The shelling wouldn't stop: when I went outside, my ears popped. The temperature was -8°C... The military guy called me again to ask where to pick us up, and then the shooting started on the other end of the line. I could hear him swearing, and the connection went off…

A piece of my soul and heart stayed in Mariupol. And it hurts like a wound because Mariupol is the city of my dreams. And I can't believe that this nightmare happened to it.

What struck most painfully was the feeling of being a refugee. You had a home, a hometown, and a life with achievements and accomplishments. And now you are a nobody. You run around social services asking for help because you have nowhere to live. I mean, we ride with our newborn son, and we know there's a chance we'll be spending the night in a field.

At first, we would hear the sounds from afar, but then the aviation started flying right above us. We listened carefully to figure out which way a fighter jet was heading and counted: "The first explosion - not here, that's cool.” You stand still and wait, and then: "The second one... run!"

Yes, we are Roma. But the passport speaks for itself. Why am I not a Ukrainian, if I was born in Kharkiv? If I lived and studied in Kharkiv, I know the laws, I love my city, and I live by it. I want to help my country, I represent the same people as all Ukrainians, I've also experienced the same stress, people I know and care for with all my heart are dying too.

I was 10 when the war started. In the spring of 2014, strange people started appearing in my hometown and in the region. They started promoting the idea of independence from Kyiv. They said that there had been a military coup there and that we would face the same danger of being killed for speaking Russian.

It took us a while to adapt to life. The emotional state was a strange one. Work had kept us distracted from all the stress of the war, and we felt a lot of fatigue. And when we arrived and were able to exhale a bit, the stress came back like a spring. Everything that we experienced during the three weeks of volunteering came crashing down, and we could not do anything. Going to a store became incredibly difficult, and speaking to people  — even more so.

In the chat of the Union of the Owners of Multiple Houses it was written that orcs were getting into the fourth entrance, trying to tear down the door. I thought then: “Well, that’s it, they’re coming after me!” I dressed up and waited. It turned out that the russians got a person from the fifth floor. At that time it reminded me of the events of 1933 that Remarque described: when Germans from the Gestapo arrested people in their apartments.