In January 2022, Valentyna came to Bucha from the Kherson region to visit her daughter and get checked out after a stroke. A few weeks later, she was caught up in the war. The family was hiding in the basement of a kindergarten, along with half the street – elderly people, mothers with children.

Food was cooked over a fire. Valentyna recalls baking flour cakes in a frying pan and turning them with her hands. “Everything was burning – the wood and the fire. All my fingers were burnt. But the children had something to eat, and we survived,” she says.

Valentyna was born in Kherson region, worked as a post office manager, kept a farm, and pumped honey until nightfall from the beehives her husband had bought. When he died, she was left alone, but she held on. She lived between work, the steppe and bees.

The village in Kherson region was occupied by the russian military from the very first days – the equipment came from the direction of Crimea. Valentyna learned about it from a video: “Tanks were driving through our village. They entered quietly and are still living there... The soldiers did not take our house only because my brother stayed there.”

She now lives in Bucha. After the blockade, she underwent heart surgery and was fitted with a pacemaker.  Three years have passed. “My soul hurts. Everything is still there,” Valentyna sighs heavily.