Marharyta Koshchavets lived with her mother in the small town of Chuhuiv in the Kharkiv region, where almost everyone knew each other. From the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, Chuhuiv became a frontline town, heavily shelled by the enemy. The family endured a month and a half under russian shelling.

"Our last straw was a heavy shelling near us, and my mother got very scared - it was very frightening," the girl recalls. 

Because of the shelling, Marharyta and her mother spent nine days in the basement. The girl adds that they were very lucky - the missile fragments flew in the other direction. Their house did not suffer significant damage. They waited for a week for evacuation because there were no humanitarian corridors. They looked for people who could take them out. At the end of March, such a chance appeared.

They took the bare minimum of belongings and their pet cat. "We didn’t have a clear plan: Where are we going, what are we going to do? There was simply an opportunity to leave.” The third year is already going," Marharyta says about the evacuation into nowhere.