Dasha and Stanislav Dmytriyevy have known one another since childhood. They were both born in Donetsk, living close to the local airport and attending the same school. Having grown up, they got married. Dasha worked as a policewoman while her husband dealt with cooking. He had been learning the secrets of Japanese cuisine for 12 years by cooking Japanese dishes.
When their native city was invaded by Russians, the couple moved to the city of Mariupol. There they managed to settle down again and open two restaurants serving Asian food. They did not know back then that after 8 years they would be forced to flee from the city and start everything from scratch. They crossed the whole country, having settled down in Lviv. There they opened a new restaurant that bears the same name and has the same sign on its wall as the one they used to have in Mariupol.
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On a summer afternoon the thunderstorm in the center of Lviv abates and the sun comes out. If you take a turn from the central square called ‘Rynok‘ (the Ukrainian for ‘market‘ – translator’s note) and dive into one of the adjacent cobbled streets (into Ivan Fedoriv street, to be precise), you will see a sign reading Bluefin. It is a sushi restaurant that has recently been opened by Dasha, Stanislav and their partners. At the time when we were speaking to them the restaurant had not yet been opened to the public. Final touches were being added to its interior. Tables and chairs had not been unpacked yet.
We are met by Dasha, a flamboyant and smiling woman wearing a yellow-tree suit. She works here as a manager. She asks us to follow her to her working table located at one of the restaurant’s windows. On her table we see work phones, a laptop and notebook for reservations. One can feel Dasha’s strength and inner light. After the storm the sun breaks through. After a catastrophe that you have been through you try to pull yourself together and start over.
However, the smile that we notice at first glance betrays lots of pain that has been inflicted on the couple as well as human strength and the ability to recover no matter what.
Our most precious things are for our son. Donetsk, May, 2014
May 26, 2014. Dasha and Stanislav had been hearing sounds of explosions and strikes for several days. From their window they could see military vehicles moving. Living in close proximity to a once cozy airport did not bode well any longer. On that day a battle would begin that would subsequently go down in history as the first battle for the Donetsk airport A Ukrainian Special Operations Unit would be first to enter the premises of the airport. Our military and volunteers would successfully defend it from Russian occupants and pro-Russian militants. However, in the fall of the same year a new stage of the Russian attack and Ukrainian defense of the airport would ensue, lasting for 242 days. It would be one of the fiercest battles in the war waged by Russia on Ukraine.
Overcoming their fear and panic the couple was getting ready to flee the city under the roar of explosions. They did not take many things with them. Their main goal was to leave. Their eldest (and at that time the only) son, Bohdan, was almost two. The most important task was to take him to a safe place, away from shelling. They were saving their most precious thing in life.
They did not take much stuff with them, first of all taking care of their son. Just like many other forcibly displaced persons at that time, the couple were hoping they would soon be able to return to their home. They could not have thought that the war would drag on for years.
To Mariupol, to the sea. Life before February 24, 2022
Their route from Donetsk passed through two regions of Ukraine. They first lived in Avdiivka for some time, having then moved to Berdyansk (located in the Zaporizhzhia region). Finally, they found themselves in Mariupol since they wanted to live as close to their native city as possible.
‘We did not know how to keep living without Donetsk. However, living in close proximity to the sea gave us strength. We began living anew, unaware that a day would come when we would have to start from scratch’, Dasha says.
The family adored Donetsk, the way the city was developing and growing. They noticed similar changes in Mariupol. Every street, park and public garden would be frequently beautified. The local authorities deployed a practical approach in this regard. There was ample space both for kids and the youth.
The past 5 years the couple has spent in Mariupol. Prior to the new stage of the war they had been planning to move from the apartment they were renting to a new one, their own.
‚Mariupol was our love at first sight. We lived close to the sea, enjoying the beautiful view from our window. In the first days of our life here we couldn’t get enough of it, constantly dashing to the beach. We enjoyed our life here’, Dasha says, with an apparent hint of happiness in her voice.
Their family got bigger. The couple had another son. Their elder son, Bohdan, is now 9, while the younger Maksym is 4 years his junior.
Every summer their new city would come to life thanks to many concerts, festivals and guests. Songs were sung and people would have fun. It was easier to recover from previous losses in the city they came to like. The greatest joy that helped them manage through was running their own business.
A year ago Dasha and Stanislav in cooperation with their partners (another couple) opened the first sushi and rolls restaurant in Mariupol called BLUEFIN. The second one was opened shortly after.
The restaurant gave meaning to their life, as well as income. According to Dasha, the couple took care of the tiniest details, from accepting the order to the point of delivering it to the client.
