Kateryna Ivanivna Kovalchuk:
I have seven children and ten grandchildren. Three of them do not live here. Four of my children and five grandchildren live here with me.
We happened to be here in Luhanske by accident. When we were evacuated from Debaltseve on 29 July 2015, the landlords came and offered a big house so that the whole family, 18 people, could fit. Squeezed, but pleased, as they say. The kids can play outdoors in the yard and there is even some free space for keeping some livestock.
We started from scratch here. We brought our she-goat from Debaltseve. We brought a scooter and a baby cot. We tied up the goat and brought her here. She lived under shellfire in Debaltseve for two months. Some other people were feeding her. We then got her back to shape. She even had offspring twice here.
The most important thing is to have silence. Even the kids know when the shelling starts. The kids spent three months in the cellar. What saved us was that our cellar was not outside, but in the house. When there was heavy shelling, we were warned that it was better to cover the windows. And we curtained them off. We made some iron shutters.
Maryna Kovalchuk, 31 years old:
At first, we stayed at home. We had a small cellar there, which we had dug ourselves. Then, our neighbour suggested us to go to his cellar, which was a bit better. It was awful, for sure. We tried to hold ourselves together and calmed the children. And thank God, we are alive.
When the war began, and when it was in full swing, we were given a "green corridor". We were taken on board of a fire truck (the whole family) and evacuated here. We have a big family. We have many children and we all work hard. We work in the vegetable garden and try to keep some livestock too
I went to Debaltseve and tried to enter our house, but I could not. The door was blocked there. The roof was almost gone. I could not enter the house.
We have been here for six months. The children have been walking around, playing and have not been afraid of anything. And then it [shelling] started to get closer here. Thank God, we escaped it. Everything flew by, past us. We heard it flying and whistling. We heard that it landed somewhere nearby, somewhere in this area… It was scary, but not too much. We somehow got used to it. The kids can be afraid of a regular car, but if they see the tanks going, they are not afraid of them. Yet, they can be scared when seeing an ordinary car. Of course, this is not normal, but they are still small, and I hope they will all get over it, and everything will be fine.
