"Unity and mutual support. This is what our winning spirit is made of"

For TV presenter Oleh Panyuta, the war with Russia began when his homeland, Crimea, was occupied. Since 2013, he has never been back home...

After 24 February 2022, Oleh realized that the most important thing was to protect his family and do what he can do best, defend the information front.

My name is Oleh Panyuta and I am 51 years old. I was born in Crimea, in the small town of Dzhankoy, but most of my life I have lived in Kyiv. The place where I live is the town of Brovary near Kyiv. As a rule, we used to spend the summer in Crimea with our family, with our child, with our first child then because Hannusya was born a little later.

Then we started going to Crimea with her, and the summer of 2013 was amazing because it was a hot summer. I took a car and we went to visit my parents in Crimea by car. Then we went by that car to the Arabat Arrow. This is the place where I used to spend holidays since my childhood. As a rule, we would spend some 15-20 days there. We pitched a tent, and we took with us everything that was needed for... Because at that time it was not like now… It was a real wild camping, when some familiar people gathered, when some teams of campers gathered, and it was just a [camping] town within the town. And that time, in 2013, it was the same. It was like coming back to my childhood. It was probably like returning to some brightest feelings and memories of my life.

And to the feeling that this was an amazing vacation. You know, your amazing lifetime. It probably remained then. After that, I came back home certainly. And certainly, I plunged into my work, and then winter came.

Maidan [Euromaidan or the Revolution of Dignity]. Crimea. Well, and certainly, we felt like it was going to end quickly. But unfortunately, every day this feeling... it went somewhere, and obviously, since that year, since 2013, I have not been back to Crimea.

And, of course, at first I dreamed that, when it was still possible to travel there by train, I thought that we would be able to return soon. Then, when the railway track was dismantled, but people could still cross the “border” line, and it was still possible to get there, I cherished hope. I dreamed that I would get in the car and come home, but it did not happen. I was close to Crimea twice. Both times those were my work-related trips. On 24 August, when I made a live stream at work from the checkpoint in Chongar, and when I broadcasted my dreams and my hopes into the universe. And in 2021, in the summer too. However, that time I was at another checkpoint, Vermenske or Armiansk (in Russian). This is another administrative line on the “border” with Crimea.

I filmed some documentaries there. While staying there, I realized that I was just some 90 kilometres away from my home, but that way home became longer and more difficult every year.

And even my parents could not come to visit me in the last few years. Well, for the same reason, because of limitations. For the fact that a five-kilometre walk had to be made from one borderline to another. It is very difficult. Previously, whenever they came, they usually wanted to bring something from home for me. And it really became more and more difficult every year. That is why lately I have been in touch with my parents using some modern means of communication, using a computer or by video calls. That is, for me Crimea remains only in my dreams today.

For me Crimea today remains only in those feelings from my childhood and the feelings from the best times of my holidays. I did not believe until the last that this day would come, although we talked about it very often in our TV programs and in conversations with friends and acquaintances. But I did not believe it until the last, although many people today say that they knew it, but they concealed or suppressed this thought in their minds. No, I did not believe in it. I realized that it could happen but in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul, I rejected until the last the thought that this could happen, God forbid. Amazing thing. Two days before it happened, my wife and I went to the cinema. It was a movie where Oleksiy Sukhanov played a small role. It was a movie about the humiliation, about the genocide of Jews in Vinnytsia.

It gave a depressing impression. It was a movie after which you wanted to go out, turn it off, shut yourself up somewhere and forget about it. But two days passed, and unfortunately, these two days, they still gave some hope. While, on the other hand, what I saw on Tuesday somehow miraculously transformed into Thursday.

It was 05:10. My daughter came down from the second floor, from her room, and woke up my wife and me because of the explosions. She heard some explosions.

I was sleeping so I did not hear it. She is already a big girl. She is 13. She ran in and said, “There are some explosions outside.” She had tears in her eyes. And of course, I will never forget that. Like any father, I wanted to protect my child. And of course, what I had been doing up until that moment, surely I had been trying to protect her from some challenges, from some threats.

But at that moment, I realized that I must do it. Unfortunately, the protection of my child, as well as the protection of my family, is not only in my hands. It is in the hands of my country and all those people who are with weapons today. Those people we talked about and those whom we featured in our TV programs. They are the defenders. Things we thought about until that moment, they now became absolutely real. They now were absolutely close by. We were not far from Kyiv, on the left side, on the left bank. There were some military units in our neighbourhood.

