What was it like to be on the other side of the border with Crimea on February 24? “Very scary,” says Oksana Matsokina. She left Kozyryka for her grandmother's funeral on the 22nd. She saw thousands of military vehicles along the roads, but her relatives on the other side of the border told her it was a drill.

On her way back, Oksana was near the border when the invasion began. She saw with her own eyes the first volleys of dozens of Grad rockets fired toward Ukraine. Oksana managed to get deep into the peninsula, where she spent two months saving money for a long journey through Russia and the Baltic states. It was only in April that she returned to her home village, to her school, where she resumed her duties as principal.