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Eight days in the ice-cold cellar

Antonina Vakulenko from Velyka Dymerka in the Kyiv Region found herself under occupation with her 30-year-old son, who uses a wheelchair. They hid in the cellar for over a week and prayed to God that the invaders would not find them.

They covered the child’s mouth so that the Russians would not find people in the cellar

This is the story of Nadiia Makartseva, a village Velyka Dymerka resident who spent almost a month in the occupation. The Russians she had to communicate with said they were forced to fight. But this did not prevent them from shooting people on the roads, looting, and acting like they owned people’s houses.

‘With a white scarf towards Russian tank’

Maryna Belkova lived in Bohdanivka, Kyiv Region. She had to ask permission from the Russian military to evacuate her family. Her son hung white ribbons on the car, and Maryna walked in front with a white scarf in her hands. The Russians took away the son and husband of her relative. Their fate, like the other missing men, is unknown.

Viktoriia Ivlieva: ‘I would never defend Russia’

Journalist and photographer Viktoriia Ivlieva calls herself a “bad Russian” and dreams of seeing the president of her country in court.

‘The Russians mindlessly destroy everything around,’ — Mariia Karandiuk, Zalissia

She was born in 1941 and survived the German occupation and exile. During World War II, the Germans almost burned down the warehouse where she was with her mother. In 2022, ruthless invaders came to Ukraine again. Now peaceful Ukrainians are being killed by Russians.

‘They burned down the house in front of the neighbor’

Step by step, Aniuta Myronets, a pensioner from Velyka Dymerka, is restoring everything the Russians destroyed. She borrowed money to patch the house and clean up the yard. While she was evacuated, Russian soldiers lived in her home. They kicked out the neighbor from her place and burned it down in front of her.

‘My three-year-old son says: Putin should be buried in his bunker — then there will be no war’

Teacher Alina Veshchuk lived in Horlivka (Donetsk Region) until 2015. Then she fled the occupation to Kramatorsk. In 2022, history repeated itself again... She says that back in 2014 she already understood how the enemy was fighting: “Friends saw “Grad” (multiple rocket launcher) drove into the field, shoot at Toretsk, where the Ukrainian army was, then this “Grad” turned around and shot then back at Horlivka: the enemy wanted people in Horlivka to think that it was Ukrainian army shot back at them”.

The Russians shelled the cellars in which people were hiding

Kateryna Rakhmatulina was not evacuated from Velyka Dymerka because she could hardly walk. They hid in the cellar with her eldest grandson, and the house above them bounced from constant shelling. Their neighbor was shot because he refused to give the Russians his sneakers. Catherine says that it was a miracle that she did not die.

‘We were nothing and nobody. We were a human shield for the Russians’

Nadiia Korcheva is from the village of Zalissia. Her blind sister died in a nearby house from hunger and cold. Nadiia was able to bury her only after the de-occupation. The Russians smashed everything around, robbed homes, mined vegetable gardens, and put up land mines. “But I carried on propaganda with them. I tried to convince them to surrender. I talked about our state,” — says the brave woman.

‘My husband and daughter wanted to get to Brovary on foot’

Valentyna Bas, a resident of Zalissia village, went to work in Brovary on 8 March. On the same day, her village was occupied by the Russians. The woman tried in vain to rescue her family. In desperation, Valentyna's husband and daughter decided to walk to Brovary, but Russian soldiers detained them.

In the shelter, my daughter cared for her toy

Olena Poliakova is from Kharkiv, Saltivka [a large residential district]. She talks about the courage of the eleventh graders who rushed to help the victims. About life under shelling in the school basement. About the driver who took a chance and miraculously evacuated them to the station. Despite the nightmare she survived, the trauma, and two surgeries, she hopes that Kharkiv will recover and become even better.

‘It felt like the Lord salvaged people’

From the beginning of the war, the son of Liana Florynska from Vyshhorod [Kyiv Region] was engaged in volunteer activities. He miraculously managed to stay alive when the Red Cross car came under mortar fire. Liana herself almost became a victim of the Russian bombing. She left the house a few minutes before the shell hit her apartment building.

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