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The war caught us at home. In the morning, my husband and I woke up early, turned on the TV and saw that something was wrong. We started to call our son. Our son lives in Kyiv, he said:

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"Mum, missiles are being dropped on all the regional cities of Ukraine, the war has started". We were confused. My daughter and her children live in Borodianka. I immediately told my husband:

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"Go and take the children to the village". He went and took them, and my son started to get ready with his children. There are parents-in-law living near them. They have their own dacha near Kyiv,

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and they thought they would go there right away and stay there. They went there, but it was impossible to stay there. They started to make their way along the Zhytomyr highway and went to my sister's place in the Brusyliv district of Zhytomyr region.

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My husband brought his daughter and two children from Borodianka. [My husband, me and grandmother lived with us, there were six of us. There is a shop on our street, and a saleswoman works there. I approached her, and she said: "Oh, my God,

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what should I do?" They live in Vabla, it's our community, and the road is coming. They are very afraid because there were cars and Russian troops on the road. "We don't have a basement," she said. I said: "Then I will take you to my place".

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We have a large basement. Their family was 10 people, they had three children, the youngest was seven months old. I took them all. We were all 16 people. For three weeks we had them all. We stayed in the basement. It was very scary when the planes were flying,

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bombing Borodianka. We heard everything; we saw the oil depots burning. There was a very big, strong smoke. When cars were driving along the Vabla road, [it's] a kilometre and a half from us, we could hear it very, very clearly. Andriivka is 5 kilometres away,

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it was very badly burned and many people were killed. We saw the fires there. Our people were getting out and leaving as best they could, but we were still there. The power went out on Saturday, probably in the evening. We have a well in our yard.

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A lot of people came and took water from the well, because people have cattle, cows, households, and there was a queue for water. We helped each other as much as we could, because it took people by surprise, no one had prepared for it.

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Maybe people had food for a day or two. There were a lot of elderly people in the village, old ladies who were suffering from hypertension and blood pressure. And when you have gone through such emotional experience, it's even more so. We have a man,

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you will interview him, who helped people. He has solar panels, he charged mobile devices, he helped a lot. We shared everything we could. People were slowly getting out on their own, leaving, but it didn't last long, because there were checkpoints of Russian

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troops in the neighbouring villages. People were very afraid because they were shooting at cars. People didn't get out much [later]. We saved ourselves as best we could, sharing flour, onions, and oil, as much as we could. We supported each other.

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It was March, it was cold. We went to old women's houses, brought them water, brought firewood, so that people were not alone. It was hard. We had to feed everyone, cook for everyone. It was good that the gas was not cut off.

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We have two boilers at home: an electric and a gas boiler. There was no electricity, so we switched to the gas boiler, and it was warm in the house. We cooked on the gas stove. If my husband and I need to buy sugar, we don't buy it by the kilo, we buy it by the sack,

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and we also have some salt. In the summer, I close a lot of canned food so that we don't have to run around looking for it, as well as oil, onions and flour. I shared it with everyone. I went to families with children. There was a family where I went in and she said to me:

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"Aunt Ninochka, do you have any jam? My children have already eaten the last mulberries that have been standing for several years, there is nothing left." I said to her: "Daughter, come to me". She came, and I gave her everything I had in the cellar.

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The next day, her neighbours came to see me"Where are you going?" - "We are going to your place to get some canned food, because we have nothing to eat." Anyway, we gave to people, not only me, but everyone who could, shared everything.

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I gave one thing, another thing in bags, we shared it in small pieces. I also want to say how much help I received. I had this shop assistant who used to go to the store when the troops were not there. People who had money bought some more food that was there.

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Of course, there was no bread, but they bought what was there. There was a shop in the centre, "Bar" we call it, a guy seller.  They left, and he gave us permission to distribute food to the people. I and another woman, who used to be the head of the village council,

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distributed the food to the people. People asked: "How are we going to pay for it?" We took the food. I told them: "God willing, everything will be fine, he will come and continue to work. If you want, you can estimate how much money you have raised.

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If you want, you can bring him money." Thank God, everything was fine. When our village was liberated, he came and has been trading to this day. People brought him money. He told me this himself: "I did not expect such people here".

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We have very kind people in our village. I know that. I had people staying with me for three weeks, and on March 17, we were given a "green corridor". There were probably three (I forget) buses and up to thirty cars, everything was completely packed.

