From the very first days of the war my daughter would go to the bomb shelter during the air raids. It was not a specially built bomb shelter but a basement in the building of the Institute for Teachers’ Refresher Courses.  The Institute was located right opposite our apartment house. It does not exist at the moment as it was destroyed during the shelling. But at the beginning of the war it was still there and people would go to its basement to hide from the shelling. The basement was not big enough for everyone who tried to find refuge, so animals were not allowed in. We had a big dog who had to stay with me at our flat during the shelling. But to tell you the truth it was not safe in that basement either as in the worse scenario, in case the building was damaged and collapsed, it would bury everyone seeking shelter. My daughter and some other people understood that so they would not go down to the basement but would stay on the ground floor believing that it would be easier to reach them if the building collapsed.  

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During the very first days of the Russian occupation of Kherson people were desperate to get whatever they could get in the shops and pharmacies. There were enormous queues at every shop. People were buying whatever they could buy. There were enormous queues at the ATM machines as people were trying to withdraw their money. In a couple of days all the shop shelves were absolutely empty. Nothing was left. Though one day I found vinegar in one of the shops and was immensely happy as I knew that one could use vinegar to lower high blood pressure. As pharmacies could not offer the medication people needed it was important to use so-called traditional methods to fight their health problems. But soon the Ukrainian currency was devalued to such an extent that it was like toy money. And when the invaders introduced their Russian roubles Ukrainian money became completely useless.

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When the Russian occupants captured the Kherson region not only were people left without food supplies but animals were too. There is a village called Chornobaevka not far from Kherson which had the biggest poultry farm in Europe. Their chickens were sold all over Ukraine and even abroad. There was no food to feed those chickens. The Russian occupiers starved those poor chickens to death. They ordered the workers from the poultry farm to stay away from the farm and not to bring food to the chickens. Later vans from Chornobaevka were driving along Kherson giving away chickens to people. Those were the chickens who died from starvation. They were very thin. For the first time in my adult life I was plucking chickens and then stored them in the freezer. Only now I have found out that more than 4.4 million chickens died of hunger at the Chornobaevka poultry farm. Plus there was no ventilation because there was no electricity. We now call it ecocide. The Russian occupiers said that lorries with mixed feed were interfering with the movement of the Russian military on the highway. At the moment Chornobaevka is liberated but because of the destruction and mining of the fields there are no jobs and only 5 per cent of the agricultural land can be used.

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During the occupation of Kherson people were telling each other about two snipers who would choose a roof of the building in any district of Kherson and would start shooting whoever they liked to shoot. The worst thing was you could never know which roof they would choose and who would become the new victims of their entertainment.