‘My wife died. I tell the kids that she is the sun now’

Serhiy Rizakhanov, 27 years old

It was good before the war here. There were jobs, there was everything. Nobody had to hide in the cellars. Children played outdoors everywhere. While now we are scared. We are even afraid to take a child to the kindergarten because shelling can start suddenly. And the kindergarten is two kilometres away from us.

The production plants were closed down. Many shells were hitting the plants and so they were closed down, everything was closed. There are about three families left here and the rest of the people moved away. People went wherever they could.

Shells were flying here. A shell landed close by in 2016, in the middle of summer, I guess. They also landed at the end of the street. Shells were exploding; they flew over the roof. There was a whistling noise followed by explosion. There are the dugouts over there and so shells were landing there. The military were positioned there, and so the shells flew there. There was a blast wave from the explosion and it damaged our roof cover. The slate on the roof and a piece of the wall were torn off. I repaired it, but we haven’t whitewashed it yet. Volunteers helped us re-install the windows. Our street was without electricity for about a week until it was repaired. And some of the power line poles fell down.

As soon as there is an explosion, we run to the cellar immediately. We have the cellar under the kitchen so we can hide there. It is a good cellar. That is how we live. Both the children and grandmother stay here. They were crying, well... What do you think? Surely, children are scared. It is a shellfire, after all. We are all scared.

Our life has changed very much. We have lived through lots of things. Our entire life... My wife died.

When there was no war, we used to go to the seaside. There is nothing like that now. We can hardly travel anywhere. I just survive. I need to raise the children. I need to educate them. They need to go to school, to the kindergarten. They need to have clothes and need to be well-fed.

In the past, when it snowed, everyone was outside sledging. Now even riding a bicycle is indoors. You cannot ride it on the street, it is scary. We ride bicycles indoors.

My daughter likes toys and dolls. And books, too. She starts understanding it bit by bit, and can retell it herself. If I read her a fairy-tale, she can retell it. A fairy-tale about a spackled hen. And my son is our “handy Andy”. He likes to screw, disassemble or break something. We miss their mum, of course. I point at the sun and say, ‘Mum is over there, isn’t she? Where is mum?’ And the kids reply that she is the sun.

Rayisa Kovalenko, grandmother:

I feel sorry for him. He is young and he has been left alone. Well, with the kids. What to do? We need to brace ourselves and hold on. We need to raise the kids. We help him a little bit. I get my pension and help them a bit. He does not get any childcare money. We need to make some repairs. We will cope with that, we’ll do everything. We will be raising the kids. They are with me. It is good to have kids.