Boryspil, anti-aircraft defence, defence forces, which stood and defended Kyiv. That is why those explosions were quite strong and thundered very close. Not far from us, some two kilometres away, straight on, was a military unit, which was attacked by air strikes among the first targets. It was at around six o’clock, and another strike was at around eight o’clock. And some time at noon, at around 12:00, when I was driving by, I saw that there was still a fire. We saw the smouldering ruins.

We saw billows of smoke and it was a scary sight certainly, but at 05:10 I said, “Girls, we have to pack up.”

I was not thinking about the fact that we were going to leave. I was thinking about the fact that I needed to go to work. Thursday is my workday when I go and record a trailer for my weekly news program. I knew I had to be in the TV studio. I understood that bridges were a dangerous place and we had to… I was thinking about my work. The first thing I thought about was my work.

Certainly, I also thought about the girls who were next to me, that I had to take care of their safety too. Yet I was thinking about work and I needed to be closer to the TV studio. I waited for a few hours. At half past eleven, I took my son and his wife, and my wife with our daughter. The five of us got into the car and moved to the right bank of the city.

My son and his wife hopped off in the city, and as it turned out, by the evening, he signed up for joining the territorial defence units and went to defend Kyiv. It was strange to see my son, who had not served in the army for health reasons, [in that role]. I never saw him at any sort of a military training before, except for some pictures from paintball tournaments. Now I saw him in a completely different role. He was in Kyiv for three months, and now they are on rotation somewhere near Dnipro.

And I suspect that this is not the last destination point for him. I moved to our relatives in the outskirts of the right-bank part of Kyiv, and already there I was thinking what to do next.

By the evening, I understood that there would be no weekly news report. On Friday, I understood that there would be no regular work schedule either. Well, and in a week’s time, I realized that I had to change my understanding of what was happening around me and my usual rhythm of life, my schedule. So from 7 March, I have been in the marathon [TV news marathon reporting on the war situation in Ukraine].

As for Hannusya... It was very interesting how she packed up. She packed her things up herself. It turned out that she took the largest number of things with her, and that was good because she knew she would need those things. At some point, two or maybe even three weeks later, when Hannusya was going through her backpack’s content, we saw something that, in our opinion, simply should not have been in that backpack. It was an album, an album she made herself a year ago.

It was her attempt to master a photo editor on a computer. She made it. She and a woman who helped her. She made that layout herself, and then that layout was printed out. The result was a four-page photobook with photographs that were dear to her. Those were the photographs from her life. The photos with the closest people, and not only people, as there was even a photo of her favourite dog. It turned out that when she was packing up, she took this album with her.

We, adults, did not take anything with us. We did not take any nice things or memories with us. We took a rational approach. We needed our documents, and we needed money. We did not even need clothes because this is not the most vital thing in life.

Our memories are in our minds. We did not come back home for three and a half months. That is, until the moment when... when I felt that I could come back home. Although I knew that everything was fine at home, as not all the people on our street left. Dogs stayed behind at home.

And I am extremely thankful to our neighbours, as they kept an eye on them and fed them. But I had to be at work and that was what I was thinking about. I had to take care of my girls too, and that was what I was also thinking about. I had to provide them with a safe place. We stayed at our relatives’ place not far from Kyiv, but on the right-bank part of the capital. It was a private house, and so we lived there. In fact, three families lived in one house. The first days were really the most difficult and terrible ones because Kyiv was under attacks from the air.

They were trying to attack Kyiv. Yes, it was an attack from the direction of Hostomel. There were also attacks and air strikes from the side of Vasylkiv, and from the direction of Bila Tserkva. The worst thing was that enemy planes flew over the house. We heard helicopters flying by; we heard transport planes flying overhead. Then they were shot down near Kyiv and near Vasylkiv.

And that feeling of despair, as you understand that they are flying, you understand that the enemy is close to you, that the enemy is flying in there, and only Lord and our defenders, our armed forces, know whether it will be possible to stop them and what will happen next. When they flew, we heard the air raid warnings.

When they flew, we heard the air raid warnings. Yes, we went down to the basement. We took our things with us because no one knew what would happen next... Yes, we took water with us; we took those things with us, those grab bags that we came to our relatives with.

This was everything that we had with us. We took them with us and went down. And in fact, it was a safe place because we did not hear any shelling there, except for a few strong explosions when the oil depot in Vasylkiv was bombed and when an IL-76 plane with the enemy landing force was shot down near Vasylkiv. It was the enemy’s attempt to seize the military airfield near Vasylkiv. Sometimes we heard the sounds of shelling and air battles, when our forces, as we understand now (yes, that image of the defender of Kyiv in the sky), when our air forces clashed with the enemy. We stayed at our relatives’ place for another week, for about a week…

No, it was exactly one week because on Friday, 4 March, I realized that I could no longer be without my work. I mean, I understood that I was needed there.

