"Children sit, look at the candle and remember cartoons"

I am the guardian grandmother. I live with two minor children of my son, one of whom is disabled since childhood.

My parents came to Hranitne from Perm Oblast, where I was born. In 1961, I started school. I finished 10 classes. I worked as a postman for 30 years. I liked my job very much and still do, but I am retired. 

It so happened that before the war I became a guardian. My mother abandoned my grandchildren in Donetsk. Kostia was 3.5 years old. And Vika, who means the world to me, is a disabled child. She was then a year and a half old. Vika suffers from mental retardation and speech disorders. She couldn't walk, she was falling. Now she is 14 years old. As long as I have God's permission, she will be with me. 

Heavy machinery began to move at night. The noise from it was very scary. There was a village full of people.  Then machinery arrived and then they began to bomb. 

I have a neighbor here, she went to Siberia, to Pskov Oblast.  We sat with her, there was no electricity.  We drank coffee. There was a terrible explosion – and her house was destroyed. She had just made all the necessary arrangements before the war. We are not young, after all. Everything was gone in a moment. It was terrible. 

A lot of children died. It was so painful. The child was sitting at home when a shell hit it. The neighbors had a girl. A woman was injured, but the girl was gone. And the next day they began bombing and hit just on the grave of this child. 

The village was cut off from the world. Everyone had refrigerators. They all held household. People lost a lot of meat. We did not know what to do in all this despair. Everyone waited for 3-4 days or a week. They thought: what if they give the light, what if things get better. But we were deeply mistaken.

We spent 297 days with no electricity. Children woke up at 2-3 o'clock in the morning. Children sit, look at the candle and remember cartoons. They wave both hands and show  the cartoon with their facial expressions. 

Now we hear the explosions. My daughter's house was hit. She has little children. They are still small. The eldest 10 years, the middle is 6 years old and the youngest, Adel, is two and a half years. Her house was hit, too. All windows and doors flew out. And her husband died.  Now she lives on her own with three girls. We all lived here together in the winter. It was very crowded.  However, they stayed warm. And, God knows, what will happen this year. 

When Hranitne was off from electricity for 297 days, we even burned bonfires on the street and prepared food.

I had a friend who lived here. She is 82 years old, and she is also a Tatar. I am also an ethnic Tatar. I boiled a coffeepot with boiling water and ran and brought her boiling water. Now everyone drinks coffee in the morning. And we, the Tatars, are probably the instigators. We were sitting with a neighbor, drinking coffee. And she would scream, "My God, something has happened!" Everything was blown out by the explosion… It's scary. 

And one day I went to pick some grass. Five minutes passed, and a shell fell there. God must have felt sorry for me at that moment.

We fled, three families, and my my 82-year-old neighbor, fled to the basement. It hung by a single thread. The neighbor fell on her knees and began to pray in the basement. We bowed our heads. And I had bilateral pneumonia. I got punctured and went back to the basement. And we, the children, and this old woman, and the neighbors, we're in this basement. We thought that if it got into the basement, then we wouldn't even be able to get out. And we were all sitting in a small room, in the bedroom. She was praying. We were the same then. I may be a Muslim, but God is one. He heard us. He helped us. The Foundation has been helping us to this day.

I don't plant a garden because we don't have water. I only have three buckets of water in my well. We bought it at the store.

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation people has always called me. This is a very big help, a tremendous help. My children receive the aid, and I. Each of the pensioners and all the people are waiting for the assistance. We are grateful. I don't know how.There were products in the store. He had fresh food. How did they manage to bring them? I honestly do not know. But we do not have the money? A liter of oil is more than 30 UAH. I have worked for 30 years. I get 2000 UAH.

We are like an appendicitis. It's hard to get used to strangers, but still, when you go to the store, they already know that we are from Hranitne. She would always ask and smile. 

A lot of relatives died. This is such a pain that these wounds will never heal. How did they get into houses! As people were leaving. War is so horrible.

My daughter has small children, they don't want to go to the basement, they scream, they want to go outside. And where should they go if the house got a hit? Children want to swim in the sea, but they can't. God forbid we have to live through this. It is scary here.  

Nothing can be fixed. I always think that there are bedridden people. Cities and villages are being bombed. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for this old man. He's leaning on his stick and walks. I want to hold him so tight. A lot of people live alone. Our generation is still brought up differently. We can approach, help, say a kind word, bring bags. 

We had nowhere to go. Where should we go? I may have an old house, but it's mine. Where could we have hidden? Mostly young people left. Or parents left in years, if the children are firmly on their feet.

Sometimes they ran to the basement at one o'clock in the morning, and at three o'clock in the morning they ran away if the bombing started.  There were different situations. But we endured it all. We have endured and are continuing to do so.

We sing in the ensemble, we have a female composer. And the words she writes – Nina Hryhoriivna Tovpeka. We sing, and it's beautiful. We have a very good musical Director, Viktor Ivanovych Topalov. He is 70 years old. He is a great musician. We perform on stage and forget about everything. We must go to Donske, if nothing hinders us. Our people are very nice. There are eight of us.

I love my grandchildren very much. I love my village very much. And I am very sorry. I wish people would come back here. I wish we could live by the principle: kindness will save the world. I wish that the war would end soon.