82-year-old Halyna wasn’t broken by either the Kremenchuk or the Kakhov reservoirs. Then, in 1958, a young 17-year-old girl became one of the Poltava immigrants, whose villages were artificially and according to plan flooded by the Soviet government for the construction of hydroelectric power plants. And now the elderly woman experienced a powerful wave of “big water” for the second time when the Russians treacherously blew up the dam and sent tons of water into her yard.

Grandmother remembers the time when she moved with her parents to Fedorivka in 1958. Then they had received a “deed of relocation” which the woman still keeps. Thousands of people went to Kherson by freight train, and from there by car to the villages. Nowadays, Halyna is the only one left in Fedorivka from the very first forcibly resettled from the Motherland.

During the woman’s life, water from the Dnipro had never come so close to the yard. On the day of the disaster, the property was flooded literally in a matter of hours. Hastily, with the help of relatives, Halyna managed to save documents, a goat, chickens, and grain in bags. The houses are built on clay according to the old thrifty model, so the flow of water has visibly washed away the walls and ceilings. There is nowhere to sleep at home now.

The woman was born in 1941, so she witnessed not only artificial cataclysms but also the last two largest armed conflicts in Europe. The child was 4 when World War II ended. Parents shared memories that German soldiers had helped with food when they lived in the apartment. Now, after her own experience in the occupation and living in the war zone, the woman is convinced that even the fascists were not so treacherous to them compared to the racism that reigns on the eastern border.

Halyna is having a hard time living at the front during the occupation. She says: “The war began – I was born. Now I will also die in the war.” Now the grandmother has moved temporarily to relatives who live above the water level. The woman hopes that after the Kakhov tragedy, her relatives, most of whom have left, will help her overcome the consequences. She is waiting for them to come and help to rebuild.

During the trip of the Save Ukraine team to the Kherson region to help the affected families, we, together with our partner World Vision International, provided a woman with a lot of humanitarian aid. So now Ms. Halyna won’t worry about her own survival at least for a while.