Stories that you confided to us
‘The main thing is not to freeze to death. We cannot get any firewood anywhere here. Everything is mined’
We have only 22 persons in our Orikhovo-Donetske village. Four persons do not work anywhere. They have nowhere to work, and they do not get anything (any payments). The rest of us are all pensioners. When the war began in 2014, there were 49 persons here. You can imagine how many people have died since then.
In winter, the main thing for us is the heating so as not to freeze. Well, if you want to get some firewood, you cannot really go out here. It is a mined zone. We were warned not to go there. And even if you try to go there, you look everywhere carefully not to step on anything. I recently walked there. Looked around and saw some shell fragments here and there and that was it. I came back. Well, what shall we do then and how shall we survive?
In 2014-2016, it was very difficult here indeed. Shellfire was hitting just close by, right behind me, where I stand. All this was bursting just literally about 100 meters away. It was at the end of 2014. We had no electricity. We lived without electricity for about three months. Then, power supply was resumed and then cut off again. We lived quite a long time without electricity. And what does it mean for us? If there is no electricity, there is also no water. It is good that there is at least one standpipe with pumped water in the village where we were getting some water.
This year there is not any firewood at all. My husband and I collect some wooden boxes here and there. We look near some abandoned houses and bring some sticks or tree branches. We lived through it really the hard way.
Thank God, bakery lorry still comes to us and we can buy some bread. However, there is nowhere to get medicines from. And all the people here are elderly people. Everyone suffers and almost everyone needs at least some blood pressure drugs. We wish doctors could come to us, at least once a month. They used to come to us in 2016, but then we were left alone. Perhaps, because there are very few of us here. What does it mean to have only 22 persons here? That is probably the reason why we were forgotten.
We cannot travel anywhere. Even if you have a vehicle – you cannot get gasoline here. There are no fuel filling stations anywhere nearby. We want to be able to travel, to see our children. We want to have free movement, but we cannot have it. Well firstly, we are limited in all this now. And secondly, the pension is just peanuts. Even if you want to go somewhere, you cannot really afford it. Thank God, we have a vegetable garden. Thank God that we still have some health and are still able to plant something in our little greenhouse.
It used to be very good for us here. We were able to travel and people could bring us some firewood too. And now, where can we go? We are going to cut down the trees opposite to our place if we manage to buy some gasoline. We have a gasoline chainsaw, so we can cut down these willow trees and burn them as firewood. Maybe we’ll live through the winter somehow.
We have only one hope. We hope that we will be together, the whole of Ukraine will be together. That is what I want very much, so that we could communicate with everyone and so that everything could be as it used to be. Our big dream is to have peace here. We hope that this will happen soon.
When quoting a story, a reference to the source – the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation – is mandatory, as follows:
The Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation https://civilvoicesmuseum.org/
Other stories
