We lost the sense of home (IDPs Alina and Olena)

Olena: Still somewhere deep inside I understood that this was some sort of a cup and it would last for a long time. I really lost the sense of home completely: in general, there is such a feeling that I do not have a home anywhere.

Alina: People with tears in their eyes, with puffy faces… Imagine winter, extreme cold, you are in a 3 thousand person line and you are forced to throw away the thing you bought with the last money.

Olena: I would pass these checkpoints with these incomprehensible militiamen in big helmets. And it is standing there with a hangover, with a duct-taped Kalashnikov. Do you understand? I would pass this SSU building and there would be tears streaming from my eyes every time - because I could not look at it.

Alina: “Somebody thought “I want to go to Russia”, someone else would say “A-ha, you are a Bandera-man”.

Olena:  People that had hanged Ukrainian flags outside would get in trouble for real, they were for real taken away, they were really killed.

Olena: I just wish I could… simply enter my own apartment, simply approach my own window, sit in my own couch…

Olena: You know, three Alia’s classmates died, guys, two of them were militiamen.

Olena: We were forced to relocate because… Because they would just bomb everything, because the heavy machinery would constantly go by, and the planes were flying. Everything was uncertain and terrifying…

Alina: These alarm sirens would go off at night. It was terrible ... A real war. A bunch of some elderly women, retired people saying "Putin, help!" It seemed to us that it was all a joke ... And, when it got worse then. As they said about Kiev: "Ah, they turned this Kiev over, they let in a mess ...". The same thing happened with us: they fenced the city, the center, these holy icons, the mess, the bedlam, the burned bags everywhere, the tires lying around.

Olena: I have a friend in Georgia, and I corresponded with him from the beginning of the Maidan. And he told me "Lena, there will be the same scenario with you guys like it was with us”. And he described everything to me in detail. All that would follow. And I said: “Non-sense, Misha, this can not be true...". Those people hanging outside Ukrainian flags, they would really get in trouble, they were for real just taken away, they were really killed. You see? These cellars started to exist.

One boy died, he was with his mother, he was simply on his way to a market in the morning. This volunteer Sasha and his mother, they were driving in their car and the car way simply shot at. I was like, when I watched the video of it - the mother is sitting above him… They just started shooting at the cars.

You know, three Alia’s classmates died, guys, two of them were militiamen. These are the guys from Stanitsa. I would never say that one of them was capable of such a thing, but apparently he got involved into it out because he did not know any better. He got shot by his own people at a party. At a party there, they shot at a person everything that was there to shoot. And two more classmates died as well.

Alina: Well, one of the was a militiaman. But the other one - he started drinking because of all of this. And he was just unfortunate - he fell off the stairs.

I have received a photo from my window, my favorite poplar tree. There is such a poplar growing, my mom was furious about it at the time…

Olena: She was furious because Alia was making a flower bed there, and the tree had very strong roots that were preventing the flowers from growing. We all would look at the poplar…

Alina: It would cover the light. She says: “It must be cut down ...” but it would cover our windows from bombs at the time… It is my favorite poplar tree. And I have received this photo - I cried for half of the night. I could not calm down. Just a photo, snow, this poplar, peace and quiet…