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More than 250 people - adults, children and the elderly - were leaving through this corridor. My family also left. They had two cars and took my children. My daughter took them all to my sister's house, because by that time my son had already moved to Lviv from my sister's house in Zhytomyr region. 

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They all spent the night there, about 19 of them. Those who had somewhere else to go. My daughter and her children stayed there, and the rest of them went to their relatives in Zhytomyr or Khmelnytskyi regions, maybe to their relatives. My husband and I stayed here.

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The connection was very poor in the village. At first, we called on our own phones, and later only on the push-button ones. My grandmother's old phone came in handy, and I used it to call my children at least once every few days.

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The children were very worried about us and asked us to leave. You understand, after 40 years of living, having acquired everything we had, we could not break down. Our grandmother is 89 years old. My husband is 62 today, and so am I. 

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We decided not to leave because people came to us. We helped people. We took water; everyone looked at us: "If you leave, we don't know what will happen". I couldn't leave people behind to gather and leave in silence, firstly.

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Secondly, we realised later that there must have been a sign. We had a Mercedes Vito, and during the occupation it was in the garage. My husband was warming it up - he was doing something wrong. We saw that the oil was leaking. The car was broken.

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He came, and I stood up and said: "So there's no need to bother, no one is going anywhere. This is a sign that we are staying here." And we stayed. Different news came to the village - people heard something somewhere, talked about something somewhere.

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The first time we censused people was on March 2-3, there were 812 people. After the "green corridor", we made a census in the 20s, there were 430 people, of whom up to thirty children remained. Everyone had to live somehow, to live together.

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There were those who could calm us down, and there were those who undermined us:  "Oh, God, what will it be!" One day two men from our village came to me, they had seen someone, because it was difficult to get through our village because Russian

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vehicles started driving on March 11. They were driving day and night. I asked people very strongly not to go out on the road, not to provoke anyone, and [the occupiers] did not shoot at them. Because we knew that in Vabla,

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[if] they knew which houses had a little light, they would shoot at the gates, at the windows, at everything. They burned many houses there, because they saw that maybe a candle was burning somewhere or something else.

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They were very much afraid that people would not pass on any information. These two men met with someone, and they were told that there was no deputy or headman, and that they needed to organise that you had someone a little bit older who could at least coordinate this work.

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They came to me and said: "We want you to be the one". I said: "How can I do that, I'm just staying here." "A lot of people come to you, you help people, we want you to be the head." It's not going to be easy to do everything, you have to tell people, so that they know.

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The phones are not working, nothing is being done anywhere. At that time, on March 23, we had a small meeting on my street near our shop. The girls started it, said that the boys and I needed to choose a person; they called my name, and people agreed.

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That's how I ended up being the eldest. I told them right away that I wouldn't be the one to decide on all the issues. First of all, I am not able to solve these issues. I divided the streets, and from each street I chose one elderly man.

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It's impossible to have all the people moving and running towards me, they might run into those cars. I tell them: "You go to the elder on the street with your questions. They will come to me, and we will decide here what to do next." And that's how it was.

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People came to me whenever they needed something, needed medicine, needed anything. They searched for it, shared it, brought it in, helped as much as they could and as well as they could. It was very tense, but not for long. On March 25,

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it was a Friday - for our village and for our people who were under occupation, I emphasise. Those who were not under occupation do not understand what we went through at that time. Very suddenly, the Russian military arrived and dispersed to all the streets,

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they were not on the only street, Poleva Street, which looked out onto the field, because the houses were unprotected. They were very afraid of our troops. They went to all the houses. Earlier, they had already come to the villages

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and we had heard that someone's house was locked, they broke everything. If there were people in the houses and they wanted to keep everything intact, they had to let [the occupiers] in so that they could search them, because if people objected,

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they would kill and break them. At about 10 am - early 11 am, these cars left. We saw and heard them, because it was a humming sound. Our street was not long, we had about 20 houses. A lot of people moved away, many of the neighbours left their keys with us,

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because some of them had chickens, some had dogs, and needed to look after them. I went with my husband to look. They moved in and started. They opened the gate to the first house and drove in with their car. A disabled woman on crutches lived there to that day.

