«I never thought that my children would live at a time like this»

My little daughter Violetta is three years old. If it [explosion] strongly thunders somewhere, she wakes up at night and cries, and we then soothe her. It is scary, of course, especially for children.

When I was small, I never in my life thought that my children would live at such a time. We lived in a calm and peaceful environment. We used to play, jump and run around, and now I cannot let the child go anywhere freely and securely, even though there is a school nearby.

In the morning we take them to school, and we pick them up after classes – you never know... It’s scary, of course. I hope it will all be over as soon as possible, so that we could live quietly and peacefully.

In the summer of 2014, I worked at a pig farm. I was going to work. It dawns early in the summer, and the kids decided to accompany me to the church. And when the planes, fighter planes, flew almost over the roof of the house, the children were very frightened. I never went to work that day.

I returned home with the kids. They even hid in the bushes. The roof was damaged. There were many roof leaks everywhere: in the living room and in the bedroom. Then the wall of the kitchen, from the side of the corridor, moved away and there was a huge hole, so that even a child could crawl through. The windows were blown out. We also had an old corridor. There, one window was blown out too. There is a bridge here. Here is our vegetable garden and the river. A shell fell over there. And another one landed across the road, where we live. Shell fragments got stuck at the neighbours’ place and riddled everything.

Both before the war, and now, we are still at home all the time. We cannot even go shopping safely now. We are stopped and asked about our passports all the time. You can’t go anywhere without it.

My niece Arina’s house was burnt down. They lived on another street across the river. Their house and everything inside it burned down. Now they do not have a housing of their own.