Daddy didn’t want to evacuate. He was among those who died at the Kramatorsk’s train station
Daddy insisted on my being examined and it saved my life
Oleh Ivanov was born in Kharkiv 49 years ago. When he was a child, his family moved to Kramatorsk. This is where he went to school, then received his degree at the Donbas State Engineering Academy.
“He married my Mom and moved in with her in the neighboring city of Sloviansk. But he still went to work in Kramatorsk (the distance between the two cities is 25 km). He had been working at the enterprise, well-known in the city, – the Novokramatorsky Machine-Building Factory. Then he worked in Ukrtelecom for some time, and after the lockdown in 2020, he changed his job and became the employee of the Department of Civil Defense, Mobilization, and Defence Work.”
Since 2013, Kateryna had been living in Kharkiv. On the eve of the full-scale invasion of the Russian army, she came to Kramatorsk.
“I am registered here, so I had to have some documents, related to my disease, done here. Almost the entire previous year was very hard for my father because I had cancer. He spent so much pain over my treatment, he used to sit with me during and after my IV drips.”
All in all, my disease was overcome thanks to his care. I had been neglecting pain for a very long time, but one day, it slipped my tongue that I was in pain. We lived in different cities. He was far away, but he insisted on my being examined. It was thanks to him that I went to the doctor. Many examinations were unsuccessful, and they started treating me only thanks to his resilience. He saved my life.»
During our last meeting, my father said, "Take care of the family
On February 23, Kateryna couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. She kept scrolling the news feed. The news was unsettling. Approximately at five a.m., the girl jumped out of her bed as it seemed to her that the house had shuddered.
“The glass in the windows plinked. There were explosions, then some noise. I jumped out of bed and ran to wake Daddy up with the words, “Wake up, we have to get back from the windows. The war has broken out!” Then we woke up Grandma and Grandpa. These are my father’s parents, aged 73 and 80. I was scared that the explosive blast would burst the glass in the windows and they might be hurt.”
Half an hour later, Oleh picked up his things and went to work. Since that day, he didn’t have even one day off, and he had many night shifts. Even while being at home after his shift, he was still on call and always answered the calls of his employees.
The evacuation from the train station in Kramatorsk Copyright: Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse
March 8 was the last time Kateryna saw her Daddy. On that day, she, her brother, and her mother went far away from the war.
“It was hard for Daddy to let us go, but he knew that it was necessary. He was especially worried for his son, he loved him very much, and spent almost all his free time with him. On March 8, my father was given two free hours to drive us from Sloviansk to Kramatorsk. My mother is very sick, it was difficult for her to walk. However, she was trying to move somehow. In the last days before the evacuation, she was lying almost all the time. It took us a lot of effort to get her dressed, have her stand up, and go to the train station. Daddy didn’t have time to help us get on the train, he had to go to another place on business. We said goodbye. Daddy told me to take care of the family. That was it.”
The train station of Kramatorsk before the shelling Photo: Courtesy of the Donetsk Oblast State Administration
The train, on which the family evacuated, got broken, so it was delayed for several hours. All that time, Kateryna was thinking that a rocket or a shell might hit them any minute.
“While standing there, I realized that the train station was an extremely dangerous place. There are many people here every day, and the enemy may target them.”
It happened exactly a month later. Since the early morning of April 8, there were crowds at the train station. About four thousand residents of Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, and other cities were waiting for their evacuation to Lviv and Uzhhorod.
“Daddy sent us away, but as for him, he wasn’t going to evacuate, because he was the employee of the city’s critical infrastructure. Mom and our other relatives were persuading him to quit his job many times because the pressure was building every day, and it was dangerous to stay in Kramatorsk. But my father refused every time. He said that many people relied on his work. I understood my father but I also wanted my dearest one to be with us, in safety.”
He died in hospital due to a massive loss of blood
Before the tragedy, Kateryna had talked to her father on the phone for almost two hours. About anything and everything. It was as if they both felt something… On that tragic day, Oleh Ivanov was on his duty in the evacuation spot at the train station.
“It has become a ritual: I wake up and pick up my phone to read the news. I don’t sleep well at night, so I don’t wake up early. The first piece of news I read was about the shelling of Kramatorsk. I knew that my father was often on duty there. I started calling him right away. But there was no connection.”
Copyright: AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko
“Later, my relatives were told that the explosion had smashed his phone. Having not reached my father, I started calling my relatives who stayed in Donetsk oblast. They didn’t know anything either and were trying to get at least some information from my father’s colleagues.”
“He was lying in the pool of blood. That man had a similar build and face. But my grandma said that my father wore sneakers, and these didn’t look like his. And he wore different clothes.”
A dead man at the train station in Kramatorsk Copyright: Fadel Senna/AFP
Then, it was reported that Oleh Ivanov was not among the dead. It meant that the man in an orange vest in the picture was not Kateryna’s father.
“This piece of news gave me some hope. My relatives started looking for him in hospitals, but they couldn’t find him anywhere. Then I started looking for him remotely. My friends helped search for him in the hospitals of Sloviansk, Kostiantynivka, and Druzhkivka where the wounded were brought. In several hours, I was told that he had been found in a hospital in Kramatorsk. He had had a complicated surgery and was in serious condition. They had to amputate his leg because there was too much shrapnel in it. There was shrapnel in his other leg and arms, but they managed to save those parts of his body. One more piece of shrapnel had got into his eye, it was removed. However, as far as I understood from the words of the doctors, it was my father’s most dangerous injury. When I learned this news, I felt fear and relief at the same time. I dreamed about moving in with my parents.”
However, in mere 10 minutes, Kateryna had another call. She was told that her father had died. Despite all the doctors’ efforts, they didn’t succeed in saving Oleh Ivanov. He died because of a massive blood loss.
“We believed that we would see each other again. He hoped that the family would reunite… I am eating my heart out because I wasn’t with him when he was dying and when he was suffering so much. During my surgery, Daddy was with me, he never left me. This is what I should have done. And now I can’t even attend his funeral.”
