Serhiy Bondazhevskyy from Enerhodar
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Hello, my name is Serhiy, I am from Ukraine. On February 24, it started when our relatives from Kharkiv called us and told us that Russia started a full-scale war with Ukraine, that it started bombing our cities with missiles, and that its planes were flying over our territory and dropping bombs on our cities. We used to live in the city of Enerhodar, the city where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located. We thought that it would be a safe place because, well, in the whole civilized world there is such a thing as nuclear power units and nuclear facilities, and you cannot conduct any military operations near them, because it can lead to ordinary events. And so we decided to stay in our city, but a week later, the Russians did get to our city, they tried to enter our city several times, but because the residents of Energodar went to the checkpoint at the entrance to the city and became a human shield, it did not let Russia into the city. But one day they did come in and started shooting with machine guns from machine guns. They came in on tanks. They shot from tanks wherever they wanted. When they got to the nuclear power plant, it was close to night, they started shooting from tanks at the first power unit. At that time, my family and I were hiding in the corridor of our apartment, away from the windows, so that if a grenade exploded somewhere, the glass would not fly out and hurt us or the children. It was a very difficult night, we spent it on edge. The children were very scared, and screaming, and we calmed them down as best we could. The next day, armed racists, Russians, Buryats, and Kadyrovites, started walking around the city and doing what they wanted. They closed all the food warehouses, so even to buy bread we had to stand in line for 5-6 hours. It was very difficult. Once, a peaceful rally “Enerhodar is Ukraine” was held in Enerhodar, where people came out to support Enerhodar, to support Ukraine. The Russians did not like something and started dispersing people with stun and smoke grenades. They grabbed a lot of people and took them away in an unknown direction and started torturing them. They also caught my friend, he told me about how they put a gun to his temple, kneeled to his knee, pointed a gun at his groin, and told him to work for them. Almost every week there was a rotation, and with each rotation, it got worse and worse, they were plundering the city as best they could. And we decided to leave the city even then. My father gave me his car, and we were driving – I was a woman and two daughters, one was 5 years old and the older one was 10. We also had a French bulldog, so we took him with us.
Since there was a free seat, we took another family with us. We traveled for three days, stood in a field in Vasylivka, and tried to pass the checkpoints, they stripped us to the waist, looked at all our tattoos, questioned us about why we were going there, and what we wanted. They did not want to let us out. On the third day, I don’t know what helped us, but we left the occupation. So we traveled to free Ukraine and now we are in Svitlovodsk, living here, receiving state aid as IDPs. In the summer we received financial aid from Unicef, and several times we received humanitarian aid from the Red Cross. As for Ukraine, I believe that Ukraine will defeat Russia, defeat this racist federation and that everything will be fine. We will liberate our entire Ukraine and it will be a beautiful, prosperous state with a lot of potentials. Everything will be Ukraine!
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