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They entered her house, searched it, went to her cellar. They knocked down the gate, did not open it, and started going to other houses. They broke down the doors of those who were not at home. If they couldn't break the door, they broke the windows,

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searched the house, scattered everything they wanted to take, and took it. We don't know what they took from whom, because no one saw it, it was people's opinion. Some people told us who they took something from, others didn't.

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They began to break down the door very hard. And I was standing with my husband, we live somewhere in the middle of the street. By the way, our house is yellow and blue, and I was very worried about that. We have big fir trees near our house.

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Our grandmother was sitting on the doorstep, and my husband and I went to the gate, opened the gate and saw that they were breaking down the doors of the front houses, going inside, walking around. My husband stood there and said:

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"I can't stand it". I said: "Where are you going?" And he said: "Nina, we have so many keys to the houses. They will break everything." He raises his hands and goes out to them. I was standing there. I was the one in the sweater, in the jacket, in the boots.

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My blood froze in my veins, or I had a rush of blood. My hands and feet were frozen. I stood there like a frozen man. They saw him coming in their direction and pointed their machine guns at us. He walked a little bit. They said to him: "Stop!"

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With his hands up, he walked away. They pointed at him: "Where are you going, grandpa?" He was all grey. "Where are you going, grandpa?" And he said: "I'm coming, I see you are beating a lot, breaking doors and windows. We have keys to our houses.

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Why are you going to do such harm to people?" They came at him: "Come here, grandfather, come here". He kept walking towards them. I think, now they'll either hit my grandfather with a rifle butt or shoot him, whoever is going to talk to him.

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He came closer to them. They told him to take off his clothes to the waist, empty all his pockets, pull up his trousers, so that he could show them that he had nothing anywhere. And he put his hands up. I see that they are doing this search.

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I had my hands in my pockets because I had documents there. Then I thought, I'll take my hands out of my pockets. They searched him and took him to a woman's yard. There was a large family there, a woman with a disabled son, and she was not at home at the time,

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she had gone to visit her children. They entered the yard and started to break down her iron door. He asked them: "Don't break it down, a disabled woman lives here. Who will do something for her then, who will help her?" They could not break down the door.

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He broke the window and climbed in through the window. There was a TV set there. He threw everything around, broke the glass, overturned everything in the house. He found nothing there. Next was my son's car. They broke the car's windows and deflated the wheels.

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But I didn't see anything. When I heard the glass break, I thought maybe they had killed my husband. When some time passed. I was standing there, and those on the road were pointing at me and holding me at gunpoint.

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They brought my husband out under two machine guns, took him home, to the house, and entered the yard. And he was running around with the keys, not knowing where to hide them. So he threw them all into a bag and brought them to the cellar,

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where we also kept our documents. Our cellar was big. We made shelves there, took out the blankets, did everything so that we could sleep, because we had five children with us. [My husband carried everything there. They brought him there, he went down to the cellar,

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took a bag with keys, and picked out the keys to these houses. They took him away and started taking him to the houses where he had keys. But they didn't go in first, they took him around at gunpoint with their hands up, so that he would go first into the cellars and barns,

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around the places where they were walking. They were looking at everything, searching. They were very afraid that the cellars would not be closed, so that they could hide in these cellars. There were about 18 of them on our street. One part went with them to the other side,

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and the other part came to us. I was with my grandmother. They came to us. I cannot tell you everything. They came and spread all over the yard. We had all the doors open. My husband opened all the doors. They used a machine gun

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to show me that I should go into the room first. They searched the house, looked everywhere they could. They asked: "Do you have Nazis? Do you have Ukrainian soldiers? Do you have partisans? Do you have weapons?" I told him:

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"We have nothing and never had anything. We have no military in our village, no one asked us anything." But they were walking around, looking for everything. We had no electricity. In the bathroom, in the toilet, they shone flashlights in all the nooks and crannies.

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Then they went outside. They were in the attic, in the cellar, near the car. I was very afraid that they would break our car. My husband opened the doors, windows, everything in the car. I came in and said: "The car doesn't work for us".

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The second man comes out of the garage and says: "I've already looked at it." We used to keep cattle and take hay to the attic. My husband did not put a ladder up there and did not open the attic. They called me. I pulled the ladder with them. We put a ladder for them.

