A few days before the liberation, the situation in Kherson was very tense and panic was rife. The russians were spreading gossip that the Ukrainian Armed Forces would soon enter the city and start killing everyone. Nastia, who had been living in the occupation with her guardian Elmira’s family all along, was very scared. So she and her friend decided to leave for the left bank of the Kherson region.

She came home and asked Elmira for her documents, but she did not give her anything, just reassured Nastya. Then the adopted daughter asked to go to her friend’s house and never returned.

“We were stopped at a checkpoint because we were underage and didn’t have a passport. They took us to the police station and kept us under house arrest for two weeks,” the girl recalls.

At first, they both lived in Genichesk with their girlfriend’s relatives. But later, her mother came to pick up her friend from Poland and took her with her. Nastia was enrolled in a school in Henichesk and settled in a dormitory where there was no heat and the lights were turned on very rarely.

They all slept under the same blanket to keep warm. But every Monday they were forced to raise the russian flag to the russian national anthem. Children were threatened: if they did not learn the words of the anthem by heart, they would be sent to the basement. The basement in the dormitory was the place where they were beaten, abused, and interrogated. According to the girl, they were sent there simply because they said something wrong.

Once the children sang the Ukrainian anthem. Nastia was summoned for a conversation and told clearly: “You are nobody. Ukraine is nobody. And soon it will not be Ukraine, but russia, we will soon take over everything.” After that, she was placed under strict control.

The Russian military entered the girls’ rooms without knocking whenever they wanted. They did not knock even when the girls were bathing and had no clothes on. They said that if you go back to your Kherson, you will die there right away.

Nastia managed to get in touch with Elmira. The girl called her foster mother, crying and saying that she really wanted to go home. After all, the russians said that if her parents did not take her away from here in 6 months, she would be transferred to an orphanage, and her mother would be deprived of her parental rights. They kept repeating that their parents would not come for them, so they should not wait for them.

Fortunately, the Save Ukraine team managed to bring the girl home before she was transferred to an orphanage.

When Nastia saw her mother for the first time after the separation, she threw her arms around her neck and burst into tears.