These are some of the millions of messages Ukrainians wrote to friends, family and loved ones as Russia invaded early in the morning of Feb. 24. The messages are a snapshot of a fateful day for Ukraine and Europe — capturing the fear, love and support shared in the first hours of war.
“I am inspired by the humor, honesty, bravery and” messages of “How are you” and “I love you” that were sent on that day, said Ira Yeroshko, an author who collected the messages on this page and is writing a book using them. Text messages bound Ukraine together “like threads,” she said.
Ms. Yeroshko, who was visiting her parents in Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine that morning, said that she had herself started texting as soon as she woke up and heard explosions. “I immediately knew what it meant,” she said.
Most of the following messages have been translated, and some contain strong language.
Oleksandr Starun, 27, is a manager at a factory in the Czech Republic. Mr. Starun is from Belarus but his grandparents live in the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine. He wrote to a friend, also in Europe, about their anxieties for relatives in Ukraine and about the televised address that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia delivered that day.
Vitalii Hordiyenko, 24, is a YouTube blogger. On Feb. 24, he was preparing to leave Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and messaging with a friend who was on his way to a military commissariat to register with the army.
Lilia Turchyn, 33, is a judge’s assistant in the Lviv region, in western Ukraine. Her first messages were with her sister, who lived near a military base in Lviv. Later on the 24th, her sister moved with her husband out of Lviv to a nearby town that seemed safer.
Petro Krushelnytsky, 27, works in Poland. He was in Warsaw on Feb. 24 and wrote to his brother, who had been called back from a vacation in the weeks before the invasion and deployed from western Ukraine to the Dnipro region.
“I took out my phone and opened the news and it was a shock,” he said. “The first person I wrote to was my brother Mykola.”
On Oct. 16, 2022, the 128th Brigade, in which his brother served, led a counteroffensive from the Dnipro region towards Kherson and “in a heavy battle, my brother died near the city of Zelenodolsk. A couple of minutes after I found out that he died, my mother called me and it was the scariest call in my life.”
”My brother was a very kind person,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is true — the best die in war. Now I have to live for two and find a way to be happy, because otherwise all these devoted lives will be in vain.”
Inesa Matiushenko, 33, is the co-founder of a charity that supports cancer patients. Her first conversation was in English, with an acquaintance from the Netherlands — a man she had seen in person only once, with some others, a year earlier.
“I was very surprised when he wrote me,” she said. “He found out about the war and wrote all people whom he knew from Ukraine and that was me. Was very scary then but even that one message it was about support which we all badly needed.”
She added: ”It is important for me to remember those who wrote me with support on this day.”
Inna Zhurba, 45, is an administrator at Cherkasy State Technological University, in central Ukraine. On Feb. 24, she was awoken by her colleagues’ messages, opened Facebook and saw many friends writing that the war had started. She decided not to evacuate with her 14-year-old son. “I found these messages now and started crying remembering that day,” she said.
Pylyp Dotsenko, 31, is a photographer. He awoke to explosions in Kyiv, got up and went looking for a bomb shelter, photographing what he saw along the way. He called his mother begging her to stay home from work. He had phone calls with the family on the first day and exchanged his first messages with friends on Feb. 25.
Andriana Chunis, 32, is an illustrator. On Feb. 24, she was in Lviv with her husband and 4-year-old son, Ustym. They at once decided to evacuate to their parents’ house in the countryside, because they were very scared Russia might attack from Belarus.
“All day I spent on the phone with my friends evacuating from all over Ukraine,” she said
“My friend from Kyiv couldn’t leave, as there was no possibility, so she just put her child into one of the cars driving in our direction and I took her child to my parents’ house together with another 17 people. She managed to get to us only the next day. We all slept in the basement and corridors. There was no time to worry as I had to cook for 17 people. All the time someone was washing dishes.”
Kateryna Pesotska, 30, a lawyer, woke up in Kyiv hearing explosions and started thinking about evacuating with her brother, Sasha. By Feb. 26, they were already in Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine. Her father was in Mariupol, an industrial port in southeastern Ukraine that would soon endure a brutal siege. On Feb. 26, they argued about the war. “He was telling me that Kyiv is not being bombed. This was our last talk because on March 5 he blew up on a mine at the beach on the left shore in Mariupol.”