Hanna Bakotska from Chernihiv
Good afternoon! We are the Bakotsky family from the city of Chernihiv. My name is Olga, this is my son Nikita. He is holding our cat, Lucy. People left the city due to the war and abandoned her, so we took the cat for ourselves. She is very gentle. This is my mom. I will tell you the story of our family since February 24. We were living our normal life. The day started as usual for us, I was supposed to take my child to school, but we heard explosions and the sound of a siren. We realized that the child would not go to school. We were crying in the shack and did not know what to do. We could not leave, my mother was sick. I am raising my son alone. I am disabled because of vision problems. We had 500 hryvnias on our card and wanted to withdraw them. We lived on this money when we were under occupation. On February 25, it was not so scary, but it was getting worse every day. We stayed here in the corridor almost all the time. We read prayers. The whole house was shaking during the bombing. I was lying on the baby to protect him from the debris if a rocket hit the house. My mom had a stroke. She cannot walk. This is how we live. I’m grateful to the neighbors, they gave us potatoes and cabbage to eat. That’s how we survived. Now we are getting help from the Red Cross. Previously, we received assistance from the state as a low-income family. We survived the blockade without water. Now we have water in large quantities all the time. We save it. It is scary to survive the occupation, we live one day at a time. Thank you for your attention.