“So everyone is already used to the fact that they are shooting somewhere”

    It used to be an urban-type settlement [Svitlodarsk]. Now it seems to be considered a town. The town is small and is located next to power plant, which gives us electricity. 

   It was so fortunate that I left for Kharkiv just a day before the war began. I was just so lucky that my father had to go to Kharkiv on a business trip. He took us all and we drove off. And that weekend we stayed there to spend two years in Kharkiv. While all sorts of terrible things were happening there, we stayed away. And then I came back to my hometown, and everyone was not really concerned there. Everyone was accustomed to the fact that shooting was somewhere, and somewhere there was not any. Shooting was targeting the buildings, and the town in general. 

   There is no such thing now. They shoot somewhere outside the town now. And they used to shoot at people. I have my grandfather there. Some shell fragments hit him and he fell. When I walk around and play with friends, we can hear how they starts firing somewhere out of town. And we don’t just walk in the town, because the town is small. We can walk and play outside the town. Checkpoints are everywhere. There is a destroyed house on my street, which a woman left. It was bombed too; the whole roof was bombed. 

Then we left for Kyiv again, for several months. Then we came back. We left for Russia. We travelled a lot and tried to leave those places, but in the end, we came back and decided to change our hometown in order to make it beautiful, so that people would not go and think: how unlucky we are here. And so that they could enjoy life, so that they do not pay attention to all this destruction and ruins. To have it all fixed and restored.