I have to work because this is what I can do, this is what I am good at, and this is what I have to do by calling. That is exactly why I went back to work.

I drove for 12 hours. You know, it was not only a challenge; it was not only a sort of a test, where I had to cover that distance, while that driving was quite dangerous. I have an electric car, and that is why I had to know where to stop to recharge the car battery, because I was running out of power before reaching the end point.

I built my route with the help of my friends, our TV channel staff members, who told me where I could drive. It was not a straight highway route. It was quite a difficult itinerary. It was 36 checkpoints, and 12 hours. But to my mind, it was one of the safest trips, despite the fact that we passed through Vinnytsia and Shepetivka. We drove straight through the city centre, and right before that, air raid sirens wailed out. It was in Berdychiv, if I remember correctly.

We passed through Berdychiv and heard a very loud [sound]… since we were driving right when the siren was wailing, a very loud siren. If I am not mistaken, the church bells tolled very loudly too, and it was very symbolic. It was very scary indeed. Scary because at such moments you realize that your life has changed, and this life will not be easy and calm, as it has been until now.

This is a different life now. This is a life where you start your day, well, at least I do, and end your day totally with news feeds, with Telegram channels, with messages on social networks, and with the information summary. Every moment, I try not to miss something, which, as I think, shows that everything is changing for the better for us.

I have become addicted to the news, indeed. Even though I was addicted to the news even before that, but today it is a different sort of addiction. It is about trying to find the news that will give me hope. And through me, it will give hope to those people who are waiting for this news. News that things have changed for the better for us.

That we are at least one step, one millimetre, or one moment closer to our victory. In fact, our every day is like that but each of us wants this day to come as soon as possible. I began to work more, which is not surprising because we are now not... well, at least those of my colleagues I keep in close touch with… These days we do not look at who works how much time or who has overtime and how much, God forbid. We do not have any such thoughts, no.

We have to work. Each of us has to do what we can do.

Our information front, as we call it, is also very important for people, as confidence, faith and understanding of what our troops are doing is very important for the whole country and for the whole world too, in fact. When we moved from our relatives’ place closer to my work, we came to a person whom we did not know at all.

This was my mother-in-law’s acquaintance, who sheltered us for three months and allowed us to live in her own apartment. These people could help you with a kind word, and not only with a word, at any moment. Similarly, it is now your obligation to help people who are in difficult situations today.

This is when you donate some money, which you can give to people whom you don’t know at all. You don’t do it just to check it off, no. You understand that Lord will give you more, and you have the opportunity to earn or get it through some manual labour, as well as through some intellectual work, using your brain.

However, for some people, this is the only thing that can help them today, and you can help. This is when you donate to the army because you understand that how they [the military] will feel, what they will eat, and how they will perceive those people they defend, depends only on you and those around you. In fact, this is what a country is made of, this is what a nation is made of, and this is what our winning spirit is made of, I think. Faith is the strongest thing that keeps us in this world.

Faith is probably what turns a miserable person into a hero. As it might seem to someone. In fact, the faith that people are capable of much more than they can imagine turns our wonderful people, our ordinary people, who live next to us, into those to whom we will bow all our lives. I will do my singing, you know. It doesn’t matter what I sing. It will probably be a Ukrainian song. Maybe it will be a song from my childhood. Maybe it will be a song from my university choir, but I will be singing songs.

I don’t sing songs now. Well, sometimes it comes to me, when I am in a good mood. I sing and it does not matter where it is. Whether it is at work... or while taking a shower, or while brushing my teeth.

On the one hand, this is my way of getting ready for going live on TV. This is tuning in to a positive mood. On the other hand, it is a way to get your organs of speech, organs of articulation, in working condition. However, it is not the right time for singing now. Even the “Red Viburnum” song that we all sing now is not a song I would opt for. No, although I know it since my student [years], and it was a discovery song as for me. Thanks to this song, I learned that Ukrainian Sich Riflemen sang it. And even earlier, before the Sich Riflemen, it was a song of the Ukrainian resistance.

Yes, and for me it was such a... in 1989, when we sang this song in the university choir during Soviet times. It was also our challenge to the Soviet system at that time. Although people were no longer punished for it, but one could still be reprimanded or could get it in the neck for it. That is why it is a song of resistance, a song of rebellion. But for me this song was like the discovery of another country, and through this song, I understood that my Komsomol activist past was not exactly what my Ukrainian future should be. That is why I will sing happy songs. Perhaps, those that I do not know yet. Maybe it will be a song that I will learn on that very day, when peace comes and the war in Ukraine ends.