Sofiia Belich fled Ukraine when the war broke out and came to Sweden with her family. The family was living in Kyiv when the invasion began and Sofia was then studying Swedish at a university in the city. She is still studying Swedish, now from the apartment in Uddevalla where she and her parents live. But the fact that the stay in Sweden would be so long was nothing Sofia had prepared for.
– It doesn’t feel like reality. When the war broke out, I thought it would last two weeks or a couple of months at the most, but I couldn’t understand that it lasted almost the whole year.
The family is still in wartime Ukraine. Sofiia says that she used to talk to grandmother Halyna Grebnik and grandfather Yurii Grebenik every morning and evening, but that now it doesn’t work.
-During the last few months it has been difficult to talk every day because there was no electricity. They say it’s good and that it’s calm, but we understand that it’s not like that.
Watch the full interview in the player above.