Stories that you confided to us
In 2014, my daughter left Donetsk, where she had lived for 11 years, and moved here to Toretsk. There was shelling in Petrivskyi district, so they stayed at my place.
My daughter worked in the kindergarten. Once in the area of coal mine No. 21 some shells fell, and some flew over the kindergarten. It was very scary. We were worried about small children. And so, they decided to come to us.
We are very close to those villages where hostilities are taking place, so we often hear explosions. During the bombing people were killed near the market area and in private houses sector. A young guy and a man. A wife was buried under the ceiling that collapsed and her husband rushed out to rescue her, but he was killed.
In the past we knew the words “war” and “shelling/shooting” only from books and movies. Now, we actually live amidst all this; we see it and hear it. It’s very scary. You won’t wish it on anyone. The worst thing is that there is no normal life. We are in stress all the time. We worry about the children all the time. We send them to school and are constantly waiting for a call from the teacher who would say that they need to be picked up urgently. Therefore, our situation here is very difficult.
Sometimes, when we hear some shots and explosions somewhere far away, we often do not even pay attention to it.
…I felt very bad that day. I have vegetative-vascular dystonia. I phoned my husband and we were talking. But in the depths of my soul, I felt something. It was only later that I began to analyse it. At night, when I got a call at 20 minutes past midnight, it was a blow, it was a shock... It is difficult for me to describe this state.
The last time I spoke to him was at twenty-one hours and twenty-one minutes. I remember all this. He asked, ‘How are the grandchildren? How are things? What?’ I told him, ‘Sasha, I feel very bad, I will go to bed to have some rest.’ And he said, ‘My love,’ that’s how he called me. ‘Everything will be fine with us. Everything will be just fine. I love you.’ These were the last words that he said to me. And then this news came at night...
He was killed by a splinter right in the heart, in the courtyard of his mother’s house. Whether he went out for a smoke, I don’t know. He was in the yard, on a bench – and it was a direct hit. A neighbour’s house was hit on the roof and all the shell fragments flew towards our yard. A direct hit to the heart killed him...
I need to live on. I have a daughter and grandchildren, whom he loved very much. I can’t even describe how he loved them. I need to live on, in the name of his memory, for his sake. He was a very good person, a good and well-mannered man. He never did anything bad to anyone, never offended anyone. We have lived a very good life with him.
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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