He was in Poland when Russia invaded Ukraine. “I still hear these words in my head”
Magdalena Rigamonti, Onet: You have been living in Poland since 2009. Why are you not in Ukraine? You're the guy who could defend his homeland.
Zhenya Klimakin: You hit the most sensitive point with your first question. Many of us Ukrainians feel guilty.
Basically because we are alive. Yes, I am a man who apologizes for being alive. I'm 45 years old, I never knew how to shoot, I wasn't in the army, so if I went to the front, I would probably have enough for two days… I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I could be effective on another front. I have been living in Poland for almost 17 years.
But that doesn't absolve you from feeling guilty. I recently talked to a friend, a very famous music journalist who lives in the center of Kiev. He has been without electricity and water for a month. A few days ago, the director of the largest film festival in Ukraine was in Warsaw. I met with him for a while to discuss various plans, and at the end he said: Zhenya, how lucky you are to have water and that I could take a bath. The full-scale war against Ukraine has been going on for four years.
On February 24, 2022, in the morning you were at your home in Warsaw.
I was sleeping.
Mom called?
No, a friend. And she started asking a stupid question. I wake up from sleep and she asks: Have you already talked to your parents? And so it happened several times, because I didn't know what it was about. Finally I ask: What happened? And to this day I can still hear her words in my head: war, Żenia, war.
And I remember very well the cold, the paralysis of my whole body, the numbness from those terrible words. I called my parents and it was really noisy there, I could already hear that a full-blown war had started. My mother explained that she and my father didn't want to wake me up because I had no influence on this war anyway…
People gather in front of a building partially destroyed by shrapnel from a missile fired by Russia over a residential area in Kiev, a day after the Russian attack on February 25, 2022.Anna Voitenko / East News
You are an only child. My parents were there, in Berdychiv, in central Ukraine, and you were here in your warm apartment.
And they didn't want to leave, to escape from Ukraine. And I didn't stay in this warm apartment for long, because in February I started, together with other volunteers and activists, blocking Russian trucks that wanted to pass through Poland. In total, we spent a month near the border with Belarus. We were there beaten, chased away and intimidated. Of course, compared to the suffering experienced by the people of Mariupol or Bucha, we had luxury.
Then you talked your parents into coming to Warsaw with you.
Dad really didn't want to go. He said: I won't get to this Poland. As if he felt something was going to happen. They both came. We moved in together, but I was basically absent because of protests, collections, humanitarian aid, transports. A river of people we wanted to help, find accommodation, buy tickets. Parents were often alone at home. One day I was leaving my staircase, a guy was following me, he came up and said in Russian: you are a doll, a puppet in this game, stop.
Was that your neighbor?
Yes, he lived upstairs. It was terrifying to me that something like this could happen in the European Union.
Who was it?
Russian. He said to me: Believe me, old Chekist. He winked and added: This will end badly for you.
Remember that it was the beginning of the war, we were all on such adrenaline that I didn't even consider stopping. Last summer, my dad had a heart attack, fell into a coma, and then died. Then I found out from the neighbors that this man did not let my father live in peace, that whenever my father was on a walk with my dog, he approached him, accosted him, and said something to him.
He didn't tell your mom about it?
No, he didn't tell anyone. Today I think he didn't want to tell me not to stop me in what I was doing.
Watch the entire conversation in video form:
People are dying not only from Russian bombs. “Many Ukrainians suffer from PTSD”
You can argue that this Russian agent has your father on his conscience.
I think there are many such deaths due to stress, fear, and also those resulting from PTSD. Well, my father's death hurts the most. I wonder how many people like my Russian neighbor Russia sent to Poland, to EU countries, to countries where Russophilia flourishes.
70 percent Ukrainians have lost someone close to them in this war against our nation. Lost in the sense that a bomb fell on someone's head, he died at the front, someone was killed, tortured, murdered. No one counts those who died like my dad. Nobody counts how many children were not born as a result of this war. Recently, a very close friend of mine who lives in Kiev was pregnant. She had a miscarriage. She's not the only one. Gynecologists in Ukraine say: the number of miscarriages is huge, children do not want to be born. Moreover, the number of cancer cases is huge. Many Ukrainians suffer from PTSD and mental health problems. A friend, a soldier, a veteran who was in Russian captivity and has been free for a year says: not a week goes by without me thinking about suicide.
He was tortured, his nails were torn off and his ribs were broken. Russians love to invent various “games” in prison, for example Gay-Europe. They say to Ukrainian prisoners: if you want to go to Europe, show your Europe here. They make them strip naked and kiss, dance and stage sex scenes. However, you do not have to be in prison to suffer, to be unable to cope, to think about suicide.