They lived on the left bank of the city close to the ‚Azovstal’ steel plant. That was where one of their restaurants was located. Another one was situated behind the Mariupol drama theater. Their places of strength would shortly turn into two of the bloodiest hotspots of a future war.
It is on this very left bank of the city that the loudest explosions were heard on February 24. It was like a terribly strong sense of déjà vu for the family.
‚If we don’t escape the city today, we will never be able to do it’. The road from Mariupol and a train into the unknown
On February 24 the family woke up to the sound of explosions. All of a sudden, the light pierced through the darkness. They had not been preparing for a big war. Nor could they have imagined such a massive scale of it. However, having already been hardened by their previous experience, Dasha and Stanislav had a gut feeling that this war would take much longer than one would have hoped. That is why they knew they had to act quickly since Mariupol would find itself on the front line in the new war. They set out to pack their suitcases again.
‘Our plan was to take a lot of warm clothing for kids with us. Our thinking was that if we fail to flee from the city we would have to seek shelter. My husband went to search for water and to stock up on things we needed to hit the road. I had a feeling that if we would not escape the city on that very day, we would never have another chance to leave it’, Dasha says.
They called their friends and then three families left the city in two cars. Military vehicles were moving in the opposite direction. Sirens were wailing. Dasha remembers that the highway from Mariupol was empty. There was hardly anyone escaping from the city. None of the family members ate anything while in the car. They would continually scroll the newsfeed. Everyone was scared.
By the evening of February 24 they had made it to Zaporizhzhia. None of them could get to sleep, thinking about what would happen next.
The family spent 2 or 3 days living in their acquaintances’ apartment. Due to air raid sirens going incessantly off, they spent most of the time hiding in the basement. Then Dasha found out about evacuation trains leaving from the local railway station and packed things quickly. They did not have a clear plan of action, but they definitely were not intent on staying in the city any longer. There were no timetables for trains at the railway station. Nobody knew where the trains would be heading. Conductors would only say that they were moving to ‚West Ukraine‘.
The railway station was teeming with people, everyone elbowing their way through thronged platforms. Everyone was panicking. They barely managed to find seats for their children on the train.
Later they were informed that their train was heading to Lviv. The journey took about 20 hours.
The couple started browsing the internet for any information about where they could spend the night. While walking about the city they came across a volunteer who let them stay in his apartment for two weeks.
‘It was a miracle. This man’s kindness inspired us to keep living’, Dasha says.
Until mid-June they lived in a flat offered by the international humanitarian aid organization Malteser International. Afterwards they moved to a new apartment (volunteers helped them find it). They paid the rent themselves.
They learned from the news that on the third day of the full-scale invasion an explosion had destroyed the kitchen in their apartment in Mariupol. After some time they found out that the whole residential building had burned down. According to the latest information published on a Telegram channel, their house had fully been demolished.
Restoring business
When the family decided to settle down in Lviv, Stanislav found a job as a cook at a local restaurant. After having recovered from the first shock, the couple started thinking about restoring their own business. It was this very business that kept them going without looking back on their past. Their partners also moved to Lviv. Both of their restaurants in Mariupol had also burned down.
‘We got lucky once again, having found a nice place in Lviv’s center thanks to volunteers. Once we saw it for the first time, we fell in love with the place. We right away pictured us working here and showing others what rolls from Mariupol taste like’, Dasha says.
Partners helped them out with money at first while local volunteers set about actively promoting the new Asian restaurant in Lviv. That’s how the place got wide coverage. By that time they had already done a lot of promotion of their pages on social networks. For the time being the restaurant offers only takeaway options. However, the final arrangements are being made to open a full-fledged restaurant, the one that they used to run in Mariupol.
Dasha says that four people are involved in running the restaurant:
‚Just like before, four of us have our own duties: my husband is a chef, I take orders and do the promotion. I pass the orders on to Maryna, our business partner, who packs orders and passes them on to another partner of ours, Dmytro. He then delivers the orders to our clients’.
Currently they are able to deliver orders for free to the inhabitants of Lviv living within a radius of a bit over 4 miles of the city center. If the client lives outside this zone, they are charged about 1 USD of delivery fees per order.
The restaurant gets fish from Norway twice a week via the sea port at Odesa. While working at a local restaurant, Stanislav got acquainted with suppliers who then contacted him. It’s now business as usual.
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Dasha admits that the hardest thing during evacuation is when you are afraid that you will not manage to evacuate your family in time. Currently, her family are living in Lviv. However, as soon as the opportunity presents itself after Ukraine’s victory in the war, they would want to return to Mariupol and rebuild the city that had become so dear to them.
;We want to work really badly and help others to the best of our ability. We want to set an example of someone who through their will to live shows just how much they love Ukraine’.
