On the 24th of February 2022 I was woken up at 4:45 am by Slava, my husband, who told me that war had broken out. At that moment I was on a sick leave and our children were staying with their grannies. Barbara was in Bucha while Ivan and Anna were in Vynogradar, a district of Kyiv. Getting dressed in a matter of minutes we jumped in our car. Then filled it at the filling station. We called mum asking her to wake Barbara. Getting to our flat in Bucha I embraced my mum and dad, took Barbara and we set off for Vynogradar to pick up our other two children. Then we saw enormous lines at the filling stations. It was a good thing that we had already had a full tank of petrol. We picked up our children from Vynogradar but we could not drive home. We had to leave the car and it took us an hour to get home to Kyiv.

My parents at the same time took all the documents and moved from their flat to their dacha (a holiday house) on the outskirts of Bucha, close to Hostomel. From there you could get a good view of Hostomel airport and the servicemen's buildings. At that time we did not know yet that real hell would come to that place soon.

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There were air raids on Bucha on the 24th of February, that is at the very beginning of the war. And on the 26th of February Russian troops entered Bucha. My mum and dad helped to hide two men from a territorial defence team during the night of the 25th to 26th of February. At dawn they left their hiding place and started in the direction of Kyiv and in a few hours the Russian occupiers became “the masters” of Bucha.

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From time to time my dad would visit their flat in Bucha to get some drinking water because there was none at their dacha, which is located near Novys supermarket and Warsaw highway. Their block of flats had been shelled, the roof was burnt down as well as two entrances to the block. Our kitchen had been sprayed with machine gun bullets. At that moment it still existed though it was destroyed later. Because my dad often commuted between our dacha and our flat he saw a lot and the Russians saw him. He was stopped by Russians and warned not to come back. And they also sent a warning to their checkpoints “Don’t allow that limping man to pass through.” And their checkpoints were everywhere. So my dad had to stop visiting their flat in Bucha.

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On the 28th of February mobile phone connection was broken, and there was no Internet connection either. In order to call us my dad would climb a hill and tried to tell me where the checkpoints of the Russian occupiers were located. But again, the connection was very poor. I asked him to refresh the signal, but he did not understand me and actually he could not reload the signal because of the bad connection.  Once when he was coming back after these attempted calls to us he was arrested by the Russians - one officer, an ethnic Russian, and the other one was Buryat.  All the rest were sitting on the APC (armoured personnel carrier). They ordered my father to kneel down and to speak Russian. My father refused both orders. Then they hit him between the shoulder blades with a machine gun and made him kneel. All of them were wearing balaclavas so my father could not see their faces. Then they put the barrel of the gun to the back of his head and told him that they were going to shoot him right here in that place. Then my father said to them: “Who would you rather deal with – a traitor or a patriot? This is my land, I live here, and what are you doing here?” I don’t know which language he used to say all this, Ukrainian or Russian, but they ordered him to stand up and lead them to his house.

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Our dacha is located right at the far end of our dacha cooperative and borders on a field on one side. My father was led to the dacha under the machine guns aimed at him by those two Russians. The others were driving in their APC following them. When my mother saw the Russians holding their machine guns at my father’s head leading him to his house, she closed her eyes with her hands. While my father was interrogated by the officer, the Buryat man was standing next to my mother. And he was examining our house. Then my mother asked him "Why are you examining my house?”. “You are living so well here” was his surprised answer. At that time the other Russians, those who were driving the APC were searching our house, turning everything upside down. Then we realized that they were looking for Ukrainian patriotic symbols, military uniform or something like that. The only symbol that we had was our Ukrainian Trident carved on one of the walls of our house. But they did not realise it or did not know anything about the Trident.  They were searching everywhere, our house, our pantry, our cellar. They could not find anything so they left saying, “Don’t interfere.”  Actually they would search every house like this and if the house was locked and the owners had left, they would break the door to enter it. This all happened at the beginning of March, I can’t tell you the exact dates. During all those days there was constant shelling, gunfire, missiles hitting the ground. The explosions could be heard from near and far. At night the shelling turned the night into bright morning.

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The next day my dad called me to say that there was an evacuation column organised in front of the Town Hall. They took everything they needed and left. It was the only evacuation column that did not come under fire and was not shot at. At the checkpoint the Russians found a Ukrainian flag in the glove box of the car. My parents had forgotten about it. The Russians trampled on our flag with their feet. They cursed my parents with all possible swear words but luckily they allowed the car to pass.

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On the 7th of March my parents reached Italy and when Bucha was liberated from the Russian occupiers they returned. I could send you a video of our flat. There is one thing I would like to tell you – everything that was made of glass was broken to pieces, everything made of wood like doors, or plinths was broken or pulled out . Our TV and the children’s toys were taken away. My mom cries every time she enters her flat though one year and a half has passed since they came back. She says it would be easier for her if it was all burned down. Now she feels as if “all her life was raped by Russians.”