I’d like to tell the story of one night. It was that year (2016), summer, June. I spent a night with my children in Nikitovka. We went to bed around 10pm. Everything was calm and quiet. Nothing foreshadowed a trouble. After midnight, a shelling began.

I was in different room from the children; I woke up from a whistling sound. When I sat on my bed, glass flew in my direction and plaster began to fall. I fell to my knees and crawled into the hall from the bedroom on the knees.

At that moment, I had only one thought in my head – to make sure everything is fine with the children.

When I crawled to the couch in the hall where the children slept, the eldest daughter was sitting in the middle of the couch and holding the younger one in her arms. And plaster was falling from the ceiling.

I grabbed both of them and pulled them into the basement. It's good that it was in the house. From the power of the blows, the front door opened - and our dog ran into the house, howling with fear.

The children and I jumped into the basement - fortunately, everything was prepared there - and we stayed there until the morning.

I got out of the basement at 6 in the morning, when our neighbors came running and began to shout: "Is there anyone alive?"

Coming out of the basement, I was overtaken by the horror of what had happened. There was not a single glass or ceiling in the house. And in place where the children slept, in the middle of the sofa where they were sitting, there was emptiness, and everything around was in plaster.

And at that moment I realized that it was only by a miracle that we survived, as three shells fell near the house.

The roof was gone, the windows were blown out with the frames, even the wardrobes were damaged.

And at that moment a feeling of fear arose - we could perish. But at the moment of the shelling, this was not so, there was only one thought in my head: to crawl to the basement safe and sound.

I and the children were not hurt, although, roughly speaking, only one frame remained from the house.

I was telling this story to my friends. They were amazed that we didn’t get a single scratch.