The children woke us up. My eldest son came running in, already dressed, with a backpack, shouting: "Run! It's war!" We could not understand what it was. Everything was shuddering; everything was shaking, the windows because there was a military unit not far from us;
you could see it from the balcony, maybe a kilometre and a half away. When they were flying there, we saw rockets and [heard] explosions. The bed was shaking. A small child came running, too. They were very scared. I started calling my colleagues from work, [they] were going to work.
I said: "It's war". She said: "No, what are you talking about? Something exploded at the petrol station". I said: "No, no." She said: "I'm going to work". I said: "I'm not going. What are you doing, rockets are flying?" We saw it through the window. Somehow, we did not believe it at all. That day passed. Firstly, at 11 o'clock,
they hung a russian flag on the hydroelectric power station. Men started gathering in the city, going to the police and military commissariat. Everything was closed; no one was there. Everyone was like this: what to do? Nobody knew what to do. We stayed at home the first day until the evening. Then my girlfriend called me and said:
"Come to our basement". We stayed in the basement for four days in the neighbouring district. We took our backpacks, sleeping bags, and some food. We went out, the shops were working a little bit, we went out to buy something to eat. [There were a lot of people in the basement, waiting for us. How to say it,
it was very scary, incomprehensible, we couldn't believe it. We thought it could [happen] for a week or two; it can't happen in the 21st century that we would be attacked. How is this a war? People are moving on, people are exploring space, computer technology, what kind of war is that? We didn't believe it for a long time, we were waiting.
We thought it would be over in a week or two, it couldn't be. Then the food started to disappear in the shops. There were very long queues, one or two people were allowed to enter. [There was a shop with a bakery near us; they baked bread themselves. Sometimes, they sold, for example, two loaves of bread per family.
Very quickly, all the shelves were empty; only alcohol remained on the shelves, but people demolished it, too. Me, my husband, two sons, my mother-in-law and my mother. She came to me and lived with us for about a month and a half in a three-room apartment. The younger one was 10; the older one had just turned 18 in January;
he was studying at a technical school and was graduating. The [occupiers] were standing near the college; he was afraid to go there because there were so many of them. Firstly, they kicked everyone out of the college, and only those who were waiting for them remained. We weren't bombed, but we didn't understand what it was - the ground shaking,
explosions. Even when we were in the basement, they set up guns over the house, and they were shooting from them. We thought we were going to be killed in that basement. We didn't really understand what it was, whether it was coming from us, or coming to us, or coming at us. After four days, we were tired, all the children were tired,
we wanted a bath and something to eat. We had given up, as they say, so be it. We ran home and stayed at home. In the evening, we closed the windows and did not switch on the light. We put a table lamp under the table so that we could see a little bit. In the evening, the windows in all the houses were dark because they were shining the light
on the windows to see who was there. They came in very quickly. I even think that they went through us first because the road goes through us; they came in and went on. There were a lot of videos; people filmed them driving through the hydroelectric power station. And now this town is under occupation. People left,
but there are still people who cannot [leave] for some reason, some for their own reasons. Many say: "Why do I have to leave here? This is my home; I grew up here; let them go." I don't know how they continue to live there. We went to rescue the children. They travelled around the city in a minibus, taking young boys from the street.
The boys started disappearing; no one knew where they were being taken, why they were being taken, and we had an older child of military age. There were a lot of soldiers. They were walking freely with machine guns, driving around in cars. My husband and I were going to buy something, and they were standing there.
My husband had this look in his eyes... I said: "Don't look at them, please". He said: "I'm going to grab his gun and shoot them". The emotions were so overwhelmingly negative. They came - the child could not go outside for a walk, the eldest could not go to school. My husband used to ride his bike to work because he had a job
at the other end of the city; he was away for a couple of hours. There was no connection, I cannot contact him. We left on May 9. We planned to leave a little later, but our carrier called us and said: "It's either tomorrow or never if you still want to go". We still managed to leave through David's Bridge, through Kryvyi Rih,
because they hadn't closed it yet. I think we had a difficult, scary journey, but we were already at the last checkpoint at 11 am. But they held us until seven in the evening, did not let us through. There were not many of us; the convoy was small, about 20 cars, and there were small buses and minibuses. They did not let us through; they did not want to.
