It is 14 kilometers as the crow flies from Maryna Kirsanova's house in Kharkiv to Belhorod. So, on the morning of February 24, 2022, she was one of the first to realize that a full-scale war had broken out. Houses were burning and shells were exploding all around ... Maryna Valentynivna asked her ex-husband to take her two sons to the safer Svitlovodsk, and she stayed in Kharkiv with her parents. At first, they hid in the basement, then lived in the subway for almost a month. And then they returned home. Maryna Valentynivna is an English teacher, so in April, she continued teaching children. Maryna Kirsanova left her hometown in the spring of 2023; she hadn't seen her sons all these months, and she was psychologically unable to withstand the brutal shelling of Kharkiv anymore.