Tata, Kharkiv/Poltava

I’m staying at home. Just the thought that our apartment could be robbed by looters makes me sick. There is no way to take things out, there is no car. The first floor, there are no bars, the door is not a problem. We are six women, one man and two dogs with chinchilla. Scary.

So we spent more than a month: in the corridor, next to the load-bearing walls. They did not go down to the basement, because in case of a collapse, it is more realistic to get out of the windows.

The very thought that Kharkiv will be under the invaders makes one shudder. Cities under occupation are branches of hell. Our women are being raped by Russian soldiers. Many simply do not survive, they are killed. 11 girls were raped in Bucha. Only three were saved. They were sewn up. FOR-SHI-LI. Tell me, is it possible to forgive this? Is it possible to forget this? What kind of fucking soldier’s honor are we talking about? And after all, these are someone’s sons, husbands, brothers. Biomusor.

A week has passed since I sent you my story. We had to flee to Poltava. On the night of April 8, the Russians began to destroy my district, Saltovka. On April 7, there was the Annunciation, and since Russians are pious people, they decided to make us a wonderful gift: at two o’clock in the afternoon they dropped a cluster shell on my neighborhood. How the cassette projectile works, you can read in Google. At that moment we were on the street, thank God, near his entrance. First we heard a powerful explosion somewhere in the distance, and then, you know, like a wave, it began to approach us — closer and closer. All this happens in a matter of seconds: a lot of random explosions from all sides that thicken towards the epicenter. We tear our claws and run into the entrance. One of the shells exploded near my house, a fragment hit me in the leg, I received a slight concussion: dizziness, blocked ears, ringing, vacuum in the head. We immediately bought tickets to Poltava — where there were tickets for the near future, what we had money for, that’s what we bought. On Lviv, for example,
we don’t have the means.

I think I’ve come to my senses a little bit, but I can’t find the words… We left our home, everything that was. What we have been building for so many years, what we loved, is an apartment of 62 sq.m, where five people lived. The Rashists started shelling our neighborhood with such frenzy, with such hatred that our nine-story building was just shaking, the window flew out on the balcony. It’s hard to explain. Until you feel it yourself, you won’t understand.

Let’s be honest, this is a war. There is no need to get carried away with vanilla news that someone is partially resuming work there and everything is fine. Clouds are gathering over Kharkiv. Chemical weapons, I think, are waiting for Kharkov. Nothing will stop the Rashists, Kharkiv is, bitch, a bone in Putin’s throat, in the fucking Russian army. I don’t want to restrain myself in saying: if I survive this war, if I will be able to give birth to a child, I will raise him with hatred for everything Russian. And I’m speaking Russian only now, with you. This is a principled position. I’ve always been tolerant of Russians, but now it’s hate in full, and I don’t blame myself for it. My life was taken away from me, all my dreams.

I live like this now: I opened my eyes — and thank God. I don’t make plans. In Poltava, we were sheltered for two weeks. There are five of us, among them a child and a grandmother, she is 72 years old. There are three of us working, but it’s impossible to get a job in another city, Poltava is
a small city, it’s not Kharkiv. We are all officially settled at home, and there are heavy fines for illegal work in Ukraine. And now we’re all in a simple, you can’t fire us. I don’t know what to do. I think about home every day, I don’t like anything, no other city. I just want to go home.