Nothing so grandiose was planned. I was on vacation in 2021, I got to sea with my younger daughter. They wanted to go with their brothers next year. I never plan anything, I never know what will happen tomorrow.

At work, we were often told that something would happen, we had to stock up. People stocked food, flour, and sugar. We did not believe until the last that this would happen.

I get up at 04:15, the cow milked, strained the milk. I washed before work and hear explosions. Vasya [husband] is already sitting on the couch, on the TV he shows Kyiv, which is being shelled. I'm hysterical, I'm already crying. He says: "Everything, I'm going to the morning minibus, ‒ by running to the military commissariat. ‒ Don't collect anything for me, don't bother". I'm crying, I've had children, I'm upset, I'm on my nerves.

Explosions began, sadness, Vasya left. At first, I sat at home with my children, I stabbed myself in the house. The man calls: "Go to the school basement". It was not equipped before. There were classes where labor lessons were once taught. We came there, everything there is so crushed, wet, water flows along the walls.

We put the door on it, my children and I spent the night in the water almost, it was cold. They returned home at 4 o'clock. They met our neighbor, she says: "Were you at school?" I answer: "Yes, it's bad there, we won't go there again to the basement. We will be in the cellar". And our cellar is very emergency. She says: "We are sitting in Baba Lyuba's cellar. She, her daughter sat and granddaughter". And we went to that cellar.

They ran out while the light was on, cooked food. The light disappeared when there was shelling, and Baba Lyuba was already cooking food there. She ran here and there. When we had our military ones, I fed them. I somehow take a three-liter jar of pasta, go outside, they shout to me: "Lie down, bigger bird". I got up again, my mouth opened, I say: "What?" And here Vasya ran for my skin and into the house. He put all the children on the floor, laid down on them himself. And this thing that was flying did not completely break.

It was cold in the cellar, we were sitting in jackets. Everyone wore off their clothes and pillows. She changed the bed, because it was all raw, every day she hung it on ropes. Vasya once found a barbecue. I put it in the middle of the cellar, made a pipe and we drowned it there.

It was difficult in terms of hygiene. Of course, it would be good if there were wet napkins, there would be half the trouble. No one walked dirty. Maybe you will wash yourself there once every two weeks, and the children are clean. It even happened that we washed our heads with powder. She simply diluted the powder lightly, washed it with running and washed it off.

What was in the house was shared, as they say, with bread and Vasina's socks. It's no wonder they were used, it's the same, because the boys are generally in rubber bands on their bare feet. I cooked to the boys. Then they were brought food, they gave it to me, I made food for them from these products.

In general, they did not know the news, because there was no light, they did not make phones. I read, sometimes drew something, then did something else. They walked in silence, listed the animals, then came up with some stories. The little ones went to bed, and we continued to sit.

Serhiy Serhiyevich finally broke both his father and me to take the children. We left on March 28. He woke us up at five in the morning, and we left with him. They left first for Chernihiv, then for Kulikivka, then for Kyiv.

We were so worried when we were driving because we were driving in closed floors in a bus. I remember that someone spoke Russian, they stopped us. One woman said: "Lord, no matter how Russian, because now they will shoot us". We drove, cried, shook in that bead. Well, we arrived, thank God. 

We spent the whole war, all the most terrible things in the cellar. It was as soon as they came down, they started ramming the cellar. That's when it broke the whole street in our country.  Thought all ‒ is the last day, we've already said goodbye. 

I was in the fifth grade, my mother took us to my grandmother. Grandmother and grandfather were partisans. She told everything: how pits were dug, how those who were captured were put, how they were burned. Then, when they were thrown into these lands, they were sprinkled with chlorine, then the bodies were thrown again. She always told me: "You know, there is nothing scarier than war".

link to history