Watching the news, I saw my apartment in Severodonetsk burning. This is the second home I’ve lost
I saw my apartment burning, while watching the news. I was searching for something, looking through something on the Internet and then I saw our apartment building and black smoke clouds coming from floors 7 to 9. My home was on the 9th. I don’t have any special feelings about it. My friends called and everyone was asking, “What do you feel?” I feel nothing. Since the start of this full-scale war, we have lost more than our “movable and immovable property”. Since February 24, we have also lost our feelings and emotions.
How we lost our first home — back in 2014
Eight years ago we had to flee our home for the first time. Back then, we used to live in Lysychansk.
My colleague from the city’s TV broadcaster called and said that soon the gunmen would come to our office. I was scared not for myself but my kids.
I locked myself in a room and called my mom. She came to me and helped us get out of the apartment.
In 15 minutes, I packed two suitcases and took my 9-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son along. Then my parents helped us get on a train. In the morning, I got a call, telling that several people in the military uniform came to the editorial office with submachine guns. They were looking for reporters; they looked through the accounting documents and took our director “to the dungeons.”
At that time, during the first year of the war, I experienced a lot of emotions: I cried my eyes out because of my husband’s betrayal, I was worried sick for my parents who stayed in Lysychansk, and I was concerned about the future of my kids who were left with no home, no school, and no clothes.
Back then, we couldn’t believe how it was possible in our seemingly civilized world to come and invade a part of someone else’s country. How could someone rip off our flags, abduct our people, seize our cars, and rob our banks to grab the cash, delivered for social payments? “How?” – was the question we asked on our news website. The reply was in constant threats, “We will find you, no matter where you have escaped, we will get you anywhere.”
Lysychansk was liberated on July 24, 2014. But we returned to the city only in November when the electricity cut-offs were fixed and one could work there. We came back to nothing. The locks in our apartment had been changed. My kids and I were left homeless.
When we found our new home
After several years of renting, we managed to buy an apartment in Severodonetsk in 2019. It had three rooms and “Soviet-style conditions”. The previous owners threw nothing away and hadn’t cleaned it for years.
We took 50 bags of junk out and brought in a hundred bags of plaster, cement, sand, and sealer. We used up so much paper to come up with the perfect apartment plan. We put a lot of effort in it because it wasn’t merely our accommodation. I was working remotely, so it was also my office.
Yulia’s last picture taken in her apartment in Severodonetsk
We were creating a loft, inspired by the images on Pinterest. We left one of the walls in our living room without plaster and coated it with wax. I worked on the other walls myself with decorative plaster. I wanted lots of wood — we bought wooden pallets, my son and I scorched them, then coated them with a mordant solution. We made a rack, a bed frame, and a cupboard for the dining room. We bought water pipes, made a chandelier for our living room, and hanged some curtain rods. Each item decorating our apartment was handmade by us — that’s how we brought the feeling of home to our living space. With time, we bought the appliances. The feeling that we finally had our own place came to us only in 2021. Our home, not someone else’s. The place to return after our trips, our dear home in Severodonetsk that we would want to come back to.
Why we left everything immediately after February 24
When the talks about a possible invasion of Russia into Ukraine started, my daughter stopped sleeping peacefully, she was reading and watching the news all the time.
“When are we going to pack and where are we going?” – were the questions she asked every day. I was trying to calm her down, “The war is not likely to happen, they will just threaten us and leave.”
It hurt to see my 16-year-old watch the predictions of military experts and interviews with the Russian opposition leaders instead of entertaining Youtube videos.
“You can’t stay here — they will take you and kill you,” – she was insisting on leaving, “Promise me that if the war starts, we will leave immediately.”
I promised. We left on the second day of the full-scale invasion.
Yulia’s cat Richard in the evacuation train
My district in Severodonetsk was the first to be shelled. They shelled the places where the people gathered. For example, someone would write on a Telegram channel that a store opened. Not even a day later that store would be in flames. All the schools and kindergartens were destroyed — people were hiding in all of them and I am sure that those, targeting and shelling those buildings, knew about it.
There was no news about my apartment for a long time, which is not bad by today’s standards. This meant that my home wasn’t burned down, destroyed, or turned into a mass grave.
My friends were passing it from time to time. I called them, intending to ask for the pictures of my dear windows but when they answered the phone, all I could ask for was, “Leave. Now. While you still can.”
I saw my apartment burning while watching the news. Those orcs were destroying the supermarket and my apartment building. Our block was on fire starting from the 7th floor. It seemed as if the smoke reached the sky, and the angels were coughing from it. The reporter, covering the news, said that the firemen wouldn’t put the fire out because of the unstopping shellings.
Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast / AFTERMATH OF SHELLINGS IN SEVERODONETSK
“And they shouldn’t,” a recurrent thought was running through my head. “People shouldn’t risk their lives for the sake of some square meters. More so, if it wasn’t for fire or missiles, the marauders will steal everything.”
As I was watching the smoke I realized: our home was taken from us once again. Yet I felt no regret, no anger, no fear, no dread. Hatred was all I felt.
