Ukraine, Victoria dreams of returning: “I would still like to cultivate my garden”

Victoria is from Snihurivka, Ukraine, in the Mykolaiv region. She managed to leave the war behind thanks to the green corridor organized by the Red Cross: “I have an adult son, who has a family in Mykolayiv. On the morning of February 24, they learned that the war had begun. That day they came to me in Snihurivka, 70 km from Mykolayiv. That’s when they started bombing us. Snihurivka was left without electricity, heating and water. When the Russians entered my village with their tanks, they immediately dug trenches, destroyed and looted shops. Everything written about them is true. I saw it with my own eyes.” Victoria’s son and daughter-in-law tried to return to Mykolayiv. They rented a car, thinking that the enemy would not enter their city, but they did not even have time to reach the village of Bilozirka, and the car was targeted by gunfire. In Victoria’s account, the two returned to her “neither alive nor dead”. The fear and danger did not cease, however, because the bombs also fell on the village of Snihurivka: “At first we slept in the house, but one night we couldn’t stand it any longer. My two-year-old nephew and I literally jumped into the cellar, and as soon as we managed to close the door we heard debris hitting it. From that moment on we arranged the basement so that we could hide there for a long time.” Victoria and her family spent a month there, then her daughter-in-law and the child managed to to leave for Lviv, but she didn’t want to abandon her home. It was a tough decision. Then it was fear that had took over: “On April 9, early in the morning, there were shootings in the city, explosions. The windows shook. We ran away, we ran from one point to another. We waited for the bus for three hours.” On April 13, Victoria arrived at the Caritas-Spes center, since then she has calmed down a bit, sometimes she even manages to smile, but can’t help but think about the moment of the return: “I stopped crying. I always cried when I told all this. My values have changed because you understand how little you need to be happy. For years I bought things, and instead everything you really need can fit in a bag. I brought my mother’s favorite scissors with me, at least I have that as a souvenir. There is a psychotherapist here, I talked to him, after which I started to think a little differently. I felt guilty because I had escaped, but I thought that if I saved my life I could help my daughter-in-law and my grandson. The child has been suffering from a nervous disorder since he was a year and a half old, with the war it got worse. Father Mykola took my grandson to Lviv for a consultation. I think this was a very noble gesture on his part.” Since April 4, Snihurivka in Ukraine has been occupied by the Russians, but Victoria is eager to return home . “As soon as we are told that our territory has been liberated and cleared of mines, we will return immediately. It will still take some time to restore the water, electricity and gas supplies, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to go abroad. The first things I will do when I return will be to go to the cemetery to my parents and see what I could still grow in my garden.” (The text is a summary of the article that appeared on the Caritas-Spes website, from which the photographs are also taken)