I remember… In the morning of the 24th of February, my son and I were woken up by our friends who called us and were yelling in the phone: “Turn on your TV, there is a war in the country!” My son got a phone call from work with the same message. It was horrifying. During the first few minutes we didn’t even understand what was going on; we were just sitting silently in front of the TV. Then he asked a question that I didn’t know how to answer: “Mom, what’s going to happen now?”
At 8 a.m. he was summoned to work, to help hide securities. Until the last minute I was asking him not to go anywhere, to stay with me. But he left.
During those 4 hours that he was gone, I became more and more unsettled as acquaintances from neighboring villages and cities called to tell me that the Russians were installing their flags while riding through. Enemy vehicles were also moving through our city. After my son came back, I also heard from him that he saw military troops and even took their photos. All cars, tanks, IFVs, etc., had “Z” and “V” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(military_symbol)) painted on them. It was getting scarier and scarier.
Every social network, every TV channel was showing the same terrible news: shelled, hit, wounded, dead…
Closer to 1 p.m. my son tried to get cash from his bank cards, but it was already too late, ATMs were empty, there were huge queues in pharmacies and grocery shops, people around the city were saying: “Russia attacked Ukraine”.
