Kateryna Zhakot from Melitopol
On the first day of the war, I woke up from an explosion. I immediately understood that it was a war. My husband couldn’t believe it. We jumped outside and saw the airfield on fire. We got scared, packed our things, and sat waiting for news. Life has changed completely. The most terrible was the third day when the russian troops calmly walked through the town. We needed food, so we decided to go for it by car. We saw broken tanks, it was terrible. Shops were destroyed in the town. Panic everywhere, a lot of soldiers. They were everywhere. When we were driving to the bridge, a column of tanks was coming toward us. The husband just drove past them, luckily they didn’t hit us. It was very scary. My husband is a private entrepreneur, I am a beautician. We are both unemployed now. My child is autistic, so he reacts very specifically to the war, he does not ask any questions. He drew strange pictures. In general, he went through it calmly. He is 6 years old, his name is Anatoliy. Before the war, the local government helped us financially. Now we live in the town of Wrocław. Here we rent one room. We were given free accommodation for the first week of our stay here, but then we looked for accommodation ourselves. We encountered fraud and are now trying to get the money back. I would like my life to be at least as it was before the war. Most of all, I am afraid of losing time in the child’s development, we were under occupation for six months, and the child did not have the opportunity to study. Now I need to look for him again for teachers and a therapist.