People visit the graves of fallen Ukrainian soldiers on the eve of All Saints' Day at the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, October 31, 2025.YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP/East News / East News
I know there was a point in your life when you realized you couldn't do it.
At the beginning of 2023, after very intense protests, actions, collections, the death of my father, and Ukrainian-Russian relations in the stairwell of my house, I woke up one day and the right part of my face was simply partially paralyzed. I ended up in hospital. Before, my whole body hurt and painkillers didn't work. When, as a journalist, I read about suicides, about someone jumping in front of a subway train or jumping from the top floor, I thought to myself: why do these people choose such a traumatic, terrible death, after all, you can take pills.
In 2023, we organized a large two-day convention for one hundred of the most important volunteers in a hotel in Warsaw. There was Janina Ochojska, Sławek Sierakowski, many truly distinguished, outstanding people. We tried to coordinate our activities and share our experience. I was with my dog at these meetings. I remember that everything hurt, my bones, my muscles, my stomach. I had a room on a high floor.
At night, I don't know, maybe it was three in the morning. I opened the hotel room window and looked straight ahead. And then I understood these people who commit suicide. It doesn't matter whether it's jumping out of a window or throwing yourself in front of a train, because it's an impulse. The mental and physical pain is so great that you want to press stop, you want to do it.
You closed that window.
Because the dog was in the hotel room and I thought to myself, who will stay with the dog, who will take care of it? I closed the window. And in the morning I started looking for help. I met a fantastic therapist who brought me back to life.
Zhenia Klimakin at the opening of the national congress of volunteers working for Ukraine, October 22, 2022.Leszek Szymański / PAP
I know you went a step further and started studying psychology.
The key figure in my life, in making this decision, is the editor, Marian Turski, unfortunately of late memory. I was lucky enough to talk to him several times and record interviews with him. He survived the Holocaust and survived Auschwitz. He told me that after the war ended, many of his friends committed suicide. He told me that he too had taken 99 out of a hundred steps in this direction…
And then I thought: Oh Jesus, Turski, who is a moral authority for millions of people, was so close to this border… I have to do something about it, I have to have effective tools and instruments to know how to tell people so that they never take that hundredth step. Dear Jesus, if I could help at least one person, tell them that everything here makes sense, that life has meaning. That's why I decided to go to college. And in a year I will have a master's degree in psychology. I already know that these studies never end, that you have to continue training throughout your life.
Do you consider yourself a Pole of Ukrainian origin or a Ukrainian living in Poland?
I have two identities, Polish and Ukrainian. My grandmother on my mother's side was Polish. Even as a child, I knew by heart dozens of Polish carols and patriotic songs such as “My homeland, bathed in blood so many times…”. I read “Pan Tadeusz” and many other Polish books. My heart sinks when I hear both the Ukrainian anthem and the Polish anthem.
Żenia Klimakin about her first day in Poland. “I thought it was a good sign.”
Do you remember your first day in Poland?
I worked in Kiev on television. In 2009, I was at a point in my life when my relationship ended, the TV owner died, a new management appeared… My friend, who lived in Warsaw at the time, told me to come and live in Poland. I thought I'd go, take a walk, see. If I don't like it, I can come back in six months or a year. I had a good life in Kiev, I lived on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. I went. I visited the restaurant, it was nice. After one day, I decided to walk around Warsaw on my own. I remember, I'm standing at the bus stop in Nowy Świat, waiting for bus 175 to go to the airport. An old lady comes up and says: Sir, I have put my glasses somewhere, could you tell me what time the bus leaves? We started talking, the lady asked me where I was from, when she heard that I was from Ukraine, she started saying that she knew we had a hard time, but I shouldn't worry, because it was also hard in Poland, but now it's great… I remind you that it was 2009, long before Maidan, before the annexation of Crimea, before Donbas, before a full-blown war. She asked what my name was and what I did, then I asked her what her name was and what she did. She replied: Maja Komorowska, I am an actress. And then all the movies I had watched with her flashed through my head. I thought this meeting was a good sign, I was moving to Poland. I gathered up my Kiev life and moved to Poland. I am both Ukrainian and Polish.
This is an Examination of Conscience, so I want to ask you about God in your life.
As long as the war against Ukraine continues, I do not think about God, I do not ask myself why he allows such evil, such hell. I rather think about what good I can do in this hell. Do you remember how in Miłosz's poem “Campo di Fiori” the carousel turns under the ghetto walls. People are having fun, but the ghetto is burning and people are being murdered. Now we are in such a situation, this ash from Ukraine is falling on us. I don't ask myself questions about the meaning, about God. I only know that we cannot be passive, because this carousel may soon become part of the ghetto.
