Ksyusha, Ivano-Frankivsk

I didn’t watch the news often, I didn’t even have a TV, but it came from the people around me very clearly. Taxi drivers, acquaintances, strangers, with whom I crossed paths on trains or planes, some relatives. All these disparaging “Ukrainians”, “yes in the West some Benderites are Nazis”, “yes, Ukraine can’t do anything without us”, devaluation of the merits of Ukrainians, even in sports and other spheres. I remember hearing from
someone that Mila Kunis is Russian. I ask, they say, why would, she is Ukrainian, and in response to me: “Yes, it’s still one Russia.” In sports, for example, when Ukrainian biathletes took places, it was immediately: “Here are our good fellows!”. This is what is absorbed into the subcortex. It took a couple of days to get used to it. During the year of my life, no one, not once, anywhere reproached me with my nationality or language (Ukrainian I didn’t know at all). On the contrary, who could, explained something in Russian, someone he just fanned me with warmth and attention so that I would take root here.

I didn’t believe the US talk that they were about to attack. And then, on the 24th, my husband wakes me up at 5 in the morning. Collecting emergency suitcases, going to the store — “unforgettable emotions”. In the store, no one fussed, did not run past the queue — I managed to see enough of those fighting for buckwheat and toilet paper in the 2014 and 2019-2020 in Russia. I just couldn’t put it inside myself: how, how can you keep calm in such a situation? And then the realization has come that people are used to it. We’ve been used to it since 2014. Now And I’m used to doing everything in the dark after 22:00, I’m used to reading the news about the bombing, running to a bomb shelter with sirens or hiding in the hallway if the siren caught me at home. One day I woke up from an explosion, it turned out, they were finishing off the airport. It was scary, I can’t even imagine what people in eastern cities and towns are experiencing…

Another day, relatives from Kiev wrote to us — their house was shelled. Thank God, everyone was alive.
We try to help as much as we can, sometimes we are free, sometimes we just help passers-by on the street who came from the eastern part of the country, sometimes we provide financial assistance. I try to convey all the warmth that I have received from Ukrainians and Ukrainians this year.
I stopped to communicate with a part of relatives — for your peace of mind. At the moment when my father-in-law’s house in Kiev was shelled, one of my relatives boasted that oil and gas were pumping to Europe like that. Like, whatever Did Ukraine do all this? I just sent this relative to fuck, sorry for the French.
I’m trying to live in a new way, pay attention for every little thing. Everything has begun to bloom, such beauty, but still the thought does not leave us that somewhere on the other side of the country people at the same moment are not admiring the blooming cherry plum and cherry, but are trying to survive, getting out from under the rubble … I listen to the stories of relatives who are free to Poland and online, providing psychological assistance, and the hair stands on end. But the hatred that accumulates because of these inhumans, because of all crimes against humanity, gives strength. The forces that we will spend on helping people and restoring our home. I’ve always thought that I won’t have to tell my future children about the horrors of war, as my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers did. How wrong I was.