And the time was approaching, at 7 pm, and they had a curfew, and we had a curfew. The driver told us: "If we don't make it now, they won't let us through until seven, we won't have time to get to Beryslav." - We were standing in the field. The shelling started. Of course, everyone ran to the bus. It was a bit scary. We were driving;
I even turned my child away from the window; I just looked him in the eye and said: "It's okay, we're going." At each checkpoint, men were taken out of the bus. At one checkpoint, they undressed them, checked for tattoos or anything else. They told them to show their military ID cards.
They were celebrating May 9 with machine guns; they were all drunk, on something, not alcohol. They were very stupefied, joking around. He was standing there, the men were taken out, and he was holding a gun and a list, saying: "Now we will see who will go further and who will stay here". They were pressuring us morally.
And the women are in the bus, sitting there and praying: 'God, help us, let us pass. Our carrier... I think they had some kind of arrangement because they took vodka and cigarettes out of the glove compartment. They let them pass to the last one as if they had an agreement with them. He said: "I'm taking people in, I'm taking people out".
They checked a little bit and documents, but I don't remember any questions. My husband still has his USSR military ID because he served in the Soviet army for a year and the second year in the Ukrainian army; that's how he got there. But his military ID card is like a red book. He was a border guard, and he had a note in it about the special
services or how they treated them. They saw it and said: "What is this?" We arrived in Kryvyi Rih at about one in the morning, and volunteers put us up; there was some kind of centre for children or kindergarten, something like that. They brought us there. The girls got up at night, cooked borsch, fed us, and put us up.
Our distant relatives are not here in Kropyvnytskyi; there is a village nearby, so we went, knowing that at least we had a place to spend the night. We stayed in the village for a month. The eldest had to go to college, graduate from a technical school, write his diploma, and the youngest had to register for school because there was nothing in the village and no work.
So, we stayed there for a month, looked around, rented an apartment here and came here. My mum stayed with my aunt and her sister there because they didn't want to leave; they were elderly women. They said: "We are not going anywhere. What will we do there? How will we live there?" And when it came to the neighbouring house, they felt it.
They were in the basement, thank God, but they were knocked off their benches by this wave. I said: "Okay, let's get ready". We brought them here, to us. I am a volunteer at the foundation. In Kropyvnytskyi, we are opening an aid fund for the people of Kherson and the Kherson region. We were filling out a form to get something or to find out how
many of us from Kherson region are here in Kropyvnytskyi and the region. Something was unclear to me. I called the manager and offered her help. She said: "If you are not working and can come over". It was not far from where we lived, a 10-minute walk away. I said: "I'll come over now, I'll help you as much as I can.
We were also helping IDPs for a while, but with a different foundation." I came over. We started talking. Nataliia Viktorivna is a very talkative lady, very kind, and we got on well, and then we started to communicate like that. I don't even know how it happened that I started helping. Then she brought her mum here, and she also helped us.
Slowly, the team has grown to nine people. We come every day, except for weekends. We receive people three days a week, and on Monday and Friday, we do some paperwork or clean up or receive them. Our Nataliia gets everything for us, calls and asks for food because they don't want to give us food.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that a lot of our food is looted, sold, and does not reach us. But every day we post photos with people who receive and leave us with their hands full, with full bags. We don't have much, but we give away everything we have. People are happy.
We have never been given food to make such packages. This is the first time the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation has responded. We are very pleased and so are our people, because this support is very important for people. People are happy to have food.
It's a time when it's very difficult for people, especially since the IDP payments have been cancelled, it's even harder for people because, for example, to go to work here, they pay the minimum wage, they don't want to pay it more.