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“Your support is like a sign. It's like a strong feeling that everything will be fine...”

“Your support is like a sign. It's like a strong feeling that everything will be fine...”

A family of internally displaced persons from Donetsk Oblast talks about their participation in the Family to Family project, their hardest and happiest day recently, and their dreams

Nadiia loves flowers. And the flowers reciprocate. They grow and bloom profusely wherever they can: on window sills, shelves, and on the table. House plants are her outlet. In Kostiantynivka, Donetsk Oblast, every spring Nadiia planted flowers in the yard near her house, grew vegetables and herbs in the garden, and raspberries and strawberries in the front garden. It seems that everything that has a flair for it sprouts from her light hand. She cherished her family home with special love, putting her soul into it. And she left a part of her soul there, in her home, when in April 2022 she was forced to leave her city with her family.

“Mom, let's get out of here! I don't want to die here...”

“How did we live before the war? We lived well. We dreamed about the future,” says Nadiya. ”We planned to renovate the house. My husband and I were thinking about where our children would study after school. Ilona is 13 and seriously interested in theater. Kirill is very fond of football. He is only eight, but he already wants to connect his life with this sport. I realize now what a happy time it was...”

We are talking in a tiny apartment on the ground floor of a five-story building in Zhytomyr, which the family has been renting for over a year. Only Nadiya, her mother Natalia, and daughter Ilona are at home. Her husband Serhii is at work, and Kyrylo is at a school camp.

Never, in the worst case scenario, did they anticipate that they would have to flee their home. But it happened as it happened...

And “it happened,” Nadiya recalls, back in 2014. 

“We heard all these 'bahs' in Kostiantynivka often,” the woman says. ”Ilona was 4 years old, and I was pregnant with my second child. When I put my daughter to bed, I crossed the crib and myself, thinking: whatever happens, happens. And somehow I got used to it... Because when you hear such sounds often, they become commonplace. So when, on the morning of February 24, 2022, one of the mothers wrote in the school's parental chat that Russia had started a war, I was skeptical: how does she know? The missiles were flying, we heard explosions, but... we already knew that this could happen. And we believed that it would not last long. My husband asked me if I would go somewhere safer with the children. But I didn't want to leave him alone. And I didn't want to leave my mother either - we lived next door, on the same street. I thought to myself, where are we going to go... We have our own house, everything is dear to us, the children have school, my husband and I have jobs. And then - these terrible news... Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol. Our friend and her family lived in Mariupol. They were hiding from the shelling in a church, and then they were blocked in the basement of a house for more than a month. She could not even speak out of exhaustion and fear. And when she regained the gift of speech, she told such horrors. They barely escaped from that hell. And I thought to myself: how is it? Mariupol is such a city, I've been there more than once... Is it really true?”

Before the war, Nadiya worked as a call center operator at DTEK. Serhii, a skilled car mechanic, did not complain about the lack of orders. They didn't live in luxury, but the family always had enough money for basic things.  When the full-scale war started, it became difficult - not only with work, but also with everyday life: power and gas cuts. “But I refused to leave,” she sighs, ”until a Russian missile landed near our house... There were many victims. In my mother's house, the windows and doors were blown out because of the blast wave. Ilona was very scared then: “Mom, let's go, let's get away from here. I don't want to die here!” These words became decisive.”

“I'm probably not going to come home... It's a long way to go...” - said the son

It is difficult to return to those events. And it is impossible to forget. Nadiya remembers every day in detail. How she asked her daughter to feed the dog one last time. “I didn't have the strength to come up, I was crying... The cat was taken, the parrot was taken away, and there was no place in the car for the dog. There are four of us and my mother. We managed to take only the most necessary things.”

She prayed that the car would hold up (they bought it before the war, and this was actually the first time she drove it); she was worried about running out of fuel - there was a rush at gas stations and hours-long lines. She remembers looking for a place to stay during the curfew and being refused even to park in the yard. There were different things...

“We traveled for more than two days. We were exhausted. My son was silent for a long time, looking out the window, and then he said sadly: “We are not going to come home, mom. It's so far to go... And we don't know if our home will wait for us.” It is painful to hear this from a child.

We went to Pishchanka in the Zhytomyr region to visit my mother's sister. We stayed there for six months, and then, due to various difficult circumstances, we had to move to Zhytomyr. It was hard to find a place to live.  And work.  

“Now we all fit in here like a glove,” Natalia says, ”but it's not a problem. Compared to the war, everything seems trivial.”

