Svitlana, the mother of four children, managed to save only her cows and keep some documents during the flood in her native village of Ingulets in the Kherson Region. When she’s been trying to save her property, she miraculously survived.

Svitlana and her husband had laid the foundation of their future house in 1993, after the wedding. For many years, the couple have been working hard to build their dream house, brick by brick, meter by meter. After all, later they tried not only for themselves but for their children and grandchildren. All that remained was to paint the roof of the house, when the Russians bombed the Kakhovskaya HPP and the house of the Yakovtsi family was 4 meters underwater.

During the conversation with our volunteer Dmytro Lisovsky, Svitlana was constantly crying, telling how she had tried to save everything she earned in her lifetime: livestock, equipment that her daughter left on the eve of her departure with her grandchildren to Poland, grain that she grew and collected herself, family albums, in what are the first steps of children and happy moments of young years of life.

However, the most terrible memory for the woman was the attempt to save the combine that had been feeding the family: “We lost a lot of time near the combine. The batteries are not charged. The guys threw the carrier here to the house, and I was standing up to my waist in water and trying to plug it into the socket. I’ve cried. The electric fork falls into the water, and the boys shout “Faster because the water is flowing”. And I was wiping it with my clothes and finally turned it on. I don’t know how it didn’t kill me.”

That day, the Yakovets family lost all their property. What hurts Svetlana the most is the house in which she invested her strength and youth. Today the house is in a state of disrepair and is not suitable for living. So now Svitlana with her husband and two children has moved to live in the house of the eldest daughter, which, fortunately, was almost undamaged by the flood.

Thanks to a joint project with our partner World Vision Ukraine Response , we were able to help Svitlana and her family in the most difficult times: we provided them with a box of food, 18 liters of water, a hygiene kit, blankets, pillows, towels, a sleeping bag, a sleeping bag, and a power bank.

You have to see with your own eyes the consequences of the flood in the Kherson region to understand how valuable our help is for these families. We saw this incredible gratitude in Svitlana’s eyes. We hope that the family will be able to regain peace of mind and their lives after all the losses.