Karyna Semenchenko, 16 years old:
I would not say that he is an adult — 16 years old. We have seen death and loss during the five years the war has lasted. All this shooting and moving hardens your tempers. Leaving your home is especially hard.
I came from the camp, and my mother told me, "Our house burned down." This makes you a really tough person.
In April, my parents and I went out to put a greenhouse in the garden. They started shooting at that time. We went into the house and stayed there for a while until it settled down. Nevertheless, we wanted to go out. We couldn't just stay inside all the time, especially at the weekend. So we went outside. Then a shell hit the yard.
A fragment hit Dad's leg, and I lost hearing for a while. We ran into the kitchen, and I just saw that my mother took me by the hand and told me to go to the summer kitchen quickly. I couldn't hear anything. I saw that my mother was saying something to me. She was moving her lips, but I could not hear her, my father, and my younger brother. I couldn't hear anything. Mother asked me something, I didn't... She figured it out that I didn't understand what she was saying.
Then hearing returned. We ran into the house. I didn't feel anything when we went into the house. It seemed fine. We started treating dad's leg first. I brought a first aid kit. I felt bad. I felt dizzy, hot, and nauseous.
My mother said, "Go, lie down." I lay down for a bit. Then my parents went to the hospital. Dad said, "Come with us." I said I was Ok. I said that I would look after the brother at home. My parents tried very hard to persuade me, but I didn't want to listen to them.
Then the weekend passed and we went to the hospital. And we were told that I had a concussion. I needed to go to the hospital.
I was taken to the hospital and stayed there for 10 days. I had IVs, and then everything was fine. Then I came home. I had no headaches, nothing. I did get headaches for a month. So I went to the hospital. They prescribed me some pills to calm down. I wasn't allowed to take pills so often though.
We used to have a house behind the post we lived in since I was born. Then, when the war started, we went to the village of Maksymilianivka. We lived there for a month, but we really wanted to go home.
I went to school there, I liked the school. The children there are so good. Still, you begin to understand that something is wrong. Then we got a call and found out that our school was open, but there were very few people, but it still worked. We moved here and found a house here. Friends suggested it. So we took all the furniture.
The house was uninhabitable for two years. We just went there and took some things, little by little. We couldn't take it all at once. Then two years later, something fell there, and the whole house burned down.
I was at the summer camp when my mum called me. She seemed upset. I asked, "What's wrong?" Mum said everything was fine. But I could hear that her voice was upset. Mother told me that the house had burned down only when I came home. My dad went to check it from time to time, but my mum and I didn't go there any more. I don't even want to see it. I just wanted to keep it in my meory the way it was.
It seemed to have settled down a bit now. They started shooting yesterday afternoon. A woman with a child were recently shot. She was just walking with a baby, a three-year-old girl when she was shot in the chest and stomach. The wounds were lethal. Going outside is dangerous.
I have to walk three kilometres to school. It takes half an hour to get there. If I go home from training late in the evening, my parents start calling. They are worried and tell me they will meet me half way.
I've been playing volleyball for four years. I had been doing it for two years when I got injured. The coach called me and said, "You're not going to give up?" "Of course, not!" I said. "How can I quit?" He said, "If you have a headache, you have to sit down right away." Well, luckily, I've never had an accident like this during trainings.
If I sit at the table and they start shooting, my mother says, "Get away from the table. Get away from the window." I have to take books, go to the hallway, because it has no windows.
Well, we haven't been down to the basement for a long time. But still, we have some things there just in case. We keep all documents in packages.. There are times when they start shooting and such serious attacks happen.
Once, two weeks ago, we had no light for five days. The transformer was damaged. Three streets had no light. It also quite interfered with the educational process, because children had to do homework using candle light.
What makes me happy? It is probably the idea that all this horror will end one day. And the idea that I will enter university, after all. I am keen on sport. I also have gold medals in sports. When you have achieved something, you want more, right? That is what cheers me up.
Father Oleksii Semenchenko, 39 years old:
Checkpoint are set 300-500 meters from us. You can often see the military by the store. They often drive on the roads on military vehicles. Thus, they often fire on the street, just like that, which makes the civilians terrified.
I also used to work in Donetsk, at a shoe repair shop. I did quite well. I had some regular customers. I came to Marinka and tried to pull through, but it is not the same as it was there. People moved out. There is less work, prices are not the same. There is nowhere to take the material from. I will have to make orders online. So I would have to make big orders to make it more or less profitable. I used to just buy what I needed and worked.
Leaving is scary. It is hard to leave for work for 20 days, leaving my children alone at home during shelling. And there is nowhere to go. I need to earn money. We could not raise any money for rehabilitation, because it is very expensive to send a child to a good sanatorium. Luckily, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation pays for this and sponsors it. We deeply appreciate this!
We would like the children to have university degrees. But we don't have the same opportunities as we had before the war. I don't want to leave, and I have nowhere to go. So we decided that we would stay here. We got used to it. You can get used to everything. Of course we don't want this to go on. We don't this any more. I don't want this to happen again.
Mother Iryna Semenchenko, 32 years old:
The light needs repairing. But we can't do it. The children have to study by candlelight. We have already got used to it since 2014.
Maybe it got quiet now, but they can start firing any time. On one of those quiet days I got an injury and contusion. It seemed kind of quiet that day. And then the first bomb fell here. Then shells started falling down the street, in every yard. The neighbors were in the garden. They say it all. They said that our house was the first that got a hit, then other houses.
We decided to leave. We lived in Maksymilianivka for a month. Then, a year later, we went to Sribne. There are no jobs here. No one really needs us. It didn't work out for us, so we decided to come back. That is all. Now we don't leave anywhere.
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