For Nadia, February 24 turned her world upside down. At 3:20 in the morning, the first explosions sounded, and it felt like the end. She didn’t know where to run or what to do with her daughter and four grandchildren, especially since her husband was away on a business trip. She was at a loss for words when her youngest grandchild, 2.5-year-old Andriyan, sleepily asked, “Grandma, what’s happening?” How do you explain “war” to a child so young?

Her first task was to fetch her younger daughter, Yulia, from a special boarding school. Her husband went as soon as he could get back home. But the roads were already blocked, as columns of Russian military equipment were approaching. Explosions were everywhere, and the power station was captured within a few hours. Nadia, a store clerk, had to quit her job as Russian soldiers began looting money and goods from stores.

For the first three months, the city was nearly cut off from communication, with signals only occasionally breaking through in certain areas. Enemy planes flew low overhead, and explosions were heard from all directions.
In September, employees of the village council who had sided with the occupiers began going house to house. They forced parents to send their children to school, threatening to take them away for psychiatric evaluation if they refused to learn Russian. Parents were threatened with criminal charges.

Meanwhile, many children were offered trips to rest camps. Nadia didn’t send her grandchildren, fearing for their safety, and she never regretted it. A friend of her granddaughter’s went missing after being sent to one of these camps. The last call came from the border; the girl said they were heading to Krasnodar and then disappeared, not appearing online or making any further contact.

School was hard for the children, forced to learn Russian history and language. The Russians distributed notebooks with the Russian anthem printed, which the children had to sing every day before classes. Parents weren’t allowed inside the school, and children’s bags and phones were checked at the entrance. All Ukrainian symbols were replaced with Russian ones. Nadia’s grandchildren managed to attend school for two weeks before classes stopped due to heavy shelling.

The final straw was when Russian APCs and tanks entered the woods 600 meters from their home and began digging trenches. Two days later, a shell hit a few houses away. So, Nadia said goodbye to her husband and left with her daughters and grandchildren, leaving behind a small blue-and-yellow heart-shaped badge with “With Ukraine in my heart” written on it for fear of being stopped. Her grandson Taras, who was four, cried, saying his grandmother had taken his heart. Nadia promised to buy him a Ukrainian flag, his new heart.

When they thought they were safe, Nadia received a call: her husband was in the hospital, hit by a Russian military vehicle. The return journey was tougher – nearly six hours of interrogation by FSB officers, threatening polygraph tests. They found numbers in her phone of people who had provided coordinates of Russian troops. Nadia explained these were just customers who bought goods on credit.

Her husband was in terrible condition and needed to be taken 200 km away for surgery. Nadia was constantly interrogated at checkpoints for not having Russian documents and was warned this was her last pass.

Getting Russian documents was humiliating for Nadia. She had to recite an oath to Russia, but in her mind, she was singing the Ukrainian anthem. Her husband’s condition improved, but he still needed another surgery. The family considered staying, but the pressure to obtain Russian documents intensified. So, Nadia contacted our organization, Save Ukraine, for help leaving.

Now, all those trials seem like a distant memory. When Nadia stepped into the Ukraine-controlled territory, the sun seemed brighter, and breathing became easier.

P.S. The names in this story have been changed.