Valentyna Mykhailivna lived with her husband, daughter, and three grandchildren near the now-famous Chornobaivka. Together, they faced occupation, the blowing up of the Kakhovka Dam, and celebrated the liberation of Kherson.
“No one among us expected this to happen.”
On February 23, it was my husband’s birthday, we set the table, everything as usual. The next morning we woke up to hear the war being announced. None of us could believe it, we didn’t know what to do. At first we thought it would last for about two weeks. We went to the supermarket and made some food supplies in advance, thinking that we would leave for a while and then come back. But when we returned home, there were three dogs, three cats, a whole household, so we decided not to go anywhere and wait it out at home.
My brother lived in northern Russia in Surgut. He warned me a few days before: “Valya, there will be a war.” A friend’s daughter came to visit him from Moscow and said the same thing: “Dad, there will be a war.” Three days before it started, she packed her things and returned to Moscow. But no one among us expected this to happen. We thought it was a joke and no one took it seriously.
On the first day of the invasion, Russians came from Novotroitske. On television, they showed their soldiers entering village councils, all of which were closed, not a single living soul was there. So they went straight to Kherson. We did not see where they went. At the airport, something exploded, some kind of fuel barrel.
“Russians have settled in our village”
The Russians settled in our village: they came in Ural trucks that can transport 20 soldiers. They walked the streets, checked every yard, and came to our house. They came in and asked how many of us lived here, what we did for a living, and what kind of farm we had. They drove around the village in armored vehicles with machine guns on the front, went shopping at ATB and Epicenter. The residents were given humanitarian aid. There were 300 people in line to get it. But we were given it without a queue because we have three children.
If they found out that someone had money or their own business, they forced them to rewrite their companies. We had a neighbor who was a businessman, his last name was Yarosh. He had a company, they were doing something with paper. His father told me that he refused to give them money, and they gouged out his eye. Fortunately, they didn’t touch anyone among our relatives.
During the occupation, we had food from all over Crimea coming to our markets. You could buy anything you wanted. Later, they opened three supermarkets. But we kept our own farm, so we were not very dependent on stores.
There was Russian television, but we were not big fans of watching the news and did not go into the details of the events. Besides, we had little trust. When the Antonivsky Bridge was blown up, the Internet told us that it was intact, but I saw that two spans were missing.
November 11
In the fall, there were talks that Ukrainian troops were approaching from the Chornobaivka side. People were afraid. We were told that if they entered the city, they would start shooting heavily. Some people did not even go to church because they were afraid. But when they came in, everything happened so quietly that no one even noticed. On November 11, we went to the market. As we were turning from the village to the city, there were soldiers – about 20-30 people. We did not realize who they were. It turned out that they were the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Then others came from the Tavriyskiy neighborhood, children clung to their tanks. That day we went to the city center to see if it was true or not. When we arrived, everyone was hugging each other, Ukrainian flags were flying near the “white house”, and there was so much joy! A big crowd had gathered. People appeared from nowhere, and before that it seemed that there was no one there, because everyone was hiding. There was great joy. We have been waiting for this. There’s no place like home.
EXPLOSION OF THE KAKHOVKA HYDROELECTRIC POWER STATION
My husband woke up at 6 a.m. and said: “Did you hear that the dam was blown up?” We did not believe him. How could they do that, after standing there for 70 years, and suddenly destroy it? It was a shock for us. We knew that our right bank was higher than the left. And so it happened: the water went mostly to the left bank. The people there did not understand what kind of explosion it was and what had happened. They must have thought they were being bombed, so they ran to the basements out of fear and many drowned there. The water reached our house, but it was not flooded. But at our neighbor’s house, in the lowlands, the water came up to the roof. It was good that we were at a height. Nearby was a tributary of the Ingulets River, which dried up long ago, and everyone crossed it on foot. After the dam was blown up, a half-kilometer-wide sea was formed there, and people used to sail across it by boat.
There is an oil refinery not far from us, and they used to produce diesel fuel there. To prevent it from reaching the enemy, everything was lowered into the ground. When the flooding happened, all this came up out of the ground, and we still wash ourselves with diesel fuel, the smell is unpleasant, and we can’t drink water. Poor animals drink all this because there is no other water. You give the chickens a bit of good water, but that’s it, because we have to avoid wasting water. We get some water delivered, but it’s not enough for everyone.
At home, it’s terrifying right now because you never know the trajectory of a missile or rocket, or where it might land. We liked it in Lviv. I want people in Kherson to walk around like that, to enjoy the streets and life. I want to come home and see a peaceful sky above us.
Author: Ivan Stanislavsky https://khpg.org/1608812768