Sofia Galaktionova, Lysychansk lyceum № 7 of Siverskodonetsk district of Luhansk region

Teacher who inspired me to write this essay -  Iryna Serhiivna Shelekhova

«1000 days of war. My way»

1000 days of war is more than just a number, it is a symbol of struggle, pain, loss and hope. Each of these days left its mark on the hearts of millions of Ukrainians. The war, which started unexpectedly, turned the familiar world into ruins.  

February 23, 2022 was an ordinary evening. My friends came to my place, we talked a lot, laughed as usual, and planned for the future.

On that day, none of us had any idea that the morning of February 24 would change our lives forever.

On February 24, in the morning, my mother woke me up and told me that the war had started. Her voice was full of fear and anxiety.  My teacher called and told me that no one was going to school.

A minute later, my mother's phone started ringing off the hook. Relatives and friends were calling, asking what to do next.

Our hometown of Pryvillia, in the Luhansk region, was already preparing for the worst. People were running in panic and setting up basements to hide in. On the same day, I heard the first explosions. The military started arriving, with lots of different vehicles.

We went to our ‘shelter’ only when we heard explosions, because our city is small, there was no air raid alarm, only twice we heard it sounding in Siverskodonetsk.

My mother, grandmother and I stayed in Pryvillia with my dog until March 18, 2022. On that day, at about three in the morning, a rocket hit the neighbouring entrance of a five-storey building, there was a strong impact. We got up and ran to the bathroom.  The smell of gas spread throughout the apartment. The windows were blown out.

We quickly took our documents and went to the basement. We all went down in our pyjamas, sliding on the glass. Luckily, there were no casualties, the whole neighbourhood helped to put out the fire and clean up.  

After this incident, my mother received a phone call from relatives from the village of Shypylivka, which is located next to our town. My grandmother's sister suggested that we go to live with them because it was ‘calmer’ there. We packed warm clothes and documents and went to the village.

Indeed, at first it was calmer there than in Pryvillia, but then it became hot.

One day, our friends offered us to move to a cottage with concrete slabs and a basement. It seemed to us that it would be safer to hide from bombs there. We agreed. There were eleven of us.

Every day we could hear planes slowly approaching our shelter.

On May 7, 2022, my mother and I quarreled because she wanted to go shopping by herself, and I wouldn't let her go because there were strong explosions.  When I realised that my mother had listened to me, I calmed down and went to the basement to finish reading a book that distracted me from the terrible events. I finished it, hugged my dog Topa, covered myself with a blanket and fell asleep. My cousin also lay down next to me. The three of us lay there.

But one moment changed my life, that damned 7th of May. A second later, I was lying under the rubble, crushed by slabs, and it was hard to breathe. My sister and I held hands so tightly that I stopped feeling pain.  

I shouted to her that we would survive, I shouted loudly so that they could hear us, that we were alive here. I screamed: ‘Mum!’ My hand held my sister's until the very last moment. Her fingers had been squeezing my hand so tightly just a few minutes ago, but suddenly her grip loosened. I remember her last attempts to breathe.

I felt myself starting to choke, and the smell of blood and gunpowder made it hard to breathe normally. I closed my eyes and felt blood running down my face. They pulled me by my legs. My hair was torn from the plates. 

When I saw everything around me, there was no mum or any of the other eleven, only the soldiers who pulled me out. My Top was there, waiting for me, I took him in my arms and fell on the stones.  

As I found out later, it was an air strike. On that day, my two comrades died in Pryvillia and 60 people died in the school basement of Bilohorivka. A terrible day.  

People took me away. I was walking barefoot, covered in blood, with a broken collarbone and a big wound in my head.  Then a soldier came to us. I asked: ‘Where is mum? Where is everyone?’  He looked down. I understood everything. The military took me without the dog to the hospital in Lysychansk, where I was bandaged and evacuated to the city of Bakhmut. 

On May 8, I decided to call my friend because I only knew his number.  I told him everything, and his mother said she would take me to her place.

On the same day, I was taken from Bakhmut to Dnipro, where I had surgery on my collarbone, a titanium plate inserted, and my head sewn up in a different way. Finally, Maksym, my friend, came with his mother and took me to his place. Now I live in Lutsk with Kateryna, my guardian, and study in the 11th grade. I am doing well. 

To tell my way, I pulled the skin off the wound again. I was one of 11 people who survived. By the way, the rubble is still there, no one has dismantled it yet. My mother and grandmother are still missing.  

What happened to my dog?  He is with me here now, he was passed from hand to hand until he was brought to Lutsk.  

Every day this war becomes an even deeper wound on the body of our country, from the explosions that sound overhead to the silence after another tragedy.

Each of us has witnessed and is witnessing our own pain, but this pain has united us into an unbreakable force that holds Ukraine together today.