MUM and Dad had a good life. Their house was by a bank of the river Dnipro in the south of Ukraine.
Vast expanses of golden sunflower fields stretch endlessly, reminiscent of the Mediterranean climate, just a 50-mile journey away from the Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea.
They planted an orchard and Dad dug out a pond that he filled with carp and sturgeon.
I would visit with my British husband Joe and our children at least twice a year, the last time being August 2021.
Pictures capture my large extended family enjoying a barbecue on Ukraine’s Independence Day, with my younger son Wilfred tackling a peach the size of his head, juice trickling down his chin and stomach.
A video shows my Joe laughing alongside my dad, brother, and cousins, as my father entertainingly delivers Ukrainian dad jokes with a mix of broken English and dynamic gestures. He’s truly an excellent performer.
Just six months later he would use those acting skills again.
But this time it wasn’t a family comedy but a scene straight out of an apocalyptic movie.
My mum and dad were escaping as Russia’s full-scale invasion of my homeland reached their front door, and I ordered him to play dumb.
“If the Russians stop you,” I said, “Pretend to be an idiot. Do not argue, do not show emotion.”
The Russians drove their tanks into Kakhovka on the first day of the invasion on February 22, 2022.
My parents and other locals went to protest every day in the centre of town. But eventually the invaders started shooting into the crowd.
Torture chambers
Then my dad received a phone call. A man with a sharp Russian accent demanded that he give up the keys to his and mum’s businesses (Mum ran a small B&B in town).
The Russian barked: “We also know that your son joined the Ukrainian Territorial Army. Tell him to put down his arms, or else.”
Dad — headstrong and courageous as he is — completely ignored my instructions and said something like: “Over my dead body.”
The Russian made it clear that he should be careful what he wished for.
I freaked out when Mum told me this and urged them to leave.
We have all seen reports that the Russians set up special “basements” all over the occupied regions.
For basements, read torture chambers.
I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not. People started disappearing in Ukraine’s occupied areas.
My own brother, Sasha, was defending Kyiv with other ex-civilians — people from all walks of life. In his regiment there was a baker, an IT guy, an actor and a builder.
Sasha later told me how they were stuck on one side of the river Irpin near Kyiv, only a thousand of them or so — and on the other were 15,000 of Putin’s Chechen henchmen.
They were lucky, my brother told me — the weather and Russia’s poor logistics organisation meant that not only did he and the others survive, but they were able to repel the attack and save the capital.
Only a few months ago, Sasha admitted to me that shrapnel had grazed against his thigh. Not everyone was so lucky. At home in London, I was freaking out.
Strong Roots
OLIA HERCULES is a London-based chef and writer who was born in Kakhovka in southern Ukraine.
She has published four cookbooks and this week releases a memoir, Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story Of War, Exile and Hope.
A regular on TV’s Saturday Kitchen, she co-founded #CookForUkraine – a global initiative to raise money for the war-torn country.
Parents under occupation, brother in Irpin, and then the news about what happened in Bucha, very close to where my brother was located.
Bucha was liberated, and soon it became evident just how many civilians the Russians had killed — mass graves and all manner of other horrors.
I lost my mind and shouted down the phone to my mum for them to leave until they finally relented.
They grabbed two suitcases — one with clothes, another with family photographs, letters and Mum’s hand-stitched embroideries.
They dug any valuables they had into the ground, in case they would return in the future, and they drove.
But not before my mum scrubbed the whole house until it shined. It was one of the most heartbreaking things for me to hear — and for my mum to tell — how she tidied up her house before they left, imagining how a Russian woman might move into it and remark on how tidy everything was.
Ukrainians take huge pride in keeping their homes cosy and beautiful. Just like here in the UK, our home is our castle.
My other family and friends followed them a day later. They had to break through 19 Russian checkpoints and witnessed craters as big as the moon’s, left by artillery and missiles.
Mum and Dad drove for five days through Europe, a difficult thing at the best of times, and even harder given that Dad suffers from Parkinson’s tremors.
