The beginning of the war did not take me by surprise — the impending disaster has been hanging in the information space since at least January. In February I did everything, except that she didn’t make a will. I went to the hairdresser and salon beauty. I called all my friends — I promised someone something and didn’t give it back. As a woman with a Soviet past, she paid for an apartment.

I am a developer, I have been living in Kharkiv for 10 years. On the 24th I woke up and saw a bunch of notifications in the Nekhty channel that the war had begun. I didn’t hear any explosions. Surprisingly, I didn’t panic — they say people with chronic anxiety behave calmly in such situations. I digested this information, woke up the young man with the words “sunny, wake up, just don’t worry, but the war has begun.” Only now do I realize how stupid it sounds.

I’m scared. This fear is probably with me for the rest of my life. And you can’t calm yourself down with arguments, or reflections, or anything. For two months now, this is the only constant emotion. We managed to leave from Irpen.

The girl Sonia, who was once 21 and had a cheerful happy youth, is no longer writing to you. A woman writes to you. I’ll start since my family and I were not affected, that’s why I thought I didn’t have the right to share your experiences. I am alive, my loved ones are alive, which is why I constantly feel a hellish sense of guilt in front of the victims. Yes, a rocket hit my house, but it doesn’t matter at all. I am relatively safe near Kiev.

Hi, it’s me, Anya from Kharkiv. My story about the war began in Georgia. On February 23, I had a return ticket to Kiev. I had already checked my suitcase into the luggage and was waiting for my plane in the departure hall with my son and husband. It was about 11 pm. Before that, the flight had already been postponed for 12 hours, and we were waiting for the landing again.

I am 26 years old, Russian, I have been living in Ukraine for a year, I moved here to my husband in Ivano-Frankivsk. When I just moved in, I was soaked in the moronism of Russian propaganda and thought that I would almost be eaten here for the Russian language. I went everywhere only with my husband.

I don’t know if it will be useful. But in any case, thank you for what you are doing. And of course, for the opportunity to reflect a little. It’s hard for me to listen to songs in Russian. Sometimes even if they are sung by Ukrainian performers who openly talk about the war and help in every possible way Ukraine. I won’t buy a book in Russian anymore. I’m sorry every time I watch videos of Russian bloggers, because I know that for my viewing of They receive money from Ukraine.

I want to start with a message that I sent to my sister in Moscow back in February. “I’m going to write to you now as a person who lives for one hour, who can lose his home, relatives, and life itself every minute. There have been various turning points in our 1300-year history. And now it’s like this, when people suddenly realize who they really are. You can vote for the Kherson People’s Republic today at gunpoint, tomorrow — for Kharkiv, the day after tomorrow — for Chernihiv. But the true events of these days will forever remain in the genetic code of people. And when the next historical crossroads comes again, people will remember who they are. This is the genetic code of the nation.”

The morning of February 24 began as usual — I’m sitting in the kitchen in a bathrobe, cooking coffee for myself and my mom, who stayed the night with us. The baby goes to kindergarten by 8 am, the eldest goes to school by the 2nd lesson. And then the siren sounds. We look at each other with horror with mom and can’t believe what is happening. After 10 minutes, they wrote to me that children were not accepted to kindergarten, and my mother was informed that the work was canceled — we were attacked, the war.

My name is Julia. I’m from Kiev. I don’t have a special story, we were just lucky. But I want to write a lot. What’s inside. What hurts. It hurts, although, thank God, everything is fine… On the first day of the war, when I feverishly threw my underpants and socks into a bag, my mother-in-law called and asked if I needed caps for rolling. I hung up and asked: “Are you serious now?”. “I’m trying somehow to distract myself,” she replied after a pause.