“Now, I never forget to value every tiny moment of my life”. Nastya’s story about the Bucha occupation
The story of Nastya, a student from Kyiv, about her life during russian occupation. Nastya spent a month in occupied Bucha with her family and told us about all the horrors of what later became known in the world press as the Bucha massacre.
“I learned to read Taro cards out of boredom, became friends with my neighbours and not allowed myself to become depressed for not a single day”, a student from Bucha says about how she survived the occupation.
I am 21 years old. At 1,5 years I moved from Kyiv to Bucha. That was the city in which I grew up. I study journalism and PR and work as an editor at the local group. We were working on this project hard, and it was scaling quickly. That was one of the reasons I stayed in town and went through all that happened later. I felt I had to stay and help as a journalist, volunteer, and be with my close ones. Everything began for us on the 24th of February. That was the first day of the war.
Eight days earlier, on the 16th of February, my father was rushing around our house at 6 a.m. when the thought crossed my mind that something had happened. In reality, he was only hurrying for work. Fake alarm — thought I with relief.
Before the 24th of February, I monitored the news daily. I watched people preparing for the attack. We are a family of 6: me, my boyfriend, my parents and my grandparents. We had friends in military forces. They said they did not know what might happen, but we were better to get prepared. I was the only person in the family starting to pack a survival kit: a first-aid set and other necessary stuff.
So, on the 24th of February, I was ready.
The beginning
On the first day of the invasion, a phone rang at 6 a.m. My mother broke into our room. “Get up, children! The full-scale war has begun!” she said. I knew what to do. So, at 7 a.m., I was packed and ready to leave for Western Ukraine, where my grandmother lived. I could not leave my parents at home alone, though.
My mother ran her own business. She owned two stores in the local supermarket. My father and brother owned the car service station. When the war began, they went to the workplace immediately to remove all values. Meanwhile, my boyfriend and I prepared the room with the fewest windows and the most solid walls.
In the afternoon, we heard loud explosions and the noise of the plane flying by. I went outside expecting to see a passenger jet when I remembered that the sky above the country was closed for passenger flights. I saw about ten helicopters and two fighter planes in the sky at a low height just over my house.
At the family council, we decided what to do next. We had two houses. One was for my grandparents, and another for me, my boyfriend and my parents. Only one of them had a basement which we could use as shelter. There we spent all our time.
The occupation
I lived on the outskirts, right near the other city called Irpin. Our place was the last in town Russian forces reached. The occupation started on the 4th of March. Before that, there was a fierce battle for the city of Hostomel. We woke up at 6 a.m. because of gunshots down the street. It was when we realized the front line had moved to us. Later that day, we heard tanks parked by our house and stopped breathing. Somebody knocked on the door. My father went outside. Russians wrung his hands and put him down to the ground. They thought he was a military man and raided the house.
Then, my mother went outside because my father wasn’t back for too long. She asked the soldier about her husband. He replied that she had no reason to worry and pointed to my father, who stood among six Russian soldiers and smoked.
Then, my mother came up and spoke to the soldiers in Russian.
“Do not shoot here, please. There are civil people here, and we want to live,” she said.
“We do not shoot and do not kill anybody. We are just staying here. These are people of yours who shoot at us and kill us,” said the soldier.
“We are looking for Nazi and Banderivtsi (members of the fraction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists back in 1940-s),” said another soldier.
“Nazi?! Here I am, speaking to you in Russian! We lived here peacefully. What for did you come?” said my mother.
I would rather hide away, but my mother was a very courageous woman.
Meanwhile, my father stepped into the house, followed by an 18 years old Russian soldier. He was even younger than me! He told my parents to shelter in the basement because Ukrainian soldiers would use artillery on their division. My mother burst into tears. The soldier got so scared that he started stuttering.
From that moment on, Russian soldiers lived in our house. They kicked down the gates with their APC, parked it by the house and settled as if they were tenants. One day, they hit the entry door so hard that it jammed. After that, they had to get into the house through the window. They searched everywhere and looked in every corner, but we stayed untouched.
Two doors down, neighbours built a two-storey house with a steam bath. Russians were looking for two-storey buildings because, on the first floor, they could put their equipment and fire at the town next to us — Irpin. That house was occupied by a commander. He controlled everything on our street.
The railway separated our area from the city centre. Along that boundary stayed different divisions: Kadyrovtsy (a military organization from Chechnya) from one side and the Pskov division (a division of the Russian Airborne Troops based in Pskov) from the other. The Pskov division was closer to us. They marked their military equipment with a V letter.
