Oksana, Khmelnytskyi region, 26.03.2022

Dear colleagues of the Centropa team!

Thank you very much for your support and care during these difficult times for Ukraine and every Ukrainian.

For a month now, I have been living in Ukraine, which is defending itself from the onslaught of a fierce and brutal enemy, russia.

My name is Oksana …, I live in the Ukrainian city of…, I am 53, my only daughter is 15 years old (while my first daughter died on the 15th day after birth due to birth trauma after a difficult labor). I know what it's like to lose...

On the first day of the war, February 24, 2022, I bought tickets to Transcarpathia on an available date - February 27, because I saw fear in my daughter's eyes. The mother's instinct and fear for the child's life prompted me to do so. But we did not leave our hometown. Why?

I will briefly write about our lives below.

We spent two indescribably difficult days of online teaching on February 24 and 25. With each lesson on February 25, fewer and fewer children were joining the Zoom classes. The children and their parents left Ukraine. In the end, we were sent on holidays on February 28.

On Saturday, February 26, 2022, my daughter and I took our belongings (clothes, food) and went to the Territorial Defence Headquarters to help those who needed it and, along with dozens of …residents, joined the effort.

We saw hundreds of people who were carrying, carrying and working all day. We saw determination and faith in the eyes of these people. We worked all day with these people. Here, for the first time, we heard an alarm and spent 40 minutes in hiding.

The next day, my daughter and I took the food again and went to the collection point of the …Volunteer Association 'Protection', where we gave the food and offered our help. We saw hundreds of people who were carrying stuff and working all day. We saw determination and faith in the eyes of these people. We worked all day with them.

The next day, my daughter and I took the food again and went to the collection point of the Khmelnytskyi Volunteer Association 'Protection', where we left the food and offered our help. For 6 hours in a row, we were cutting an old camouflage military uniform into strips of fabric for camouflage nets. It was cold outside, my legs ached but no one left. By tearing the cloth to pieces, we seemed to be destroying a predatory enemy who attacked our Ukrainian land. We again saw hundreds of people who drove all day carrying food for the Armed Forces. We felt the unity of the nation, the determination to stand until the end, the faith in the Victory of Ukraine, the only impulse to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine as much as possible.

I felt that my daughter was no longer as scared as she had been on the first day of the war.

Around 5 pm, my colleague (she is the Head of one of the educational institutions of our city) came to us. She and her husband and son (12 years old) also brought help and came to work with us - to cut the old camouflage into strips for nets.

It was dark in the yard, there were many large bags with an old camouflage uniform, which needed to be divided into a piece of cloth for the garter nets - a whole bead. My colleague offered to take some of the bags to her school. And just like that, for several days my daughter and I and many colleagues of mine helped cut the fabric into camouflage nets.

My daughter and I live on the 10th floor. My close colleague saw fear in my daughter's eyes while the sirens were crying and offered to spend the night in her house in the private sector. So, we spent the first nights of the war with the family of my colleague at