I have worked in the same place for over 30 years. We live in the village and have a vegetable garden. We had a small farm, but after the occupation, everything was smashed—the outbuildings were destroyed. Now, we are only repairing the house a little.
February 24, 2022, and the First Days
My granddaughter turned one year old on February 6. On the morning of February 24, while it was still dark, I woke up to loud, unusual sounds. We all ran to the window and saw missiles flying. It was terrifying and confusing.
We immediately started calling relatives. My brother is in Chernihiv, and I asked them to come to us so we could all be together. The child is small—we didn’t know what to do. We fueled the car just in case. It was such chaos.
In the first days, loud explosions could be heard all around—in Shestovytsia and in Kyianka. No one knew how far away they were or how close. I still had procedures to attend at the medical point—I walked creeping along the fences because we were afraid to walk openly through the village. Practically no one went out; everyone stayed home. We gathered for small meetings just to discuss things somewhere.
We did not make the decision to leave. We hoped that everything would end, that it would somehow be settled, that they would negotiate. We were waiting. But at the last moment, a relative called and said he could pick up my daughter and granddaughter and take them somewhere towards Borzna. That was March 2. They were supposed to leave the next day, but they didn’t make it—on the morning of March 3, the occupiers entered the village. Thank God my daughter didn’t manage to leave, because that day people were shot on the Kulykivka highway.
All this time we hid in the cellar. In our village, these cellars are small and shallow. They are not bomb shelters. As soon as an air raid siren started, even in the middle of the night—at three or four o’clock—we would take the child from the crib. She slept dressed, her jumpsuit just unzipped. We would grab her and go down to the basement.
March 3–5: The Occupiers in the Village
The occupiers entered on the morning of March 3, at three o’clock. I missed them by 15 minutes—a neighbor said I had just driven home, and he went the other way and ran right into them.
My house is in the middle of the village; they entered from the edge. People who lived on the second floor saw them. But we couldn’t see anything from the cellar.
Before they came to us, we had gone into the house. Then our exit was blocked—an APC (armored personnel carrier) drove into the yard and started shooting. My husband begged: “Don’t shoot from here, there will be return fire. We have a small child, and we won’t be able to get out.” No one paid attention. As soon as they drove out, the return fire hit immediately. They were hit right in front of the threshold, and everything started burning.
The APC began to burn. We couldn’t get out anymore—there was ammunition inside, and for about an hour and a half, everything was exploding. Things were flying, windows were shattering, glass was flying into the house. We lay on the floor. Later, when we were cleaning up, right where I had been sitting shielding my granddaughter… My husband and I had placed her between us, with pillows all around. And literally two centimeters from us—a large piece of shrapnel had entered the floor and the bed frame. That must have been the shrapnel that scratched my back.
The occupiers reached us on the morning of March 5. There were four armed men in the yard, two APCs, and a motorcycle. Zeros (circles) were painted in white on the equipment. They wore red armbands—some wore white.
They entered the cellar and said: “Come out, there will be an airstrike now.” My husband pleaded: “Maybe we can stay? We have a small child here, and we need to gather our things.” — “No, get out. It’s not for long, just for two or three days.”
We needed to take warm clothes and medicine. They didn’t let us into the house. An armed man stood on the threshold—a Tuvan, he didn’t understand Ukrainian. I begged: “I’ll just take the bag, it’s standing around the corner. There are baby things there.” I pointed to the child. He nodded: no. I said: “I’ll just take it.” And he struck me between the shoulder blades with his rifle butt. I thought: he doesn’t care that I have a child in my arms.
My mother could barely walk; her legs hurt. They dragged her at gunpoint. I remember there were so many of them—equipment stood in every yard, gates and doors were open. They were leading us out all around, and they were climbing over fences, driving in their APCs and small motorcycles. Many of them. They were all Tuvans.
They stood on all sides, marching us in the center. It felt like being led through a living corridor. They were standing everywhere, machine guns pointed all around. They followed you with their guns wherever you walked.
At the turn to the school, they had smashed the fence and dug trenches. One was sitting on a trench—he had fit into a computer chair, broken off the arms, and sat curled up. He had a helmet on top. You couldn’t see their eyes. Such a face: two narrow slits instead of eyes, a flattened nose, a strip instead of a mouth. And no emotions. Even when they speak—there are no emotions.
One said to my husband when my mother couldn’t walk faster: “It’s easier for me to slaughter a chicken than a human. But it’s all the same to me—a chicken or you. Equally easy.”
After this, my granddaughter wouldn’t go to men for six months; she was very afraid.
They took us all—my husband, son-in-law, daughter, they dragged my mother by the arms, the child was in my arms, and a neighbor was with us. All the people from our yard.
When we walked to the school, they didn’t allow us to look around. As soon as I raised my head—immediately: “What are you looking at?”
They took the phones from my husband immediately and smashed them in front of him. When they led us out, they forgot about our phones, but then they took them in the basement. My phone—I turned 50 on February 1, and my children gave me an expensive phone. They took it. Six months after the occupation, someone called my number—it was active, but the message said: “Insufficient funds.” It was probably lying in a yurt somewhere.