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He also climbed into the attic and looked around, searched everything, but there was nothing there. They didn't find anything. We left, and I went to the neighbours. The neighbour's grandmother died before the New Year, she has a granddaughter in Kyiv,

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and her grandson was here, he left on the 12th of the month. They started searching them. They held me at gunpoint outside, and did not let me into the house. They found a holster. He jumped out of the house and pointed it at my face: "What is this?"

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And I was stunned - I realised what it was. And what should I say? What should I do?" I said: "I don't know, it looks like a knife or something." He: "It's a holster. Where's the gun?" I said: "I don't know, these are neighbours. How can I know what's going on?"

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They called the third man into their house and started again. I heard everything flying around the house, they were interrupting, looking for that gun. But fortunately, they did not find the gun that day, the guy hid it very well. Then they came out angry and said:

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"Lock it up." I locked it. One of them was holding me at gunpoint at the entrance to the yard, and the other one was standing behind the house. Then they turned around, took me outside and started walking down the street. My husband also came back with the people he was with.

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Then they got together and left our street for the tower. Behind our street there is a water tower and a stoker, a high pipe from the stoker, and there was an internet connection and plates. They went and started cutting these wires with axes and shooting.

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I said to my husband: "Let's go see how the woman in the first house is doing. She is disabled, let's see. We had a hardware store, and they didn't open the store." We went down the street and visited her. We saw that it was locked. And they were near that yard,

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they started coming back. They were shooting at plates and the bullets ricocheted on us, a bullet flew over my head, and we fell to the ground with [my husband]. I shout at him: "Lie down!" He was lying down. We heard that it seemed to stop.

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We turned around and went outside the towns, on a different road. We didn't know that they had gone through all the streets and what was going on. Then they left in the evening, at about four o'clock or five o'clock. By the evening,

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Then they left in the evening, at about four o'clock or five o'clock. By the evening, people started coming to me on the street and telling me what was happening. They were holding young boys captive in the school, stripping them, checking if they had Azov tattoos.

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Then they shot an innocent man because he was riding a bicycle, and he didn't have to go. There are very, very many people who were training hard, two were taken prisoner, one from Shevchenko Street, a young man and a man from Lisova Street.

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They were beaten and taken with them. And then [the occupiers] left for the evening. They stayed with us until the last days, travelling around the village until the troops started to leave. In Vabla, our second village, there were battles, a lot of houses burned down.

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There were people there who were wounded. We were so scared that it seemed impossible that they had all left. We have an apartment in Borodianka [our children and] neighbours lived in Borodianka, they also came to visit their parents because a shell hit their dormitory.

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They were about to leave and said: "Maybe we'll come into the room and take some things before they take them away". We asked them to take me and my husband with them, we wanted to see the apartment. Our apartment is in the centre of Borodianka.

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We went to Borodianka on the first of the month, and from the road to the centre we walked along the lower street, along the embankment. I couldn't believe it. People were all frightened, scared. People were so happy to meet us, they asked us where we were from.

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We told them that we were from Nova Hreblya. They said: "But we were told here that Nova Hreblya doesn't exist anymore". Because they came in a tank, put a tank near the school and fired from tanks. My uncle had a hayloft and equipment,

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and it all burned down. Some people said on the phone that Nova Hreblya was on fire. Everyone had a different opinion, everyone could tell it differently. We were in the centre of Borodianka. I saw how it was still smoking in the early days,

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what looting was going on there. It was very scary. It seemed to me that someone would come out and shoot anyway, I couldn't believe that they had left. When we were liberated, our military were everywhere, and they are still there today.

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I cooked lunches, distributed humanitarian aid at my home, and they brought it to our garage from Fastiv, Zakhidna, Volyn, Rivne, Vinnytsia. We distributed the aid to people while we were driving it. And somewhere around [20]22, in autumn,

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I started helping to send aid to the front, collecting from people. Our people were very kind, they helped a lot with food; we needed cots, blankets, pillows, clothes, and financial assistance. Whenever I need help, people help me and support me to this day.

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I've been weaving nets for more than a year, like a senior coordinator. Girls come to me and help me. We are weaving the 132nd net. We really want victory, peace and tranquillity. May God protect our military, who give us [the conditions] to sleep,

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to wake up, to have bright mornings, so that our children and grandchildren can grow up in a healthy Ukraine in the future. I want our Ukraine to grow,

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develop and flourish in the future. I love flowers, they are everything to me, and my children know that. Children and flowers are my life.