Oksana is a primary school teacher from Zaporizhzhia, a mother of three children. Her older son, Vladyslav, a marine, has been in russian captivity for more than three and a half years. He graduated from the Bilinsky Lviv Academy, received an assignment to the 36th Brigade in Mykolaiv, and later ended up in Mariupol. Oksana recalls: “I asked him to take care of himself, and he replied: ‘Mom, you know where I was going. This is my decision.’”

On 9 April 2022, the connection was lost. Three days later a short message arrived: “Mom, I promised to let you know where I am. We were taken captive.” Since then, every year for the family has been a year of waiting. At home, in Oksana’s freezer, there are cherry varenyky — her son’s favourite dish. Every year she makes a new batch and says: “This time he will definitely eat them.”

When she first heard about the opportunity to go on a psychological retreat from the “Heart of Azovstal” project, she hesitated for a long time. Rest felt like betrayal. But there, in the Carpathians, she allowed herself to exhale for the first time: “I thought I would betray my son if I went, but I understood: to help others, you must first put the ‘oxygen mask’ on yourself. We are learning to hold on, learning to breathe, learning to live.”