‘Having lost my daughter, I became indifferent to everything’

Olha Surkova:

Previously, everything used to operate at our place. We had a bakery here and a good production plant. Packaged Yuzovski sunflower seeds were produced here too. We also had a hospital that was in a very good shape as it was a district hospital and people were coming from all over the district.

The new town was hit very hard. It used to be the most prosperous part. We had ATB [food store], a luxurious restaurant and a new market there. All that was wiped out completely. Just the old town remained. All people mostly live here. There are only a few people living there, in those large five-storey buildings.

Shellfire began. Shelling… We were at home. People in the hostel started to panic. They all left immediately, on the first day. We lived under the staircase for a week. We covered it with mattresses and had food, water and everything there. During the first year, we made some jarred food on open fire. We were squeezing tomatoes. All that was made outdoors. We did all that there.

In the first year, we did not have water supply in the town that is why (it is good there are water wells) we travelled quite far for getting water and delivered water ourselves. All this [jarred food] was pre-cooked on open fire.

I work as a nurse in the traumatology department of Krasnohorivka hospital. In the first two years, we received a lot of civilian casualties. This is scary. Scary to see those wounds. It took a long time to heal, we were taking care of them for a long time.

‘It bangs’ as my kid says. ‘Mommy, does it bang?’ I say: ‘It bangs, sonny’ – ‘Is it far?’ – ‘It’s far away’. I wish we would not hear it at all. At first, it made us very nervous. We would sit and wait for the evening when that banging used to begin. ‘Has it started, mommy?’ – ‘It has’. We would sit and wait it out until it all calmed down, thank God. In the morning, it was exactly the same: half past five in the morning and the banging starts again. We would sit and wait till seven o’clock, till half past six – here comes the banging again.

It fell in the street. A shell hit and all the fragments were flying in here. All the windows were blown out, the TV set was smashed to pieces, the clothes were damaged. We threw everything away. It was probably about six o’clock in the evening, and we were dressed. We were just having some rest time. And when the wave began, we did not understand it at first. Then another wave came. It is good that we have a partition wall in the corridor, and we ran into the corridor… The walls are good. We were standing there until it all ceased. Everything was in shell fragments, everything was damaged all over.

It is very painful to lose a kid, and all the more so, a grown up. To raise them, to bring them up, to give them education and then suddenly your child is just gone in an instant. It feels as if your right hand was cut off.

Danylo Surkov, 8 years old:

I had a sister. She went to Donetsk and a sniper killed her.

Olha:

She was past nineteen years old then. She graduated from the culinary school. She did not have many friends and acquaintances. She was a stay-at-home girl.

Danylo:

She was a kind person. We used to go to the river together. She always used to buy me something tasty.

Olha:

My daughter went to Donetsk to visit her friends. As the forensic experts told me, she was walking and got a bullet wound in her leg, in her left thigh.

The last time she contacted me was on the fifth. ‘Mommy, everything is fine, everything is ok. Don’t be worried, I will come back on the ninth. I will be home right after the holidays.’ Well, good, and then the connection was cut off. I am not aware of the circumstances, of how it all happened.

I could not believe it that she was gone. Even my little son said: ‘Mommy, it is not true, it is not her. Mommy, she will come back, will she?’ I said: ‘Of course she will, sonny, she will be back. Well, this is your sister, everything will be as it should be.’

We have a big age difference between the children, fourteen and a half years. So, my Katia was like a nanny. She always helped me in everything.

At first, I was crying a lot, surely, while recalling her. Then, it became a little easier, gradually. After all, you cannot cry all the time, right? A small kid is growing up and he sees it all. It is better that he sees less of all this.

She was a kind person, not stingy. She always shared things with everyone. When she received her study allowance, she used to spend everything on something for Danylo. She was a kind heart, open and very credulous.

We are very thankful to Rinat Akhmetov for helping us. He sees how badly people live, how hard it is for them to pull through it. How people stoke these cast-iron stoves. There is no coal, no water, and sometimes there is no electricity. He helps people. And who will help, besides him? Who will help?

I wish it all would not be real. It is enough now, enough. People want peace, they are tired of all this.