“My sister and I started to cry.”

It all started with the fact that something fell or exploded loudly in the early morning. I was nine years old. I got very scared.

I was sitting with my family in the kitchen. Grandfather went outside. All the neighbours went outside. It seems that nothing much had happened, but my sister and I started to cry, and our grandmother decided to leave with us. She still hasn’t told us anything yet.

In the evening, she went into the room and offered to move to another city, in Dnipropetrovsk. We did not mind. We started packing that evening. We left in the morning. Grandfather stayed at home as household had to taken care of.

We came to my grandmother’s sister and stayed at her place. The next morning, grandfather did not answer the phone for a long time. It turned out that shelling was initiated in our village. We were lucky to leave.