On February 24, at 5:30 in the morning, Nadiya's family woke up to a terrible explosion. Their house shook, and the adults ran to the children. "I remember how the children got scared and started crying.
My son-in-law bent over them and covered them with his body in case something happened, and my granddaughter said to him: "Dad, we don't want to die!" Nadiya recalls.
Everyone was very scared, but it was still unclear what was happening. Nadiya and her family looked out the windows - everything was burning and smoking. Then it calmed down a bit, but it became obvious that the war had started.
Nadiya and her husband helped the children and small grandchildren to gather their things, and they left. The couple themselves stayed in Kharkiv, because they didn't want to leave their home.
"We were scared from the first day. We went to the basement, because the shelling could come at any minute without warning. We spent two months there."
"It was scary to go home. As soon as you try to descend stairs, the house would start shaking from the shelling. You stop near the elevator shaft, wait for the shell to fly by, and then go down to the next floor. By the time you run from the 7th floor to the basement, half your life has passed. It was a little quieter in the basement, but still scary. More and more explosions occurred. We were afraid that the house would collapse and we wouldn't be able to get out," Nadiya said.
It was also scary for her to go out for humanitarian aid. But they wanted to eat, so Nadia and her husband prayed to God and walked. If a shell was heard flying, people pressed themselves against a wall and waited for the shell to fly or explode.
"We took the humanitarian aid and quickly ran back across the snow and ice. You run, and you pray to God to reach any basement," she recalled.
At first, there was still a shop nearby. There were a lot of people in line, so they had to stand for two hours. Then the Russians started shelling this particular store. One day they hit it. A man and a woman were killed there, and many were injured. After that, the store closed.
"It was also scary to go to the pharmacy," Nadiya said. "As soon as we went in there, the shelling began. I didn't know where to take cover, where to run, or what to do. Whether the windows would fall on me, or if the building would collapse."
When there was no water, electricity, or gas in the city, Nadiya and her husband decided to leave.
The authorities tried to evacuate people by train because the buses were afraid to carry so many people. Volunteers with cars also started to help: in the morning, from around 6 to 7, they tried to shuttle people to the railway station.
That is how Nadiya and her husband were able to evacuate. They haven't returned home yet, because Kharkiv is located close to the Russian border and is constantly under fire.
This material was created on the basis of testimonies collected by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
