Наталія Пімкіна Natalia Pimkina

There were shortages. It's just that the shortages were so bad that... They built an extension near the department store, and people were already standing in line in the morning. They didn't know what scarce goods would be sold there, but these people were standing right there, taking up positions, writing down their [places in the] queue. “Whatever is [sold, that's enough],” people used to think. They needed whatever was [being sold]! And they stood in line there. And then this car would come. There was a gate there, and they would drive out the gate in this car and unload the goods there. And these poor people were fighting there, jostling for who would buy what. One day, they would give you pots, a set of pots, and everyone needed pots. The next day, they brought out some carpets without a queue, and people grabbed them. Then there were some imported shoes, which [everyone] wanted to have. Beautiful shoes, imported shoes. And you know what happened: for example, I wore a size 38, and they ran out. People would take any size and give it to their sister, friend, or neighbor as long as they could get something. This is how it happened.

People were going to nowhere. You'd be talking on the bus, “Where are you going?” That is, the driver would ask, “We're going to stop in this city, in that city. Who's going where?” And there were people like this man with his father, who was 87 years old. I asked them,”'Can I give you some water?” Or something else. And he says, “No, no.” — “Where are you going?” And he says, “We don't know where we're going. We don't know at all.” At least we knew that we had grandchildren here and had a place to go, but they didn't know. And then this driver had arranged for us to spend the night somewhere, in a village. We arrived in that village very late. It was a village with very few [residents], a lot of houses, but they said that either 15 or 20 people remained living in that village. But the people we met — we saw them for the first time, it was so cold, it was freezing — both houses were heated. A woman cooked potatoes, a woman cooked meat, opened some canned food. They told us that however many people were coming, everyone had a place to sleep. And we wanted to give them at least some money. And we spent the night in the house where their old, old grandmother lives. We spent the night with that old lady. And we wanted to... They didn't want to take any money. We silently left the money there. We thought [to express our gratitude] at least somehow, [these] people have fed us, after all... Why would they even care about us? And that old lady, she ran out after us, said, “What are you doing? No!” She shoved the money [back], and that was it. Why did I mention this? Because this man, who was 87 years old, and his son, who is also like that, in his 60s, I think. They asked these people, and they said, “Yes, you can stay. We will not pay you money, but we will feed you. We have work, a big garden, a farm. You stay and be our helpers.” That's how people got accommodated. Some would call their friends somewhere. Young women were traveling with small children, also calling someone. We stopped at some villages in the Lviv region, and they were already greeted by the village council and given the keys. They said, “The house over there is already heated, we'll take you there, and you'll stay there.” That was the kind of journey we had.

I don't know where it came from, but there was information that it would start tonight. And we... We packed two bags with our documents, water, some biscuits, some smoked sausage, two not very big bags, and water. And we went to bed. And we went to bed in our tracksuits, but no one slept. The children lived not far from us, so they would call us and say, “Can you hear it, it has begun?” — “Yes, we can. Of course, we can hear that it has begun.” Well, they didn't run right away. It was, of course, scary. Such explosions. And you don't know, you can't pull yourself together. You don't know which way to run and what to do. Only a bit later, you somehow... I could understand a little bit what I had to do... But at first, you didn't want to believe it! You didn't want to believe in all this! But it did begin — there has been more than one bang! One after the other, and it just keeps going. That's so frightening... I have a sister who lives in France, she says, “You know, I can’t even…” Just like we used to! You know, we saw this war, Chechnya, back then, yes, we saw it, we sympathized with people. But you didn't go through it yourself. So she always keeps telling me now, “I can't even [imagine it].” “Then you don't need to, you don't need to know and imagine all this because it's all frightening!”

And then it started... These explosions and shots started. It was terrifying. Our children were just vacationing, my husband's daughter with her children and husband were vacationing in Berdiansk. We stayed there, in Berdiansk, we did not go home. We met where our dacha is [Bohorodychne village], 40 kilometers from Kramatorsk, but our Ukrainian guys [soldiers] were there, and we [went by] some dirt roads. [You drive] on a dirt road, it's scary, through some villages. We drove and drove and eventually arrived at the dacha, where we could hear everything, but they were standing right there... It's the Kharkiv-Rostov[-on-Don] highway, and there's a turn to Sviatohirsk, and at this turn, right on the highway, there were Ukrainian guys standing there. We got there, and they were checking our car, checking us. And I was crying so much, weeping that I made it, that they would protect me here! Do you get it? That I was with my [people]! And then it started in the city, it was very scary.