“We were among the first to take the Zhytomyr highway. It was horror,” – with these words, Olha Khrulenko recalls the first days of April 2022. They maneuvered around “hedgehogs” on the road, abandoned cars, and realized: during the russian occupation of part of the Kyiv region, many lives had been lost here.  Burnt-out cars, twisted trucks, tanks lying on the roadside, and most of all – the heavy, suffocating smell of scorched metal and flesh. “It was the smell of death,” Olha remembers.

In the first weeks of the invasion, refugees from different cities gathered in the Khrulenko household. Women, children, a dog — they all lived together. They were united not only by shared grief, but also by the desire to help one another.

Olha was eagerly waiting for her sister from Kherson, Liudmyla, to arrive. Later, she and her team relocated to the Zhytomyr region and opened a space for women to adapt to wartime conditions. This is how the “Nezlamna_Ya (Unbreakable_I)” hub was created in Radomyshl. Olha joined in: “This is a place where you can get moral relief. This is needed not only during war, it's needed always.”

Olha’s biggest dream is to go to the sea again. In Kokhany, 50 kilometers from Kherson, her sister had a summer house. Every summer, they used to go there together. Now it is occupied territory. “I want our sea to be liberated, to be clean, and for it to be possible once again to just get in the car and go. Without fear.”