Stories that you confided to us
It was early in the morning. Sofiyka woke up at 8 o'clock and at twenty minutes past eight... It is very hard to recall this. We probably remember more how we tried to save her.
As usual, she was counting candies, she was on the table. Some noise came. It was always unquiet in our area. People gathered downstairs near the store – there was a store below us. There was no power supply.
I don’t know what happened to the kid then, what exactly pushed or urged her. She was very small. She was 2 years and 7 months old. It so happened that I went out into the corridor and the kid stayed in the kitchen alone. And apparently, she was frightened by that noise. And she fell out through the window, down from the fifth floor...
My friend was downstairs, outside. I looked out of the window, and she picked her up and brought her to the entrance door. I ran up to her. We started to look for a car. A man was going somewhere with his wife. He asked his wife to stay, to get out of the car, and took us to Kurakhove.
She was conscious, she was crying all the time. The injuries were quite heavy. She had a hip fracture and an open fracture of her leg. Her arm was broken in two places. She had some operations. We were on a treatment course in Dnipropetrovsk four months. We are thankful to Rinat Akhmetov who provided us with a course to a sanatorium in Slovyansk. We went there in 2016, for a rehabilitation treatment course. We went through many procedures. The most important procedure for us was the physical exercise, the one that helped to restore the arm.
In Krasnohorivka, we do not have doctors that could help us. We can only visit a traumatologist or have a diathermy for the back.
It is very difficult indeed. We don’t want to remember it at all. And when I recall it, my heart stops beating, and it feels as if it did not happen to us. We just cannot believe it.
The most terrible times were when shell fragments were flying. It was in 2014, on 19 July. We went to visit my mother. And there was a shelling in the evening and it was very scary then. Those shell fragments… when it hit the gas pipe. We stayed in the cellar for a long time, but we had to get out because no one knew what could happen to that gas.
There were many various cases, when, for example, I walked along the road and heard those sounds. The kid took it very hard. She is so very worried after the injury. And we have nowhere to hide here. We hide in the hallway on the fifth floor. We cannot go down to the basement because we have a problem with a sewage system in the building, as people do not live here. The basement is very wet, damp. You cannot stay there.
Once a bullet flew into our place and the window glass was damaged. Nobody was at home. Sofiyka and I were in the sanatorium in Slovyansk. The girls were at home, but they went out for water. It was summer. It was hot and the balcony door was open. If the balcony had been closed, the balcony door would have been damaged surely and we would have to freeze then. It was in summer 2016. The bullet was lying on the floor. It was God’s willing that everyone stayed alive and nobody was at home. We all were lucky in this regard.
There are only three apartments in our section where people live. A woman and another 83-year-old woman live here too. Well, basically, everything was damaged here. All the windows are covered or closed up. We try to repair something, as much as possible. Other tenants came and took out some of their belongings. They gave us some plastic film and wooden glazing beads, at least to cover the windows for the winter.
We hope that everything will be over. We wish it would be over, and peace would come, and there would be jobs. So that our plant would resume to work. So that our hospital would return completely. Because it is very far to go to the hospital in Kurakhove. You cannot be without work. My working place was closed. It is difficult without money.
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/
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