my sister or angry with her for the fact she has pulled me into running business once again. Still, it is probably as if we were sprouting roots, we had to start something in Lviv in order to feel we were not strangers anymore here. When you create something, it connects you to the place <...>. To people, as I was not such a public person back in Crimea, we worked in a very specific b2b field. And here there is Sykhiv, where everyone knows you and says "hello", "hello." And you know a lot of people. And you become a better known person, sometimes you think it is too hard psychologically, but <...> you also have a possibility to bring your message to people."