During the full-scale invasion, Kateryna lived in Nikopol with her husband and 5-year-old son. She says that she expected the war. "I saw missed calls in the morning. I understood that the war had begun. I'm a journalist, and I slept through the war. The first news was that our mayor asked not to take the children to school. We drank coffee and monitored the situation. Hits on Kyiv, Dnipro. We did not prepare for the war, we did not buy food. It was a shock. The news was non-stop. 

Kill lists were drawn up in Nikopol. If the russians came in, found us – journalists, activists, patriots. But we stayed home. We began to prepare the cellar, spent the first weeks there. There were hits on the military unit.

The russians reached the border of the Kherson region, began to seize Enerhodar. We watched the streams of the locals with horror. If they enter Enerhodar, we will be 4 km away. On March 4, ZNPP was captured at night. "The Nuclear Power Plant is on fire," my sister called me. Panic. We didn't know what to do. The scariest night since the invasion began. The next day, a lot of people were at the station. It was then that I realized that a real war had begun.

The first strike from a Grad rocket launcher was very unexpected, it hit near the house. I grabbed my youngest son in my arms. I saw the arrival.  On July 12, terrible times began for Nikopol. We understood that it would be systematic," said Kateryna, a resident of Nikopol.