The first time I met Mariia Serheieva, we were both catching our breath on the final stretch to Annapurna Base Camp in 2023.
A year later, the mountains reunited us — this time on the trail to Everest Base Camp. I remembered the easy laughter we had shared over exhaustion and instant noodles.
But when, for the first time, I asked, “How is Ukraine now?” her gaze shifted, and her voice grew taut.
“The bomb didn’t go off,” she said quietly. “None of us are safe there.
Mariia — “Mary,” as friends call her — is 29, from Kharkiv, a city that has become a grim shorthand for destruction.
Once Ukraine’s second-largest urban hub, it is now a place where air raid sirens have blended into daily routine, and where diesel generators hum through the night because the city’s energy infrastructure lies in ruins.
A life scattered across borders
Mary works remotely for an international company, a lifeline that has allowed her to move between countries as the war grinds into its fourth year.
She considers this a rare privilege. “Most Ukrainians don’t have that option,” she says.
“They live every day under the shadow of bombs.”
Her humor surfaces unexpectedly, laced with bitterness: “How much a girl hates throwing pickle jars from the kitchen window at those throwing bombs — there’s no way to express it in any language.”
The analogy is absurd, but so is the idea of civilians defending themselves against guided aerial munitions with nothing but bare hands.
By mid-2025, Ukraine’s war ledger had grown bloodier than at any point since May 2022.
According to UN monitors, July 2025 alone claimed 589 civilian lives and injured 1,152 — the highest monthly toll in over three years.
Kharkiv has remained one of the most frequently struck regions, absorbing wave after wave of artillery, drone, and missile attacks.
The first morning of war
Mary still remembers February 24, 2022, at 5am. Shelling rattled her home before the city had even stirred.
“We were unlucky to share a border with such a terrible ‘neighbor,’” she says, shaking her head.
She packed in thirty minutes under bombardment, moving through rooms without touching the windows for fear of shattering glass.
The family fled to a nearby suburb, their departure less a decision than an instinct for survival.
Six months passed before she dared return to her apartment — scarred but still standing.
By then, Ukrainian forces had pushed the Russians back more than 30 kilometers, giving the city a brittle reprieve from mortar fire.
Psychological siege
“The most dangerous place for me in the world is my home,” she says.
“Every day, the sirens start. Sometimes five times a day. Sometimes ten hours without silence.”
Even as she responds to my messages, she pauses mid-sentence: “They just shelled the city again.”
Her description of Kharkiv’s war-time rhythm is chilling in its normality: a supermarket flattened here, a hospital struck there, endless lists of villages that simply “ceased to exist.”
More than eight million Ukrainians have left the country since the full-scale invasion began.
Kharkiv Oblast alone now counts over half a million displaced people.
Mary was spared refugee camps, able instead to rent hotel rooms and temporary flats across Europe.
Yet the emotional cost is steep. “I had survivor’s guilt,” she admits.
“I worked with a psychologist to keep going. Now, when I’m home, I no longer feel guilty — just unsure if I will live to see the end of this war.”
‘The blame is entirely Russia’s’
Her anger is unambiguous. “The blame is entirely Russia’s,” she says.
“But those who buy Russian resources — oil, minerals — share in this responsibility. Their money pays for the weapons killing Ukrainians.”
For her, the only acceptable outcome is victory.
“Not a ceasefire. Not a truce. Peace with Russia never lasts,” she says, recalling Chechnya, Georgia, and even Ukraine’s own post-2014 history.
“If we stop now, they’ll return. I don’t want to pass this war on to our children.”
Returning, leaving, returning again
Mary’s life is now a pendulum.
When the situation in Kharkiv eases, she goes home. When the shelling intensifies, she leaves. Her family is scattered across countries, their reunions fleeting.
She sends me a photograph of her apartment block — its corners blasted open to the sky.
“We are not safe,” she says simply.
“But we keep going. We fight to survive, outside or inside Ukraine, until we can live there without fear.”
And somewhere between hotel rooms, border crossings, and the stubborn pulse of a city under siege, Mary keeps walking — as if the trek to safety is just another high-altitude climb, one she refuses to abandon before she reaches the summit.