The former goalkeeper of Chernihiv "Desna" Ihor Litovka, who now plays for the "Zagora" team of the third Croatian league, recalled the events of the beginning of the war.
— I was with the team at a meeting in Turkey. My wife was in Kyiv, she was about to give birth. And my parents and my eldest daughter were in Chernihiv. We were constantly in touch with them. The wife spent the first days with friends, and then went to the maternity hospital. She gave birth on February 27, fortunately, in the ward, but within an hour she was forced to go down to the bomb shelter with her newborn daughter Miroslava, following an air raid signal.
My parents immediately tried to leave Chernihiv, but an armored personnel carrier drove right in front of them and hit a civilian car, after which they returned to the city and stayed there for five days. Then they united with neighbors and sat in the basement all these days. Then, thank God, they found an opportunity to leave, despite information on the Internet that all bridges were mined. At the same time, my wife tried to leave Kyiv by evacuation train. I just can't imagine what was going on at the stations then and how my wife with a newborn child survived it all. From her memories, it was simply hell. When the train arrived, crowds were breaking into the carriages, breaking down the doors of the conductors, just some kind of apocalypse... In Khmelnytskyi, she already met my parents, took her daughter, and already went with her to Romania, where I met them. It was all very difficult and exciting. The eldest daughter immediately burst into tears when she saw me. Nowadays it is remembered as a terrible dream. Then we went to Poland and from there to Croatia, Litovka said.