“There were no nightingales here for two or three years, and now they are coming back!”

Our "Trud" [Eng. – labour] gardening society comprised four hundred summer cottages. About fifty people used to stay here for the winter. And this winter there were only six of us.

Damaged houses... There was a house close by. Two shells hit right inside the house and blew it to pieces. There are three shell pits of this large size in the garden. Other house nearby was hit by shells too.

People have been in fear since 2015, since February, when all this began to happen. Just scared. Even now, in 2019, although it has calmed down, people are still scared. Mentally, they are afraid to come here.

Since 2015, everything has become overgrown here, because people don't come and don't clean. You can see shrapnel hits. You can see how the gates were hit, how houses were damaged.

My wife and I survived shellfire. It started somewhat all at once. We fell down to the floor before we even had time to leave the house. It was a narrow escape for us. Pipes and power lines were damaged in the village. We then, for a month and a half, with an electrician from our gardening society, made teams and were restoring it all on our own. Now we also try to repair everything on our own. We cut out some pipe sections that were damaged and welded some parts too. And now we also repair some old pipes the same way. So far, we hold up.

It's good here. The air, we have the cleanest air here. And silence at times. There used to be lots of nightingales. Then there were no nightingales for two or three years, and now I can hear – the nightingales are coming back here! Sometimes they sign their songs in the morning.

People come to visit their native places. They walk around and look around: "Well, maybe we'll come back, maybe we'll return." We hope that people will come, that there will be funds and we will restore all this.