Later I discovered, Kadyrovtsy didn’t get along with the National Russian army. For this reason, they stood separately. Kadyrovtsy were robbing houses and taking everything out. Pskov division was not less cruel than Kadyrovtsy. Units changed every week.
Sometimes, we left our house to get fresh air in the backyard. When we heard the burst of artillery fire, we immediately knew whether we should go to the shelter or shots would only pass over.
Russians put their artillery almost in the backyards of houses.
The trenches were so deep that you could shoot, staying on the horse. Soldiers were driving from house to house, looking for the basement where they could hide later. They were scared. They did not know what they would do if Ukrainian soldiers broke through the frontline and entered the town. The majority of soldiers were from 18 to 20 years old. They were like kids. In the evening, when the curfew started, they played improvised football matches with their helmets.
They broke into pharmacies, took out medicine, and then gave it to villagers to treat themselves. They brought boxes of medications. They robbed pharmacies and acted as if that was a charity. Some people had no choice but to take that drugs for their elderly.
On the 10th of March, we found out that there would be a green corridor. My mother went to the soldiers to talk. She put a white bandage over her shoulder (Russians did not allow civils to leave the house without them and also did not allow them to wear black clothes). The most terrifying was that nobody knew what mood soldiers were in that day. My mother was crying and bagging them to let us go. Russians refused and told us other soldiers would gun us down at the next checkpoint. We stayed.
Occupiers did terrible things to the people who tried to resist them. There were seven houses on our streets. Russians knocked on the door of one of them, but people refused to let soldiers in, so they broke down the door and shot down those people. The house was on fire for two days. Into the multi-storey buildings, Russians threw hand bombs, and the ground floor burnt down completely in two days.
There was a woman who lived somewhere nearby. Before the war, she used to walk along our street with her child in a wheelchair. The child had Cerebral Palsy. During the occupation, Russians shot down her husband. The woman and her child are somewhere abroad now. The dead body had been lying untouched for forty days or more because they mined it.
They shot down civils and threw them into the cellars of their own houses.
In the building of a school located in our area, women and children were found. They were raped and then hanged. Pskovski Desant did all these things.
We rarely left the house. We never went out for humanitarian aid. We were outside only if we needed water or to catch fresh air in the backyard. For not a single day during the occupation, I felt depressed because I knew that Ukrainian military forces would reach us one day.
I decided to learn how to read Taro cards to entertain myself. We lived in a tiny place and had quarrels from time to time, but those were such little things.
My second birth and 21th birthday
On the 2nd of April, I had my birthday. I woke up as usual but did not hear any announcements about the location of the Ukrainian army on the radio. That silence frightened me so much.
My boyfriend and I went outside and heard a voice calling for my father.
“Lyosha! Lyosha!” somebody shouted.
A man turned out to be our friend who worked for the intelligence service. Then, we noticed the soldier with the blue bandage over his arm and three cars with the Ukrainian flag and started crying. I can not even explain what happiness that was. Everyone, even my father, was in tears. That day we had two celebrations because I had my 21st birthday in Ukrainian Bucha.
During the occupation, many people were searching for us. Later, I saw all those texts in the chats and cried. In the messengers, numerous people were writing they were searching for someone, but I could never imagine somebody would search for me one day.
Life goes on
A month in occupation has entirely changed my life. I started to value everything I had. We became friends with our neighbours who we had never known before. During the occupation, we cooked food on the stove, washed laundry in the rainwater, and melted snow for water.
We were lucky to have an oven in the house. We could heat the premises. Also, we were fortunate to have a neighbour who knew how to make bread, while we gave her flour. Finally, we were lucky to have our neighbours. We supported each other and had some fun. When Russians did not allow us to cross the road to get water, our neighbour gave us her. We forgot about all the issues we had ever had and became a big family. That was how we survived the occupation.
Later, along the street with the humanitarian aid station, people found many dead bodies. I am so grateful to myself and my parents for our decision to stay home and avoid that station. Every morning I say thanks to God — if there is a God — that I survived. I thank God for my mother escaping the attack, my grandparents having no strokes, heart attacks, or high blood pressure, my father not getting into the house where occupiers killed people, and my boyfriend staying alive.
Now, I never forget to value every tiny moment of my life.
The story was gathered, written and translated by the team of volunteers at The Ukrainian View. Special thanks to Nastya, the main character of this story, for her bravery and spirit to share it with the world.
All the photos were privided by Nastya.
