Alina Havryliuk, known by her stage name Alevtina, has been immersed in the music scene for nine years, the last three as resident DJ at the popular Sky Bar in Kiev. But the war in Ukraine has brought her life to a screeching halt, like that of millions of Ukrainians who have been forced to flee since Russia invaded the country.
The 32-year-old left Ukraine at the beginning of March and will arrive in Ibiza in the next few days to work this season. She will be working for the Nassau Group, for whom she will be DJing a couple of days a week in one of their clubs. “I was previously in Ibiza with the International Music Summit (IMS) and, last time, I was DJing for a live radio show that took place in a beach club,” she says. Now he will set foot on the island again, but under different conditions.
Havryliuk has been staying in Barcelona for several days, after a bomb woke her up a few kilometres from the city of Kiev on that fateful 24 February. That night she had spent with her team recording a techno session that they ended up celebrating with a few drinks. “We talked about the plans we had and no one thought the war was there,” she says.
It all happened very quickly, around five in the morning. “I heard people running around, picked up the phone and saw that I had several calls,” he recalls. In barely ten minutes his mother had stood up at his house to get him out of there. “We are being bombed,” she told him. “I can’t forget that feeling, nor her face,” the young woman adds. As quickly as they could, she and the friends who were at home packed a backpack and went to Havryliuk’s parents’ house, where they stayed for three days. “We decided to move to a safer place because it was impossible to sleep with all the whistles,” she says. So they packed seven people into a car, two of them in the boot, and drove to Berezivka, 20 kilometres from the Ukrainian capital.
“We stayed there for only one night because it was impossible to sleep, from the window you could see the red sky from the shelling,” he laments. “I was just waiting to get out of bed to hide,” she says. And she bursts into tears. Remembering this and knowing that family and friends are still there is difficult to explain, she says, and impossible to understand for those of us who did not live through it. They backpacked again on their way to the Volyn region, where he was born, until they decided whether or not to leave the country. “On the way, a bridge exploded on the Kyiv-Zhytomyr road in the village of Stoyanka. We didn’t even have time to hear it, but we felt it,” she says.
On the way to Spain
They crossed the border into Ukraine on 5 March, after his mother drove for nine hours straight. Her sister had done so days earlier to settle in Norway, where she sought refuge. “It was a very difficult decision for me. It meant leaving the people I love,” she laments. Among them her father, grandfather, uncles, cousins and friends. “We left and the Russian army started attacking Berezivka, which is where we were at first. They were without electricity for a week, they could only hear the sound of war,” she says.
The young woman dreams of returning to her home, from which she was only able to salvage the stereo system she uses to play music: “It’s the most expensive thing I had in the flat and it can be useful in any case,” she says.
For the moment, she and her mother already have a temporary residence permit. “In just one hour we had it”, she says. And she offers to help compatriots who don’t know how to manage these procedures from her experience.
Havryliuk has chosen Spain because of its affinity with Latinos, she says. “Spaniards are very emotional like me and, in terms of my profession, I can have more opportunities here than in another country and it is closer than Argentina, Mexico or Colombia,” he explains. Although he studied land management engineering, his passion is music.
Radical change
She is just one of thousands of examples of people who have fled Ukraine. “One morning you wake up and realise that what you build for your whole life can disappear,” she says, her voice cracking. “And the people you know may not be alive, you don’t know if you will be able to see your friends again and you only dream of sleeping in your bed, calling the one you love and hearing their voice,” he adds. Havryliuk hits the nail on the head: “We don’t know how rich and happy we were before the war”.
Since that 24 February, the only sounds echoing in his head have been the shelling, the traffic, the sirens? The images of people running, queuing, stuffing things into cars are piling up in his eyes. “Before I go to sleep, I dream every day of seeing my family together again,” she says.
She is not in favour of calling them refugees. “I am a human being and so are all the people in this situation,” she says. But she is immensely grateful for the solidarity of all countries. “The world is full of good people and in the end, as we say, good will overcome evil,” she stresses.
