‘My hair turned grey almost completely’
Iryna, 44, unemployed, Hola Prystan, occupied by Russia
My children and I are now in a village that wasn’t affected by the flooding (the village will remain unnamed for safety reasons since Iryna is currently on occupied land — author’s note). Our friends had left the occupied territory at the beginning of the war and left us their keys for a rainy day. That day has now come. It’s a great arrangement: I have a whole room with a big sofa where the children and I all sleep together. We have food and drinking water, so we’ll live.
I hadn’t even seen myself in the mirror this week. Today I took a look, and my hair has turned grey almost completely. Russian “liberators” have turned our lives into hell. I hate them.
It’s our second year under the occupation, and every day is like the last. But at least before 6 June I had a home, and I could go inside, close the door, and imagine that there was no war, that my husband would soon be home from work and my children from school. For nearly 1.5 years, my children have been out of school. For nearly 1.5 years, I haven’t seen my husband, and my children haven’t seen their father. We’ve been deprived of everything. We are now homeless. Thousands of people have become homeless because of this damned Putin.
Good thing I’d thought to take the kids to my relatives who live at the highest point of the city. At first, we had planned to wait out the flood in the attic together, but the water started coming in too fast, and I got scared. I grabbed the children by the hand, and we hurried to our relatives. The farther we ran from our house, the less water there was, and the fear receded. It seemed that things would end quickly — that the water would hold for a while, the vegetable garden and the furniture in the house would suffer, but it would not be a disaster.