Oleksandra Bondar from Zaporizhzhya
Hello, my name is Oleksandra, I am from the frontline city of Zaporizhzhia. When the war came, we were at home. At 6 o’clock in the morning, our friends called us and told us that a full-scale war between Ukraine and Russia had begun. It was unexpected, we did not believe it, but when we went outside, something terrible was happening. There were long lines of cars, probably kilometers long. Gas stations were overcrowded, and everyone was withdrawing cash from ATMs. They were throwing things and just running.
The most terrifying moment probably happened when it was very dark, there was light camouflage, it was very dark, we were all afraid and there was such silence on the street, and then when the silence passed, the first explosions started.
My family and I were hiding in a temporary shelter at my workplace. I work in a preschool. We were sleeping on mattresses, on the bare floor, the children were in overalls. It was very hard and scary. We were with our cell phones and the whole family, and there were a lot of people who were also very scared.
It was terrible, a year and a half of war changed our lives quite a bit… The children started to be afraid at night because our city was being shelled. For the first six months, the children slept only with us, we all slept with our clothes on, because we had to run at any moment. This is how we live in a frontline city.