Nastya, Rozovka

In February I had to leave Ukraine for Russia because my grandmother was dying there. Even though Russian troops had been gathering around us since December, we did not believe that a war would begin. If they had allowed such a possibility even for a second, I would never have left. My husband and children stayed in Ukraine. It was the first time I left the children for more than a day, and I planned to return in early March.

My husband and I were very tense on February 22 after the news about the recognition of the LDPR, and I changed my plans in Russia — I had to return on February 25. But I didn’t have time.

On February 24, I woke up around 6 a.m. and was already out of habit
I started watching the news. That’s how I found out that Russia had started a war, that Kyiv, Mariupol, and Kharkiv were being bombed. An hour after that, the hospital called me and told me that my grandmother had died. Since then, I have been trying to get to Ukraine to my husband and children.

I left Russia almost immediately because it is impossible to be there. Now I am in Georgia, working as a volunteer and at the same time trying to get a visa to any of the European countries bordering Ukraine by land. So far without success, I do not lose hope.

I am not under bombing and shelling, but I’m going through no less hell now than everyone else in Ukraine. My children, my husband, my friends are there now, not far from Mariupol, in the zone of active hostilities. Our village was bombed, although I don’t understand what can be bombed there. The population of the village is about 3,000 people, we have two schools, a kindergarten, several shops, an agricultural enterprise, and a railway station. It’s all. Nevertheless, Russian troops almost completely destroyed one of the streets, shelled residential buildings, including the house of our friends, where my family was at that moment. Two Russian shells hit their house.

I do not know what happened to the house in which we lived, my husband has not been there since February 26. Maybe he’s gone too. Like everything, we’ve been building all these years.

My children are now relatively safe (as far as possible in the zone of active hostilities), but they do not have light, water, Internet. No humanitarian corridors pass through us, food and medicines are not delivered. From March 2 to March 14, I had no communication with them at all, now I manage to talk to my husband at least once or twice a day.

Mariupol is the nearest city to us, we went there for shopping, to the doctors, just for a walk. This year my daughter went to the 1st grade, and we had a medical examination before school in the very hospital that the Russians destroyed. At the end of December, I took the children to the Mariupol Drama Theater, which also no longer exists. All the places I see in the photos from Mariupol are familiar to me, I recognize every street, and I have some memories associated with almost everyone. My husband has relatives living there, with some of them there has been no connection since the beginning of the war. We don’t know if they managed to get out if they are alive at all.

I hate my Russian passport. If it wasn’t for the fact that I might still need it to get home, I would have gotten rid of it long ago. If until the end of February I still had some feelings for Russia as the country in which I was born and grew up, now there is only hatred.

Thanks. It was important for me to write this.