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On February 24, I was in my apartment at 62, Stroiteley Avenue, near Bakhchivandzhi Market. Early in the morning my sibling called me at 5 AM – the beginning of 6 AM and told me that the war had started,

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told me to get ready. I had things, honestly speaking, since 2014 we always had the "alarm suitcase" ready – documents, valuables and warm clothes, because it was February, of course,

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we did not know where we would find ourselves, where we would be, how long it would take. He has his own house, my parents live there. He came, took me, and from that moment until March 21, we were in the basement;

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there were 12 of us – my parents, my relatives, my mother-in-law and some other relatives. There were 12 of us. We practically heard explosions from the first day, from February 24, and literally [after] a day or two, shelling of our house began.

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This is a private sector, 2 Konechnogo Lane, the area of the trolleybus depot, Krasnoflotskaya Str. Heavy shelling started literally 2-3 days later, and we basically didn't get out of the basement.

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Our house was in a place where we were visible from all sides. We had the impression that they were working to kill. If someone went out into the courtyard, they immediately started shelling the house and the people.

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It was even by accident that my brother survived, because they shot exactly at him, and it was only by accident that he survived. He was injured a little bit, the concussion was very strong, he could hardly hear at once.

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There was a period – a week, when they were shelling and airstrikes were every day. We thought we would never get out of there. My nephew, 18 years old, was with us, and we were worried about him most of all,

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so that he would not be taken anywhere. On March 20, we decided that we had to leave, because it was very dangerous to go out into the yard, even for us. At that time we already knew that my husband's apartment had been destroyed,

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it was near the store "Zhiguli", where 2 entrances had folded down. My house was hit by a shell – the 8th entrance was immediately destroyed, damaging the 7th entrance as well, the roof of my entrance was broken.

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We left on March 21. We went for several days, because we went to [Bilosarayskaya] Spit, and from the Spit we went to our relatives in the village. It was very scary, because there were checkpoints everywhere, who it was,

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"DPR" or orcs, we didn't know, but the fact was that they were not our soldiers. There was already devastation all around. We drove out through Nakhimova Avenue towards Melekino. Houses were already destroyed, many houses were burning,

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people were wandering around. I didn't understand: there was shelling, and people were just wandering around, children were wandering around. It was so scary, I thought, it meant that these children didn't have parents anymore,

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if they were walking in the street during the shelling, as if they were detached from everything, just a child walking and not thinking about anything, he wasn't afraid. We decided to leave. They suggested me,

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my mother-in-law and my nephew to go to Zaporizhzhia. On April 13, we passed 35 checkpoints that were not ours to Orekhovo, at each checkpoint they checked us completely, groped us, checked our bags, purses, undressed our men.

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Everything possible, the way one could humiliate a person, it was all there. At that time I was practically 60 years old, that's retirement age. I had everything in my life to live in peace. Even I told myself that I would turn 60 years old,

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I would get a pension, I would not work a day. Because my children are well settled, I have everything, I have a country house by the sea. I dreamed that in the summer I would be at the country house or go somewhere,

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and when it got colder, there were many other options for vacation, and live in peace. But February 24 crossed everything. I hope that I still have a lot of good things in the future.