I will say that 2022 started quite normally. There were big plans for our village. I wanted to do something a little on street lighting, on local roads. I planned a vacation, to go to rest in the summer. Place the child in further education, finished 9th grade.
In February, they said that the Russians were planning an offensive. Collected at the border of training in Belarus. The offensive was on 13, 16, 23. No one talked to on this topic, no one believed it. When I wake up on February 24, I open my eyes immediately to my phone, and I have 15 missed calls. It was about half past six in the morning. I remember everything like today.
Came to work at seven. My first task was to gather reservists and send them to the district shopping center. He took the boys to the shopping center and returned home. There are already military personnel and roadblocks under the city, and I did not take my driver's license or passport with me, I left everything at home.
They call us from neighboring villages: we need medicines there, warm things there, pillows, blankets, socks, gloves. Collected, delivered, new people come in again ‒ all over again: medicines, warm things, food. We did all this until February 28.
My ex-wife was not in Shestovytsia, the children were also far away. Little ones call, cry. I say: "Sit there, they won't get you there, no one will touch you". My parents and I were here on the spot. The phone did not have time to charge, because there are many calls and questions.
Mother calls, screams, cries. "Someone closed the house, ‒ says, ‒ can't come in". We all got in as a group, arrived. It turned out that the mother was a little in a panic, she did not open the pen until the end. Parents were having a hard time.
For the first five days, I did not go to the village at all after the occupation. Then he started somewhere on the 6th. I walked around the neighbors like that a little, but not in the center. He did not carry phones with him.
Already later, my cousin came to me on a bicycle and said that fewer katsaps had already left. They then led the crossing through the Desna and left. Not very many of them, but there are still. Then he realized when he came out and looked at what they had done. It's literally in a week, one and a half.
On the 4th day, 6 personnel and a driver came to our yard on an BMP. I think whether they will leave, the house will be checked or something. They ran to the well. They went here for water according to the ‒ schedule in the morning, at lunch and in the evening they will collect water, they left. And all ‒ 18, 19, 20, 22 years old are just as young.
Parents talked to them a little. Well, what can I say to them if they came to our village and say: "What kind of garden did we take?". People say: "What kind of garden is this? It's village." "How is this village? There is asphalt here", ‒ say ours.
The mother is a little more cowardly, the father did not go to the basement. I adjusted the basement, covered it with everything possible. We didn't have bread, we didn't have yeast. There was one situation when one man sold 10 tons of pasta to people. They soaked them, sculpted them, baked cakes. It was like that. Someone had flour, yeast, then bread was baked. We had stocks of products: sugar, salt, potatoes, beets, lard, meat.
It was difficult with medicine. One woman walked to Kiinka for morphine, because her son had oncology. Morphine was needed to be painless, because the son was already screaming. My mother still had medicine for about a week or two, and then they went to the neighbors.
I will clearly say one thing: we were united during the occupation. There are those who did not communicate, then they started. They became friendly more or less, and when the humanitarian went, I'll tell you honestly, it's... Disconnecting factor.
He pulled out the battery from the car, brought it into the summer kitchen and connected it. The news was constantly listened to ‒ what was happening, where it was happening. He cut the garden, grapes, and raspberries. Greenhouses repaired. There were bees, so he worked around the hives. He brought order. Everything that was collected when he was busy before the full-scale invasion, he did.
link to history