Liliya Miletska:
To leave was not a decision of one day. It all was adding up and accumulating day after day. When you cannot sleep at night because you hear explosions. When you realize that the war begins in your city. And you understand that you want to live on, you want peaceful sky, you want to sleep calmly and quietly. You simply fear for your kid’s life and for your family’s life.
This is why we made a decision that we needed to leave. Like everyone else, we thought that it would end soon and we would be back soon. It did not happen so, unfortunately.
I thought that it all passed smoother. We tried to work on this situation, but the video that our son recorded last year at the summer camp… He said so many different words there. It turns out that it was imprinted in the kid’s memory, after all. He saw it all and remembers everything.
Our grandmother still lives there [in Donetsk]. Our son feels upset that he cannot go and visit her. At first, he felt sad about his bed and about his toys. You simply come with one suitcase and the kid has no toys, no bed clothes, nothing. Thank God, there is a peaceful sky above! This is the most important thing – your life is safe. The rest will come with time.
It was scary to take him to a new school. In Donetsk he studied in a Russian-language form, and in Kyiv he moved to a Ukrainian-language school. Well, thank God, we met a very good teacher in the primary school who also had a background in psychology. She helped the child overcome all this and establish contact with classmates.
When I realized that it all was not going to end soon, I tried to show my son the advantages so that he would be less upset and would miss his past life less. I told him: ‘Look, what a school! Look what a good teacher she is.’ Surely, he got accustomed to it over these years.
Mykyta Miletskyi, 13 years old:
At first, I missed my previous life a bit. I thought how I would live without Donetsk, without my friends, but then I stopped thinking about it somehow.
In Donetsk we had a moment when we were near our school. I then finished my second grade and my dad picked me up. Our teacher told us some joke and all of us were laughing and then suddenly we heard some rumble. We thought that the building collapsed. Then, we started following the news on TV and we learned that helicopters and soldiers were attacking us.
When a few days passed, we saw on the news that so many were killed, soldiers, generals. And my dad began to think that we could not live in Donetsk. He said: let's go to the sea to have some rest. It was his plan not to come back here. Dad started looking for an apartment and found it in Kyiv. And we settled there. I began to get accustomed to my new life. I was nervous that I was leaving Donetsk forever, or maybe not.
‘Summer for Children from Donbass’ is a very good project. Children are given such an opportunity in order not to live amid the war, not to live in fear of bullets. To feel like human beings, to find some new friends and simply to have fun.
Liliya Miletska:
Our son was delighted. I saw it myself when we just brought him to the camp. It was a nice camp in the forest with pine trees and nice air. It was such a big real camp.
We were well received by the camp counselors. I realized that I was leaving my child in good hands. He called me once a day or sometimes I called him to find out how he was there. He answered me: ‘Mom, I am fine, bye.’ It meant he was fine there because otherwise he would have called three times a day and asked: ‘How are you there?’ And would have asked to take him home.
And it is great that psychologists worked with him. They did everything in a format of a game, so children did not even notice, did not know that those were the psychologists working with them.
He came from the camp and we felt as if he was a different child. He opened up his talents there, such as acting, musical and dancing talents. Well, not opened up, he did have them previously, but mostly showed them at home with the family, but he was shy to show it in public. And when he came from the camp, he then wanted to take part in everything, in every activity. It all started at the camp.
When I came, the camp counselors told me: he took first place, they danced and sang. Me: ‘Did he? Was it my Mykyta? He sang and danced?’ I was just amazed, surprised. This was thanks to the counselors, thanks to the psychologist, thanks to the organizational approach there, he opened up there like that. And during this year, everything continues this way, and this is just great.
I wish him to be a happy person. Just to be happy. I don’t think about any of his future profession. While earlier I tried to set him up for studies, to push him forward somewhere, now I have my finger on the pulse, but at the same time I try to accept him as he is. To love him as he is. And tell him that the most important thing in life is for him to be happy.
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