"The most terrible thing at war is everyday fear"

My first war encounter

My family is what I cherish most of all My wife Iryna and I raise two daughters: Eleanora (eight years old) and Karina (six years old).

At first we heard shell explosions nearby. It was May 2014. Then the attacks started on our street.

We moved in with our parents, who lived a couple of streets away. Their house was closer to the wood line, and there was a well there – the only source where you could get water from.

After all, since the beginning of the military conflict, communications have been lost. W did not have electricity, gas, or water.

We tried to get water in the early morning to have time to cook food. Luckily, we had coal. The attacks usually started at eight in the morning and before one in the afternoon. Then a couple of hours of silence and more bombing followed.

We were deprived of all everyday utilities - electricity, water, communications. The shops were empty. The curfew, shelling attacks…

We hid in the basement. I fell terrible when I try to remember those days. Fear, despair, and anxiety - all feelings intertwined.

Painful memories

There are thousands of painful memories and minutes associated with them. Every time the bombing started, my thoughts were about one thing - that all my family would stay alive, unharmed.

My wife's parents lived in a neighbourng town of Snizhne. In one of the attacks, their house was destroyed, and her father got a fragment wound in the neck. It's all very hard to remember. He survived, but his health problems remained.

The most terrible thing at war is everyday fear. I'd like to forget how they took the city over. How they captured the enterprise. Heavy machined driving quietly around the city. People with guns whose actions you cannot predict.

Everything has changed overnight – we no longer have confidence in the future.

On 17 July 2014, we were going on a bus home afterthe shift. I got off at my stop. We heard a loud bang in the sky. When I turned in that direction, I saw huge clouds of black smoke. Later I learned that it was a Malaysian Boeing with 298 civilians on board. They all died, including 80 children.

People want to live in peace

Because of the war, we left our home, our city. I lost my job and my plans for a protected old age were disrupted, because I worked at the mine and did not work enough for three years for the necessary underground experience to get a preferential miner's pension. I had to start from scratch in a new city.

Six years have passed. The people who stayed in Torez, live according to the rules and laws that now apply in that territory. Like all normal people, they do not want explosions, pain, hunger, destruction. They want to live in peace.

I dream that the conflict in Donbass will end peacefully as soon as possible. I want Donbass to be part of Ukraine again.

I wish that peace would come, and people (all people on both territories) would feel proud, confident in the future, and stable. My dream is to see Ukraine as a prosperous country where all its citizens live equally.