My name is Kateryna. I am a single mother of many children. I live in the village of Orlovske. There are a lot of abandoned houses her. A lot of people left here. The village looked like a ghost.
The eldest daughter's name is Anastasiia, 9. She goes to school. The middle son, Maksym, is 6 years old. And the youngest son Yaroslav is 4 years old. I was born in Mariupol, studied there at School No. 4. Then I went to Chernihiv. I trained as a pastry chef three years ago and returned here with my children.
I had to leave my village again in 2014 because of what was going on. The attack was fierce. Shells and fragments flew through the house. Sometimes they hit the roof. There was a workshop nearby. One of them got here.
The worst thing was to run into the house and the children scared to death. They started stuttering out of fear. I just can't describe what it was. War is horrible.
It happened either in January or in February 2014. The biggest shelling attacks happened at that time. We raised our heads and we could see shells flying over our heads. We sat and prayed that it wouldn't fall… I wasn't afraid for myself. I was afraid for the children. Their mental health was damaged.
Psychologists came to us here and talked to them. Despite that, they still behave strange from time to time. We came here in the spring. It was 2015-1016, and things were getting better, I guess. We could still hear some banging sounds even though the fields were cleared. And the children immediately fell down and started shouting, "Mum, we are being fired at!" I said, "No, we're not. Military men are just clearing the field somewhere."
There was a workshop, a farm, a canteen, a shop, and a kindergarten here. Our big village was blooming. There were many children, elderly and young people. Most of them had to abandon their homes because of the war. Some people come and look after the houses. But no one wants to live here anymore. Only pensioners remained.
Pupils went to school in Pavlopil. So people did what they could and left wherever they could. Some went to Talakivka. Some went to study in Kyrylivka.
We manage to pull through, because we have a farmstead and a vegetable garden. We try to sell what we can. There is no other way for us. Now it has got very tight with the selling. Summer residents used to come and buy our food. We had some kind of income. And now the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is mostly the only reason we are not starving. We have no income.
We can't get a job anywhere here. Going to another city is not an option. It is very hard. If you rent an apartment in the city, you must leave your home. Burglary rate has increased right now because of this situation. People left for a week. When they came back, their housing has already been looted. It's hard to leave home.
We dream a lot of things. The most important thing is to end the war. If it wasn't for the war, everything would be fine.
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