"We arrived in the Makarovsky district on the evening of the 24th, 8 people, my father-in-law, mother-in-law, their daughter with a 1.5-year-old child, husband, and his sister, and 5 cats. We came to see friends - Liza's classmate and her parents. We drove through Irpin, already you were able to hear loud sounds of explosions from Gostomel and see enemy fighter jets overhead. We realized that it is turning into a real war.

The next day we wanted to go to Rivne, but it became scary as Russians were already on the roads and shooting at any car, they were stopping cars, taking them away throwing people out. That is why we decided to wait. We bought food in almost empty stores in Makarov, bought medicines, decided to sit it out for two days ... And two days later the electricity and the Internet were turned off, columns of enemy military vehicles drove right down our street along the fence. The first time there were a lot of them, we hid, counted the number by the noise. And then it became even scarier to leave. There were explosions all around, from Gostomel. We slept in turns since there were no air defense alarms, you have to hide from the explosions once you hear them.

 

The next enemy convoy fired and shoot houses around the roads, yards, indiscriminately... from machine guns. One of the columns stopped and they fired at the houses for more than 20 minutes. They shot, threw some small bombs into the yards, which exploded with a bang. That time I did not have time to hide in the cellar, but Lizka managed to.

For me, it was the most terrible moment when they shoot right over your head, and you don’t know what is happening to the child. The owners of the house also did not have time to go to the cellar, we lay on the floor and hoped that they would go further, and not land the infantry at home. It worked out that time.

From the firing of the explosions, the fields around the city began to burn, on March 2, a shell hit a neighboring barn, the gas exploded there, people who were inside were burned alive.

 

Shells hit our yard on March 3rd. The house was half destroyed, two sheds were completely destroyed, the entrance to the cellar in which we were sitting was blocked. What is important - these bastards put their equipment and rocket launchers between residential buildings so that Ukrainian Army could not openly bomb them, they literally hid behind civilians. When the house and cellar were destroyed, we moved to the basement of an unfinished house, without light, floor, bare walls, and the fear that the house would collapse and fall asleep in the basement. When on March 4 we realized that we couldn’t even go get water during the day because of the shooting (the neighbor who lost his family went, he didn’t care), on the 5th early in the morning, as the curfew ended, we decided to go.

The village was surrounded, everyone was shot at, and all the time when they decided to go, these bastards let us through the checkpoints. They took away all the phones, laptops, tablets, batted them with rifle butts. We were 11 people in three cars.

A wounded woman, a toddler, me, my daughter, and all 11 of us managed to get out.

 

My daughter Liza is 14, and she has gray hair now, but we are alive. A wounded woman has gotten three surgeries already and she will live"

It is one of the thousands of stories, the testimony of ones who survived among those who didn’t make it.

Tagged here Katya and her friend Valeriia Kutuzova , pls if you have time write your words of support to them.