What was happening in the occupied village of Yakovenkove in the Kharkiv region in the spring and summer of 2022? Tetiana remembers everything very clearly. From the first days and the march of endless columns of equipment to the day when they put a sack over her head.

Looted and smashed schools, shops. Vehicles hidden from the occupiers in hay. Real hunger, people shot on the roads — this is what the occupied territories of the Kharkiv region lived through.

Tetiana, as the school principal, refused to cooperate with the occupiers and was preparing to teach children according to the Ukrainian curriculum even just outside, in the street. But one day they came for her, put a sack over her head, and locked her in a cell for four days. From there they took her to a town, where she crossed on foot into the free territory and reached Kharkiv.

Tetiana told the whole story in her essay for a competition held by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, becoming one of the laureates.