In that crush my girlfriend was given a three-month-old baby so it wouldn't suffocate. Lena carried the baby somewhere into the back of the carriage. At a certain point it was no longer possible to control people, and the crowd just broke into the carriage. When I got on, I saw Lena crying; she thought I had failed to get on the train and had stayed behind.

At that time, I hoped that I was leaving temporarily, but already in the winter of 2014 it became clear that was not the case. The need to leave everything in Donetsk was also motivated by the fact that I worked in a library for children there. So I knew that I would be required to propagate the pro-Russian ideology to children. And that was unacceptable to me.

The planning time frame was one day or even a few hours. It felt as if somewhere behind me, somewhere behind the car there was Godzilla, who was about to crush us or pull our car out of the line at the checkpoint

After I left Donetsk, people often ask me where I am from. I am from Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Toretsk. Now I can probably call Kharkiv my home.

I am a mentally stable person, so I tried to just work and help, not paying attention to what was going on. That worked until March 2, when a rocket hit our office at the Palace of Labor. With my friend Slava, I was standing in the courtyard, recording a video message in which I was reporting on the money I had received and spent.

Every day, as soon as I wake up, I pick up the phone and check what is happening at home in Dergachy, read the news, and worry about my family and friends. Every day I call home. My husband is still there and he flatly refuses to leave. It's very loud there, and as the days go by it doesn't get any quieter.