"We have nothing but wounds"

When the grief happened to us, many friends gave us a helping hand. We have to acquire things all over again.  We were taken out wearing just underwear. People helped us in Kharkiv and Novoaidar, where we were admitted. People brought food and things, because we had no means of support.

We lost our normal living conditions. All the furniture was ruined. The walls collapsed on our heads. We lost everything.

The main thing was that we were alive. A shell exploded in our apartment. My husband was right at the epicenter. The main thing is that he is alive. We stayed here. That is how we live.

The attacks continued for the third week. It was very scary. We hardly ever went outside. We didn't go to work. We didn't go anywhere. We were scared to go to the store. We lived practically in the corridor. I was afraid to go into the rooms.

That night, I was woken up by a fragment blow to the head and realised that I just couldn't get up. We were buried under the debris. The walls collapsed on us.

It was not scary, it was terrifying. Our hair stood on end. I struggled to get out of the debris. The child was by my side. We must have slept very close to each other out of fear. And I was kind of covering for him. He stood behind me. I saw that the legs and arms were intact. My husband was piled up with furniture.

Trying as hard as I could, I pulled him out from under the furniture and saw that his legs were very badly torn. Blood ran like water from the tap. I needed something to bind it up. I had nothing at hand. The walls collapsed into the corridor. There were some things in the corridor. I found a scarf somewhere in the dust. I tied the scar around his feet.

I could not even make a call. I had to shout through the broken window and call for help. There was a cloud of dust. I couldn't breathe. I had to breathe this dust in. We coughed for another week afterwards.

I noticed that there was no window. The sky was starry, and the moon was so large. It was such a horror. The walls in the next apartment were also destroyed. A large field is destroyed and in the middle of this field is a husband, crushed by pieces of furniture.

The child and I slept near the front door, because we considered it a safe place. He slept in the hall, on his usual bed. Our husband is a strong man. He was not afraid of anything.

He was covered in dust. Blood was running down his face. He was buried beneath the furniture. The furniture was very heavy. It was so horrible. I think he was shocked, because he doesn't remember much. He has a barotrauma on two ears. His eardrums burst.

Thank God, he's alive!

People who saw these videos, how we were taken out, what kind of destruction, are surprised that we were still alive there at all.

The front door of the neighbors's house was jammed. They couldn't come right away. When the neighbors pulled up, the child was immediately taken to the basement, because it was intact. And we took care of my husband. My husband was in a very bad condition.

The ambulance arrived, gave him an injection, took him out of the window. It was impossible to pass through the front door. We arrived at the hospital, where he got first aid. Electricity was on and off all the time. It was scary. Windows were flying, and the hospital was horrible.

And the next morning they decided to take us to Novoaidar. He needed a surgery. We have good, wonderful doctors, but they just couldn't operate without light. We picked up the child from the basement. He was staying there with the neighbors. Moreover, the attacks continued, Grads were flying everywhere. It was not scary. It was terrifying.

We took the child and what he was wearing, We went to Novoaidar with practically nothing. We had no money. At the hospital in Novoaidar, people found out about what had happened to us.  Many people came to visit us. They brought us food and clothes. They fed us. Wonderful people live there. I really appreciate that.

But my husband was in a very serious condition. So we decided to take him to Kharkiv, although we had no friends, no relatives, no one there. In Kharkiv, people also treated us well, with understanding. They saw the state we were in. We had nothing but wounds. For three months, my husband was raised to his feet in the Kharkiv regional hospital.

The first days we were just terrible.

The child stuttered, and his vision failed. He got so many frights after that. We are afraid of loud sounds, explosions. When we were in Kharkiv, the slightest sound made us just fall on the floor. We couldn't get rid of that fear.

We are grateful to Rinat Leonidovich for the fact that the child will undergo rehabilitation. The child's health is very important.

We all want peace. We all want this to end and we won't be bombarded again.