Volodymyr Mykolayovych Petriakov, 65 years old:
On 9 August 2016, at 3 o'clock in the morning, we came under shellfire. One shell landed near the yard and another one fell behind the house, near the vegetable garden. The fence was just smashed, the house was damaged by shell fragments, the windows were shattered in all the living rooms and utility premises, and the garage was damaged too.
There came a shot. I managed to fall down on the floor just in time. I was sleeping in the living room. Then there was a short break of literally some two or three seconds, and I managed to dash out into the next room when it all collapsed. I just shook off some pieces of glass from me.
We saw flashes of fire. It was a terrible story, very scary. I can’t even tell you the exact timing now, how it was. It was like a nightmare, about 30 minutes of nightmare. Some two or three seconds and an explosion sounded, two or three seconds and an explosion again.
It was absolutely unexpected. No one expected it to happen. Surely, I was stunned, blast-shocked at that moment and could not understand anything.
The water well was badly damaged. The electricity wiring going to the house was cut off. We lived without power supply for about a week. The electricity poles were damaged, the flowerbed was swept away. The dog took the blow. She was killed right away, but she died on duty, while guarding the territory of this house.
My son and I noticed that there was a fire and we rushed to extinguish it. We had a tank with some water in it, so we managed to put it all out. There was a small greenhouse. Everything burned down. There was some hay for rabbits, to be used as litter for livestock. We kept it dry here. We dried some medicinal herbs here too. We do this sort of business.
You can still see a shell pit from the shell that turned our greenhouse and part of the vegetable garden into a memory. The windows were broken in many houses. The neighbours’ windows were all shattered too. The roofs were pierced with shell fragments.
It just blows my mind. It is not clear what is going on and when it is going to be over. All this chaos, softly speaking. It is just a torment, humiliation of our peaceful people.
It is very hard, very hard. For the first two days, I just could not understand where I was and what was happening to me. And now the understanding of what has happened comes gradually. And believe me, it is such a very dreadful feeling.
My wife and I are working people. All our lives we worked for the benefit of our homeland, Ukraine, and now we have this chaos and destruction. And I guess, it is not only me, but many people like me, older and younger ones. It is very bad when there is no future for people, neither for young, nor for elderly.
Next comes a preparation for the winter. We need to change the windows, to repair the roof and put up the fence. We will be licking the wounds, as they say. The only question is how? Where to get the money for this? We have started doing it, and asked our neighbours for help. Our children also gave us some help. However, we don’t know what to do next. We hope for some help from the state.
We are pensioners. We worked and knew that we were going to retire. We made some repairs, built [the housing], so that later, when retired, we would be less occupied with these matters of living conditions. We built ourselves a toilet, put a water supply line and made a water well. And we have come to zero. We came back to where we started. That’s what is very, very disappointing and frustrating.
Olena Petriakova:
The doctors made me a very traumatic operation. I have necrosteosis. I spent three days in the intensive care unit and had a big blood loss. I move on crutches within this bedroom. This is my life. They said the recovery would be six months. I can’t help with anything and I’m very worried that I am not able to cook or go out and do some housework. The whole workload is on my husband.
My husband does a great job. He has no time to sleep properly. He looks after me too. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy… I damn those people who fire these shells.
I hoped that I would come home and there would be some care for me. We didn’t think that this would happen. When they brought me back home, I saw that my whole bed was in pieces of glass and there was no window. There was not a single window left intact in the house. Our friends helped us clean it up and sweep here, as much as they could. It was such a shock for me to see it all.
The winter is coming soon. How are we going to cope? We are pensioners. We have no savings, nothing. We are not ready for anything. We had been saving our son from heart attacks, but we ourselves went through heart attacks too… We support each other morally.
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