"I cannot imagine how it can be that there is no war"

Tetiana Putintseva:

Some time ago, old people used to sit on the benches outdoors. Now there is no one anywhere. It is hardly possible to describe how long we stayed in the cellar... You need to experience it in order to really feel it. Tanks run along the streets. It is scary, very scary!

We left for four months.

I lived at my daughter’s place. She was scared to live alone. Then their house also came under shelling. We decided to leave. We spent all the savings we had. Only 46 hryvnias were left. And we came back home.

We rented an apartment not far from the checkpoint. We live on. Shells fall to the vegetable garden, hit the building, sometimes the windows and doors are shattered and blown out. We restore everything.

As soon as we light a fire, shooting starts. Everyone needs to run to the cellar. It is very scary. Everyone certainly changed. Everyone began to take life more seriously.

My son-in-law worked in Donetsk. He is a shoemaker and he had his own shoe-repair booth or kiosk. The booth was hit by fire. He then did not go home for the night. He stayed in the booth. And the booth was fired at so that he could neither close nor open it. He spent the night on the floor and came home only in the morning.

There are no jobs at all. People find some occasional work where they can. Some stores have opened. Last year [2018] was more or less bearable. We are scared, but what to do? We wake up in the morning and realize that we have survived. The night has passed and we thank God, the day has passed and we thank God again. That is how it is.

Recently, Karina was given a ticket to attend a football match, but she was supposed to be accompanied by someone from adults. So, her godfather decided to go with her. He said, ‘I am going to get my hair cut.’ After all, he was going to Kyiv with his goddaughter to attend a football match. He went out of the house, closed the door, and he was shot. Maybe you heard about Mykhailo Semenchenko? Right near the house in the yard.

He loved Karina very much. He did not have children of his own. He was not married. That was about two months ago. She withdrew into herself completely. It was very hard for her.

Granddaughter Karina, 15 years old:

This is when you are not afraid, you can go, you can even go out somewhere in the evening, even at eight o’clock [in the evening]. We cannot go anywhere at eight o’clock. The military may come up and start asking you to show your documents.

You walk down the street and are not afraid that shooting can start at any moment, and you will run home and hide or it can happen that you don’t even make it to the house at all.

Tatyana Putintseva:

Everything is black inside our souls, you know. It is just inexplicable. There was a smell of smoke at night, a house nearby was on fire. One man was killed here, and another one was injured there. Recently, two men stepped on a tripwire. One was in intensive care, the second one was discharged from the hospital. There was something with his legs. We worry about them. We feel sorry for the grandchildren. We do not care about ourselves, but how about the children? They haven’t seen anything yet. They are afraid of every sound now.