Before that, reconnaissance had come in—there were two of them. One asked for medicine: “Don’t you have medicine? A comrade cut his finger there.” My husband said: “We have nothing, everything is in the house, they won’t let us in.” And he said: “Those girls standing there—hide them, because coming up behind us are ones who will…” My husband asked: “Where can I hide her? We are just sitting in the cellar.” I pulled an old scarf over my daughter so she wouldn’t stand out so much.
My son-in-law had been in the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation). We were afraid for all the documents. The documents remained at home, but he remembered that photocopies were somewhere in a dresser. They allowed my daughter to run back. She said: it’s good she found them immediately. She grabbed them, hid them in her clothes, and ran back. We burned the military ID card bit by bit later—burning parts, tearing parts, so it wouldn’t be so visible. They searched us periodically.
The First Days in the School Basement
We entered the school—there was a lot of equipment there, and it was so new, everything was painted. It felt like everything had been painted and prepared before this show.
About 360 people gathered in the basement. There were 19 people in my room. There were several rooms. In the large room, there were 139 people, then there were four or five smaller rooms. People were everywhere—in the rooms, in the corridor. There was nowhere to lie down; everyone sat. There was nowhere to put a leg, impossible to turn around. And total darkness. No light in the basement, no windows, no ventilation—the premises were for utility needs.
When we entered, they identified everyone. They asked who we were, locals or not, what documents we had. They didn’t check everyone—they took my husband’s passport and looked at it. They checked my son-in-law when he went to the toilet—he was brought at gunpoint, already with his passport in his hands.
There were 68 children under the age of 18. The youngest were from a few months to a year old—five such babies. My granddaughter was one. There were many children aged 3–8. Why so many? Because people came to their parents, to relatives with children. Everyone thought the village would be safer.
In the first days, I cooked porridge; we managed to take it to the cellar. I brought a 3-liter pot of semolina. We lasted on it for three days. And that was only for the child. Some remained, we saved it for the child. But it went sour and spoiled.
I had a small bag on my shoulders; I put documents, a pack of baby formula, a bottle, and a thermos in it. That was all I used the whole time. Water could be found to mix the formula. This formula saved us. Otherwise, there would have been nothing to eat. It was very hard for the child—we had just started transitioning her to normal food.
At first, it was very cold. As people gathered, the temperature rose. Condensation began to collect on the walls, on the ceiling. It all flowed, dripped—whitewash from the ceiling. Everything on the floor was viscous—cement dragged on our feet.
There was nothing to breathe. There was such dust. It settled in the respiratory tracts; noses were completely clogged. Wet heads, wet shoulders. People started getting sick. The children’s cough was such that they were choking.
My little granddaughter—at night I hear she isn’t breathing, she starts wheezing, she can’t catch her breath. You jump up, start shaking her, giving her water, and at first, there wasn’t even water.
Against this background, my mother had a micro-stroke. She started confusing words, jumping up. Then shooting—I realize the occupiers fired a burst into the cellar. I don’t know if it was on purpose or if it just happened. Thank God no one was hit—everyone was down low.
Then my husband runs in: “A tank just drove out of the yard, fired, and left; there will be an incoming hit here now.” It’s night. We flee; everyone jumped out in fright, running from the garden. They carry the child ahead; I drag my mother behind me.
Three houses away, we jumped into a neighbor’s cellar. Their son-in-law also followed—he had been feeding livestock on the next street. It took him a day and a half to get home. He says: “I crawl through the grass, lie down, when they stop shooting—I crawl a bit.” The village is small. He says: “I see you running, and behind you stands an APC shooting after you, only over your heads. And they are laughing, sitting on the APC, that a crowd of people is running.”
They let people out to the toilet like this: they let you out, there is a line of 400 people. And in 10 minutes, shelling starts. People either fall into the mud near the toilet or run back into the basement.
We sit in the room, men, women, children—and you need to go to the toilet. A cut-off 1.5-liter bottle—that was the toilet. I understand it’s night, dark, but you are still in your right mind. There are children there, and my mother practically couldn’t get up. Terrible bedsores appeared from the floor. I had to lift her, hold her, catch all of this.
In the large room, 139 people and one bucket. It flows down the stairs because people aren’t let out. Old people relieved themselves right under themselves—there were those who had no one, and no one cared for them enough. Someone would bring water, hand over a cup of food, but everything else—washing, wiping—no one did that.
There were no phones, no one wears watches. We sat not knowing if it was morning or evening. We oriented ourselves like this: when they open the door, we know it’s somewhere between 7–8 AM, that we could go outside. They might open it around three—that’s when they distributed cups, we could approach, take them, go for water. And in the evening we knew it was closed—they propped up the door. There were gymnastics bucks in the school. They propped it up with those, there was a concrete block, and they propped the door with the buck. We knew then that it was already around six o’clock.
There were still many days ahead.
The testimony was recorded from the words of a resident of Yahidne village, Chernihiv region, within the framework of the in-depth school on war storytelling and human rights “Truth through Stories,” implemented with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).