Natalia is 71 years old. She is originally from Zhytomyr region, but fate threw her to Donbas: she has lived there for almost forty years. “Many people say that Donbas is like this, Donbas is not like that. But I have always spoken Ukrainian there. Both at work and with my friends. And no one ever reproached me for my language. Good, sincere people live there,” the woman says.

The infamous events in Donbas in the spring of 2014 began in Kostiantynivka, Natalia recalls. She says that when she saw our soldiers who came to defend the region, she wanted to support them. She and her neighbor baked pies for them and carried parcels. We met a lot of refugees from Horlivka and Donetsk, all of whom were traveling through Kostiantynivka. “Once I met an old lady who asked me where the train station was. I offered to walk her there. I look and she has different slippers on her feet. It was obvious that she was getting ready in a hurry... Oh, I feel sorry for you, I said. And she replied: “Daughter, I feel sorry for you, too... It will be even worse for you here. You will have a meat grinder here...” That's what my grandmother told me.

And now... oh... half of Kostyantynivka is probably gone... Our relative, a young man, helped repair tanks for our military. For this, the DNR cut off his head... A terrible dream in reality.”

 “Yes, it's impossible to realize that this is happening in the civilized world today,” Nadiya adds, sighing, ”We fly into space, make great scientific discoveries. And... then we kill people. How many young boys and men lie in the cemetery in Zhytomyr. And it is not the only one. There are cemeteries like this all over Ukraine.”

“Anyone who donates money to this project is trying to understand the pain of another...”

Participation in the Polish-Ukrainian project “Family to Family” has been a very significant support for their family, says Nadiya.

“The funds received from the project were spent on our most urgent needs: food, household chemicals, public transportation, and utility costs. My daughter and her theater group were going to a competition in Bulgaria - thanks to this support, we were able to pay for her participation. I would not have been able to do it myself, we simply do not have such funds. And so, the child was at sea, distracted from the war, and got good emotions.

Our income is small. Only my husband works. I have a second-grade disability. I have sore joints... It's hard for me to move around the house. That's why I can't work. My pension is small, and so is my mom's.

My mother's blood pressure is often so high that she lies down and does not get up. And she has panic attacks. She is afraid to stay at home alone. Wherever we go, she goes. The “tail” is ours.

... You try to live like everyone else. You try not to show who you are, that you are an IDP, that your home is not here... But it doesn't always work out. It's hard morally. “It's even harder financially,” she says, ”There are 5 people in the family, and prices are biting. We save on everything. It's good that my husband has hands of gold. He found a used washing machine and refrigerator in an ad. He repaired them and still saved us a lot of money.

That's why this “family” support is like a sign for us, like a feeling that everything will be fine.

I want to thank Polish families for their understanding, for their ability to sympathize, for their care, for their empathy. A person who donates money to this project does not just donate it. They understand who they are helping and why. In this way, they try to put themselves in the shoes of a person in need. To understand how much it hurts.

And I would like to wish our Polish benefactors: God forbid that they ever feel what we are feeling now. I wish them peace. Just peace.”

I ask Nadiya which day was the most difficult for their family recently. “The one that brought the news of the war. And the one when we had to leave our home and make this difficult decision,” she admits.

And the happiest?

“It is now. Because we are here. All together. Happiness is when you can wake up in the morning. I am happy that my daughter took part in a recitation contest and won first place. It seems like a trifle, but now you realize: no, it's not a trifle. I used to think: oh, we need to make repairs, buy some things.  And then we left... and we didn't need anything. They left everything there. The TV, the washing machine, the furniture. Everything we had worked for many years. But, praise God, we were not under occupation, our house was not smashed to pieces, we did not bury our relatives.

And the happiest day will be when we hear that the war is over. That Ukraine has won!”

Along with a hug, Natalia gives us her warm smile. She says that she often sees her home in her dreams.

“Our neighbor in Kostyantynivka, who looks after my and Nadia's houses, feeds the dog, she tells me: “Natalia, when the war is over, we will take the tables outside and celebrate the victory here together. Yes, our home, our homeland is there. We will return to our hometown after the victory. We will!”

Ilona, 13 years old: “I am sincerely surprised by people who ask me: “Why don't you leave Ukraine? When are you planning to leave?” Why should I leave? On the contrary, I want to live in Ukraine. To work in the theater, to continue our Ukrainian tradition. If everyone leaves, who will stay here? What will be left of Ukraine? Who will develop our traditions and culture? Everyone leaves with words: 'What kind of future awaits Ukraine? What kind of future can we have if you all leave? But I don't want to go anywhere! I want to live here and continue to nurture our future.”

29 July 2024
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