Anastasiia Novitska was supposed to be wearing a lace wedding dress last week, surrounded by family and friends, while she exchanged vows with her future husband. She was instead forced to cancel the wedding and leave her fiancé behind as Russia invaded Ukraine.
“Basically, my life was destroyed just in one single night,” Novitska told ABC News Live in an interview on Friday. “We were getting everything ready for the wedding, we already started decorating the hall, all of the guests were booked, some of them were already in the city waiting for the wedding day and when I woke up early in the morning, I realized unfortunately, it’s no longer going to happen.”
The Russian invasion was a shock to Novitska, just like most of Ukrainians. She described the second day of the invasion, when her neighborhood was beginning to come under attack.
“I thought that everything would be safe in my city. But then on the second day of the war, on the 25th of February, while I was asleep I heard that bombs were attacking the airport next to me,” she recalled. “The attack was so hard that all of us were awake just in two seconds, we went into the underground, but thank God everyone was safe.”
She then made the tough but necessary decision to leave her home and entire life behind to find safety in Poland. Her fiancé stayed behind to fight in the war.
