My life was peaceful, calm, with everyday concerns: how to do homework quickly, meet deadlines, pass the exams, buy new jeans or go out with friends. Nothing exciting. To be honest, when I was growing up, I was integrated into russian environment, but not that much to be fascinated by it. There were always friends who admired Bulgakov and recommended reading The Master and Margarita. I didn’t even read it. Of course, even after 2014, still, there were bloggers and artists I followed. I liked them, but I wasn’t deeply immersed in it.
Everyone talked and warned about the war. Everyone said that it was necessary to have your emergency go bag packed, but it was taken as a joke. Personally, I hardly believed that everything would happen exactly as promised. I didn’t want to consider that in the 21st century, you would have to grab your backpack to run away with. At that time, I didn’t take survival kits seriously and wasn’t going to pack them. My relatives did it, but when they fled the city, unfortunately, they forgot it at home. Still, I woke up on the morning of February 24. Actually, I should have gone to Chernihiv. I waited for the alarm clock, but my grandmother woke me up and said that the war had started. She told me that I’m not going anywhere. I went outside, and there were echoes of explosions. Then I realized that I definitely wasn’t going anywhere.
Little has changed in our village, because the war did not affect it. We simply remained cut off from the world for a while. Our bridges were torn down on both sides. The only trouble that ran into us was interruptions in the supply of products, it stopped altogether. People bought up everything from the shelves quite quickly, too. There was also a problem with the supply of bread. A small bakery was started in our area, but still it was necessary to grind flour somewhere. One of the farmers agreed to provide his farm mills. Loaves made from that flour were brought. I remember how I cut off a piece of bread, and there were whole grains. Honestly, that bread seemed so delicious then. Especially after you haven’t tasted normal bread at all. Then, we already learned to bake loaves ourselves. It became easier.
I had no close relatives, and no friends from Russia. Thank God! There were relatives from the time of my grandparents. We only called each other on holidays. After the full-scale invasion began, they didn’t call us, didn’t text us, didn’t find out if we were alive at all, if everything was fine. We know neither their attitude nor how concerned they are. I guess if they haven’t called, it’s obvious they’re not too bothered. It makes you wonder how close they really are.
The agony of survivor syndrome made me decide to volunteer. I felt a lot of guilt for not being able to be useful, for being in safety. Someone has no water, but I’m alive. At that moment, I started looking for opportunities to be useful and help somehow. That’s how I came across an announcement about the search for translators for the “VEPR” translation chat. We translated news from Ukrainian to English, which were then published on a website for foreigners. It was important to translate the news and distribute it to the information front. Actually, it was not only English, but also such rare languages as Japanese or Italian, it was ambitious. I was only in the English chat. I think it is very important that foreigners see exactly our perspective, because it is a little different. Experience shows that foreign media and Russian (if they can be called media) grossly distort the information.
I tried to donate something from the studentship, from savings, at least a little. Every donation is important, so even if it’s five or ten hryvnias, I tried to give at least something. Perhaps my biggest donation was during the Eurovision broadcast together with Serhii Prytula. I donated about 600 hryvnias to his fund then.
The fight is still on. Active hostilities are still ongoing. You realize that somewhere people are in danger every day. Although we are all in danger, I feel that I still need to be more helpful. I keep reminding myself that we all benefit from being safe. We bought a coffee — this is already some kind of help. We work, pay taxes, donate. And this is already a benefit.
I recently started making videos on YouTube. They are devoted to playing visual novel games, which is one of my hobbies. Until February 24, I watched Russian bloggers. Then a full-scale war began, people have to give up everything Russian. If there is no content you are interested in, create it yourself. I am currently reviewing our Ukrainian application, from Ukrainian developers “Moon Chai Story”. If new Ukrainian developers appear, I will review their novellas.
I have seen many stories where people who lived in regions with active hostilities had to drop all their equipment and move to a new place. I believe that this didn’t contribute to the creation of any new product. We have a lot of high-quality, quite worthy content, which is in no way inferior to others. My personal top: the news channel “Television Toronto” — based; popular science channel “Damn Rationalist“; crime stories from the “Vivsianka” channel; “Underground stand-up“. I also like the topic of mythology, so I recently found the “Felixora” channel. It is cool, and the author delivers the content nicely. However, I would like our Ukrainian offices to exist so that people would moderate what is happening in our region.
The war taught me that you still need to pack an emergency go bag and stock up. I used to be rather skeptical about how my grandmother, for example, stored large stocks in the pantry for a black day. I just didn’t believe that this black day could come. As it turned out, anything can happen.
I feel like I’m accumulating goodness little by little as well. In addition, I overestimated a lot and understood that people were right saying that happiness comes not from material things, but from people. You understand that your loved ones are the most valuable ones you can have. Some of my relatives went abroad, and I miss them dreadfully. They are the ones I always want to have with me.
Translator: Bohdana-Nikolietta Terekhina
