Topic: Ukrainian Women

My name is Yulia, I’m 30 years old, and I can’t say exactly where I’m from anymore. The Russians took my house for the first time in 2014. I was born and raised in Yalta, moved to Kyiv at the age of 17 when I entered the university. I still haven’t been able to work out the problem of the lost house, even with a psychologist. As soon as my psychologist asks about Crimea, I’m starting to cry. Now I’m writing this and roaring too.

I am 36 years old, was born in Kyiv, and lived there until recently. I am not married, I take care of a 96-year-old grandfather with dementia, a slightly younger grandmother, two cats (one with urolithiasis). I draw vector pictures for sale, old people are paid a good pension, they somehow managed before the war.

Almost a month of war has passed. I’m used to air alarms and air defense. There is no fear, only a reflex – to take cover. And if the air defense – move away from the windows. Odessa was shelled by a Russian ship from the sea the other night. I live close to the beaches, and around five in the morning I woke up from a hellish cannonade. But I was drinking corvalol at night, and I just couldn’t get up physically. I’m lying down, I hear these explosions and I think: I need to get up, wake up my mom, and then I think: well, fuck into the house, that’s how it will be, I’m tired.

I am 35 years old. I have been living in Odesa since I was 17, before that I lived in Mariupol. I work as a data analyst. I live with 3-6 cats – depending on how it turns out to attach them. On February 24, I woke up to a call from my mother, that the war had begun. We discussed this possibility before, but I didn’t want to believe it in any way. That morning I had no stock of food, there was only enough cat food for two days, antidepressants were running out. And I’m lying in bed, hugging the cat, I hear the factory being bombed nearby, and I can’t get up. I lay there for half a day, and then I forced myself to pack that damn disturbing backpack and tape it up the windows.

I’m Sonya. In April, if I’m lucky, I’ll turn 27. I am from Kyiv, but for the last couple of years, I have lived in three cities: Odesa, Kharkiv, Kyiv. There are people I love living in each of them. I am an anarchist, so I have never harbored patriotic feelings, but my loved ones now wear machine guns, uniforms, and yellow-blue chevrons. And I’m wearing plitonoski [basics for bulletproof vests], first aid kits, and tactical gloves for them.

Hi, I’m Nastya, 22 years old. My life in Kyiv was quite carefree — if you look at it now, then for sure. I had a good job, a beautiful apartment. Two weeks before the war passed on nerves because of the escalation, but I did not believe that Russia could attack, I did not want to.

I’m Sasha, I’m 22, and my city is no more. A week before the war, I had nightmares and woke up in tears. “Just in case,” we started making a list of things and a plan of action. At 05:30 on February 24, I woke up and heard from my husband: “It’s started.” Somehow, immediately, without explanation, it became clear what exactly had started. There was no point in going to another area because the attacks were almost all over the country.

I am an executive producer of a major international production. I shoot commercials and movies. Now I’m like in the movies myself. In a very, very scary way. We were on vacation with the children when we found out about the war. Our return tickets were cancelled and we had to stay abroad. Our relatives, friends, friends, employees are in bomb shelters, someone managed to leave. Someone died.

My whole life is an attempt to escape from violence. The father, according to the textbook, isolated the mother and subdued her. The child, that is, I was part of the plan “you will not run away, wife.” Sleep deprivation, flinching at every knock, deprivation of money, food, beatings, hospitalization, marital rapes behind the wall, poor conditions in which it was necessary to exist, study, be a good girl. Neighbors, relatives, other people who can’t help with anything, with their problems, requests to suffer more quietly, not to scream at night when they try to break the wall with your head. Useless militia.

My name is maria. I am 28 years old. I am originally from Sevastopol, but I have lived in Kyiv for the last 5 years. The roots of my whole family are in Russia. Great-grandfather came to rebuild Sevastopol after the war, then took the whole family here. Every year on May 9, he took me to the Victory Day parade. And I always knew that the most terrible thing that can happen in a person’s life is war. I looked at the veterans, I saw that every year there were fewer of them. I was proud that I was the daughter of the people who saved the world from the “fascist infection” at a huge, simply monstrous price. Like many other Ukrainians, on February 24, I woke up to the sound of an explosion. In Kyiv, at 5:30 a.m.,