"My grandson has fits of hysterics. He screams in his sleep every night"

They were tired of running to the bomb shelter. Five times a day, from the ninth floor downstairs, with a child in the arms, who is less than two years old.

After almost two months of the war, Anzhelika Litvina, her daughter and her grandson left Mykolaiv for a safer place. The child still feels stressed – he screams in his sleep every night.

We lived well. I have a husband, a daughter, and a small grandson who is one [year] and eight months old. I am not employed. I am engaged in raising my grandson. I am already retired. I retired early due to my years of service. I have been engaged in raising the kid. My daughter is on maternity leave and my husband worked at Zoria plant. Everything was fine for us and we are a close-knit family.

My sister called me on the phone and said, “The war has begun.” I did not understand what kind of war she was talking about. I thought she was probably joking. What kind of war? War against whom? It could not be true.

She said, “Yes, against the Russians.” But how? I could not imagine it at all. I could not wrap my mind around it. How? It could be anyone, but not Russian soldiers. Then, basically, they started showing all this on TV. They reported about the air strikes on Kyiv. That was the first thing. Well, and certainly we heard that Kherson had been captured. They began to advance towards Kherson. The city was bombed. I was at home until 17 April. Yes, I was afraid [to leave], although everyone who was with small kids left, while I... Well, I was scared. They kept shooting. It was terrible. At first, they started bombing Kulbakyne, the airfield. There were some terrible explosions there. The houses in that area burned down completely, and we live very close. Not far, well, maybe some three bus stops away from that area.

And when my husband and I went down at night, he said, “They are bombing”. We quickly ran to the basement.

We live in a 13-storey apartment house. The tenants somewhat fitted up the basement there but it still was not suited for it. There are very few bomb shelters as such in our city. One bomb shelter we have is at Vodoliy... We have a sports centre called Vodoliy, which has a very small bomb shelter. As far as I know, it is designed for a hundred people or so. Well, there were the two of us [in the basement], with mattresses and chairs, while other people fitted up their space there. Some of them brought a carpet, a couch or a bed. My husband and I then brought a foldable bed there, as well as some blankets and pillows. It was very cold certainly. The basement was not adapted for it. It was very dusty and it was difficult to breathe there.

The baby was lying in the stroller and we were freezing cold until four o’clock in the morning. After that, we went upstairs surely. Our flat was on the ninth floor and the lifts did not operate.

We had air raid warning sirens five times a day. We were tired of running back and forth with the baby. Believe me, we were tired of running up and down. Everyone who had small children left, especially from our Korabelnyi district. Everyone left at once by car. We had a parking lot next to our house, which used to be full of cars. It got completely empty.

Not a single car was left there. Just imagine an air raid siren waling and we have to go downstairs and out with the kid like this. Then we had some two cases when the window glass shattered. The last explosion was just terrible. I fell out of bed and after that, our patience just ran out... At around 11 o’clock at night, the sirens start wailing. Well, as I said, we hear them five times a day. They destroyed a lot, the entire infrastructure.

We left because there was no water and electricity was cut off often, very often, while we have everything powered by electricity. That is, I used a candle to warm up the child’s meals.

I heated up his food for him that way. On a plate above a candle, you won’t believe it. There was no water. They cut it off. The gas pipe was broken. The place where my husband used to work almost does not have any jobs now. They [the enemy] hit MGZ (Mykolaiv Alumina Refinery). No, not MGZ but Zoria [plant]. Yes, Zoria was hit hard. Zoria plant is not working now. Nika-Tera [port] was destroyed, and Morport was destroyed too.

They also hit the Alumina Refinery, the depot. If we decide to go home, we cannot travel back from Lviv directly. We used to have a direct train from Lviv to Mykolaiv, but not now, we cannot. We will have to make a transfer. The child obviously experienced a lot of stress. I noticed that he is nervous, he has bad sleep at night, and he screams [in his sleep], he still screams. As those severe explosions began, and as the siren wails, he apparently hears it in his sleep and screams. The kid is one year and eight months old. We ourselves are scared too. We kept running out to the corridor.

We have a corridor and so we ran into a small one [small corridor], according to the rule of two walls. We have a two-room flat with a corridor lengthwise. We were told that if something happened, we had to rush out and run to the lifts immediately. Well... because it could be that we don’t have time to go down. We ran out, we rushed out with the kid and a stroller. We wrapped him up and he was screaming, poor boy. So he still has hysterics at night. Severe fits of hysterics...

With his eyes closed. He cannot open his eyes and he screams. Yes, fear and horror.

Rockets flew right above our house. Rockets flew very close. They bombed Balabanivka [village]. There was Balabanivskyi forest nearby. They hit the forest and a house. They hit some residential housing in Balabanivka – a lot of private houses were destroyed there.

And our multi-dwelling houses stand like four candles, 14-storey buildings. Our houses are located near a stretch of open country. So all of them are on an open terrain, unenclosed and unprotected, you know. The house shakes when they fire. It is built of expanded clay (keramzit) blocks. It is not even made of brick, not concrete, but like a mix of sand with expanded clay (keramzit). So the house moves and shakes and that is scary. Prybuzke [village] was destroyed; it was razed to the ground. Zasillia was destroyed too. There was a very large sugar factory there. They got very close and that is why I was very scared. It is very scary, you know. As for our leaving, my son-in-law submitted a request and literally a day later...

People wait for a week, for five days, while we left right the next day. He said, “You are leaving tomorrow.” We were taken out by evacuation buses departing from Nika-Tera. We got on the bus at around eight o’clock in the morning and came to Odesa at around one o’clock in the afternoon. In Odesa, we were waiting for the evacuation train to take us to Lviv. I really want to believe that this will end. I think this will end. I think that our people are still very strong. They are strong in spirit and they will win.