@vito4ka.eth

Hey my dear friends! 🫶🏻 I want to share you story of my life. The story of a Ukrainian woman who has suffered from Russian aggression. I am not writing this to be pitied, but for understanding what Russia is doing to Ukrainians. I lived in the Luhansk region, in the city of Luhansk. This is my homeland. I was born there, grew up there, and lived my ordinary life there. We had an apartment. It was my home, my city, my point of stability. Luhansk was an industrial and economically strong city. It was a miners’ region with coal mines, factories, and large-scale production. There was heavy industry, chemical plants, manufacturing — everything needed for a full, working life. It was not a poor or abandoned place. It was a developed city where people worked, lived, and built their futures. Life in Luhansk was good. Calm and understandable. I liked living there. We worked, made plans — we weren’t surviving, we were living. My daughter went to a good kindergarten, and I already knew exactly which school she would go to. I had a sense of a normal, stable future. Everything was in its place. That was how life was until 2014. Until the moment the so-called “Russian Spring” began. In the spring of 2014, what was happening in Luhansk was presented as a local uprising. But in reality, Russian terrorists and Russian security services entered the city, and administrative buildings were seized. The Ukrainian authorities were inactive at the time — for what reasons, I do not know. But what happened, happened. My family and I made our choice. We did not want to stay in the so-called “LNR.” We did not understand who had come to power there and what kind of criminal authorities they were. So we left for territory controlled by Ukraine. Later, my husband went back to collect our belongings. At that time, there were no borders or demarcation lines yet. It was a trip with a real risk to life. There were checkpoints on the roads, with armed people standing there. He took our things and came back. We moved to the Donetsk region, which was under Ukrainian control. My husband had a small house there, and we settled in a small, cozy town. My relatives came to stay with us — my mother, grandmother, and sister. For some time we all lived together, crowded but holding on. Later, the relatives moved away — some to Kharkiv, some to other cities. And we stayed in that small town and lived peacefully and happily for a while. Until a certain moment. Coming to terms with the loss of property was very difficult. We worked hard to buy it. My parents and my sister did as well — all of us lost our homes. Over time, we had to accept it, because the situation never resolved. But the worst thing is not the loss of real estate. The worst thing is that we lost our homeland. We cannot go back to the places where we were born and lived. We cannot visit the graves of our relatives. Not because we don’t want to, but because we were forced out. To be continued.. P.s. These photos were taken before 2014. Me and my daughter. Luhansk region — endless fields and blooming apricot trees. Our home.

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