Stories that you confided to us
My husband’s name is Yuriy Ivanovych Zhukov. He was 62 years old. I was holding him in my arms when he bled out. I was in a sweater, with my hair dishevelled. It happened on 21 November 2014.
He used to work as an electric fitter at the mine. I asked him: ‘Would you like to eat something?’ He said: ‘No, let’s drink some tea.’ He did not drink alcohol and did not smoke cigarettes. He brought a bar of chocolate. We switched on an electric kettle in the kitchen. He lay down on the sofa while I sat down by the fireplace. We were talking when a strong explosion thundered. I still have a ringing sound in my ears. Such a hissing sound as if lightning. I started screaming. He was also dismayed. I asked: ‘What shall we do?’ I bent down in an armchair and remained sitting. Pieces of glass were falling down and pieces of plaster were coming off the walls. He said: ‘Run down to the cellar.’ I squatted and ran outside into the yard. And there came another explosion. I could not understand anything: everything was flying, pieces of plaster and slate.
The tragedy happened at the time when I was in the cellar. There was a third volley. I said: ‘Yura, where are you?’ And he was bringing a sheepskin coat and his overcoat. He went to the bedroom, took the clothes and was literally on the doorstep into the cellar holding the clothes in his hands. He said:
‘I am done…’ I said: ‘What do you mean by done?’ I could not see any wounds on him, nothing. His legs began to sink under him. I took him by the arm – he sat down on the second last step.
I sat down near him. I hugged him and I saw some blood on my hands – it turned out that he had a shrapnel wound to the chest. I started screaming. He was wheezing – and that’s it. 10-15 minutes and he was dead. That was the end.
He is my guardian angel. For everyone, for children, and for grandchildren, and for me. Everyone at work was shocked.
There was probably a kind of a warning. I was in Zaporizhzhya. He was lying on a hammock here between the trees. There was a water pit next to him. The pit was without water and one could hide in it. There was a small ladder, a chair there.
He said: ‘I thought I would make it there to hide.’ Well, an explosion thundered so strongly! He said: ‘It was not possible to hide. The shock wave just swept me away.’
Explosions thunder almost every day. On the 19th, a man was killed in his own vegetable garden. An elderly woman was in the house and a shell flew into the window and killed her. I’m here like in hell. It is scary, just awful here. I just go out of my mind with worries here.
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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