They went to stay with my cousins in Berlin. But within the first two months, Dad decided he couldn’t do it. “I will die from inaction and depression here, Olia. I am going back,” he told me.
Mum was so broken, she did not go with him. She said she could not imagine living in Ukraine while Kakhovka was occupied, while Russians lived in her home.
Planning to reunite
To explain the severity of their separation, my mum and dad met at primary school.
They are both 67 and they had known each other for 60 years already, and been married for 50.
My dad is in Ukraine now, and Kakhovka is still occupied by the Russians.
It is a ghost town and is pummelled by Russians on a regular basis (they use old Soviet launchers that are not exactly precise, so when they try to shoot at a town on the front line, it can fall anywhere).
Russian FSB officers moved into my parents’ beautiful home. Dad found out his factory warehouse was used to house Russian tanks, so he told Ukrainian intelligence the coordinates.
When Russia invaded, mum and dad went into town every day to protest. Eventually the invaders started shooting the crowd
Olia Hercules
After careful reconnaissance and making sure that it was safe to do so, the Ukrainian army hit it and destroyed the tanks, along with my dad’s warehouse.
I am sure Dad is heartbroken about his life’s work being turned into rubble, but he told me he had no regrets. He is now with his sister and nephew in another unoccupied region of Ukraine.
Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world, so Dad is using his engineering skills to convert an old tractor into a driverless minesweeper. Mum is still in Berlin, but she is planning to reunite with Dad next year.
She has accepted they may have lost their home forever, and started entertaining the idea to start anew in another part of Ukraine.
This is because, unlike in the 1990s after independence, Ukrainians do not want to live elsewhere. Everyone just wants to be back home. My parents want to be within their community, speaking their own language.
They crave the south Ukrainian sunshine, they want to dig around in their garden, they want us to visit them there, to clink glasses and eat delicious food, and to tell silly jokes.
For my youngest Wilfred, five, and my older son Sasha, 13, to run around and gorge themselves on massive peaches.
It’s because of this love — love of a country that people like my dad and mum worked so hard to build — that I know we will not stop fighting.
As English author G.K. Chesterton said: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
But you don’t need to be a soldier to fight. My weapon is my pen and my ability to translate our human experience to people in the UK through my cookbooks, which are full of snippets of my family history and now, hopefully, through the family memoir I have written.
Rebuild and flourish
It has been incredible to receive so much support, because people knew me and trusted me.
Within a week of the war starting, I had been able to raise enough money to supply ballistic vests and helmets, boots and even ballistic underwear, and to get it delivered just a day before my brother and 105 people in his regiment went into battle.
I will never forget this generosity of the British, the post-war spirit and the Keep Calm And Carry On philosophy which is so keenly adopted by everyone in Ukraine.
War news fatigue is real — I get it.
It is not easy to keep looking at the horrific news, at the distressing headlines. But with “peace talks” looming, I hope people do not forget that what the media call “territories” are not faceless dots on the map.
They are places that still hold our homes, our memories and our people.
Not everyone was able to leave like my parents did.
I have plenty of friends and family who had to stay behind, to look after the “unmovable” — the elderly or ill parents or even neighbours.
People started disappearing. My brother was defending Kyiv. My father’s life was threatened. Mass graves, all manner of horrors. I lost my mind and shouted down the phone for them to leave
Olia Hercules
If those areas are given to Russia, the war will not cease for them. Like other places that Putin grabbed over the years — Abkhazia and Ossetia in the Caucasus, East Ukraine and Crimea — they will become “grey zones”, internationally unrecognised, with no life and no future.
One thing my parents and my grandparents taught me was to never give up, and to never give up hope.
I will be honest, it has been very up and down. But even on the lowest day I know that Ukrainians will never relent, and will never give up the fight, and the hope that we will return, rebuild and flourish.
As my late grandmother used to say: “Always look at the roots. If the roots are strong, it doesn’t matter if the wind blows off the pretty petals.
“If the roots are strong, it doesn’t matter if a storm breaks the fragile stem.
“It will all grow back again.”
- Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story Of War, Exile And Hope, by Olia Hercules, is out on Thursday.
