Alla Kozliuk still remembers how in the summer of 2023, four russian missiles flew low over their village. She could even see their insignia on the body. Twenty minutes later, she heard the news that the capital’s Okhmatdyt hospital had been hit. “You’re standing in the yard, looking up at the sky, and you don’t know where to go. It’s flying right over your head,” she says.

She also recalls the fall of the Shahed in their village. Alla could not sleep: she had a premonition. She laid down for just a few minutes, and that’s when it shook. Her son-in-law ran outside – the debris fell behind the vegetable gardens, glass shattered in the houses. My daughter managed to cover her young grandson with her body. 

But the worst news in the community is the losses. One of those killed at the front was Alla’s nephew, Vania. A handsome 35-year-old man, he had just completed his training and was killed. “Now I’m looking out the window as if he’s going to run. But he won’t,” she sighs.

Alla and her daughter are involved in volunteer work:  they bake pies for the military – with poppy seeds, meat, and cabbage: “We even decorated them with roses.” Every Sunday, Alla lights a candle in the church: “Not just for the war to end. I want it to be a victory. Otherwise, what did our boys die for?”