Together with her husband, Anastasiia Honcharova moved to Irpin from the Kherson region a few months before the full-scale invasion. The occupying forces quickly advanced toward Kyiv. The decision to leave Irpin was not easy: “Everyone tried to convince us not to leave, but my intuition told me we had to go. We didn’t have a car, so we walked to the highway. There, we just waved our hands, and luckily, one car stopped. These people became like a second family to us, and we spent five months with them in the west of Ukraine,” recalls Anastasiia.

Later, they returned to Irpin. “We arrived, and there was emptiness: no people, no life, shot-up cars in parking lots,” says the young woman. Gradually, the city began to come back to life. “We saw the first mothers with children, and it felt a little calmer,” says Anastasiia.