Alisa Hetman knows what war is not from the news. In 2023, her godfather was killed at the front. She speaks about it with that inner emptiness left by the loss of a loved one.

In Sumy, the girl lived for a long time under constant russian shelling. “Shaheds,” missiles, “Lancets” flew over the city every day. She recalls how two enemy missiles hit the center, and another one landed near her school. After that, her parents decided: Alisa had to leave. Now she lives in Ternopil with her father, while her mother stayed in Sumy with two dogs and five cats she could not abandon.

Alisa says: the family very much hopes to reunite, to bring her mother together with the animals. She believes it is only a matter of time.

Alisa told her story in Zakarpattia, as a participant of the program “Peaceful Rest for the Children of Ukraine”, organized by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation.