Kateryna's village, where she lived with her sisters, grandmother and father, was one of the first to be captured by the Russian military. At first, Kateryna recalls, the Russians did not touch the Ukrainian flag, and it remained flying over the village council for several months. But then total russification began. Children were forced to study in russian schools, and adults were forced to obtain russian passports. Several times Katia's house was searched and interrogated: why the girls were not at school?
At first, Katia and her sisters studied online at the Ukrainian school, but it was too dangerous. The occupiers checked their phones constantly. A few months later, children from the village were deported to russia and Crimea. During such raids, her grandmother hid Katia and her sisters wherever she could: in basements, abandoned buildings, even in a cornfield. One day, her father fell seriously ill, and the family decided they could not wait any longer.
Kateryna told her story during the Blogger Camp, organised by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation in cooperation with the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.
