According to a study by UN Women, civilians compirse about 90% of the victims of modern conflicts [1]. Women and children prevail among the victims during armed clashes, while the representatives of the military are trying to protect them from the manifestations of war. Civilians are dying, they become either homeless, or injured and traumatized. All these consequences leave a long-lasting footprint of violence on generations ahead.
The stories from Donbas, documented within the framework of the project "Empowering civil society for a transformation of commemorative culture - nonviolent ways of dealing with the Donbas's violent past" underline the defenselessness of women and children in a situation, when their hometown turns into a military camp, and hostilities are waged around it.
Valeria Onyshchenko (the name has been changed) is living in one of the cities of the Donetsk region, located in a 25-kilometer zone near the contact line. She works as the head of a preschool educational institution. In the summer of 2014 for the first time she had a felling that war had reached her hometown. This feeling came along with a strong fear for the lives of loved ones, friends, and colleagues. It seems to her that everyone was frightened by the distant explosions and the sounds of the Ukrainian artillery stationed outside the city.
“You could hear echoes somewhere far away... You experienced it in a completely different way and thought that it would not affect me. For some reason we always had had such an opinion,” Valeria recalled. The constant stress and fear for her loved ones forced her to adapt her life as well as the life of her child: “I taught my daughter that [during the shelling] you should go out into the corridor and lie on the ground.” At work, Valeria initiated trainings on what to do during the shelling. Together with the other teachers, she prepared a bomb shelter in the basement: they put chairs, stocked up with candles and drinking water. But the building of the kindergarten was not intended for life in a military environment - to get into the basement, you had to go outside. This is what prevented the use of the bomb shelter exactly when it began.
The first explosion broke the windows on the right side of the building. The teachers, together with the children, ran into the room on the first floor, laid down on the floor, and the adults covered the children with their bodies.
Valeria remember all all the horrifying details of that moment:
We cried a lot, while laying down, children and adults screamed ... There was a true panic. We waited. We heard many loud explosions, we could not understand where they came from. We heard glass clinking. When the shelling stopped, we grabbed the children and ran down to the basement and stayed there until the rescuers and ambulance cars arrived. Thus it all lasted, perhaps, three minutes, although it seemed like an eternity. And it was so scary!
During this shelling, a young mother, who went to the kindergarten to pick up her child, and a schoolboy who was on the street, died.
Death of a child. This was so horryfying. When we went down to the basement, we saw the corpse of this seven-year-old boy. He was so young, he would have had years to live ... This was the most terrible thing for me. I held on when we lay, I held back, I tried to calm down both children and adults. I was a leader, but to be honest: when I saw the corpse of a child, my tears poured in a stream, I could not calm myself down.
Valeria notes that even a simple daily life near the front line requires constant mental stress. It is impossible to believe that a peaceful life will not collapse in one moment, and that one can continue to live without fear. Civilians in a conflict have always become victims of circumstances, and while the situation is completely dependent on the military, ordinary people cannot influence it in any way. The only thing they can do is to look after themselves and their loved ones: “Probably, in this situation, nothing depends on ordinary people. You still need to resolve the conflict at a higher level, and people should be careful so that nothing happens to them."
Valeria's reflections on the issues of war and peace, the role of an ordinary person in a fragile lull during hostilities, concern difficult questions that have no simple answers. Every military clash, every shelling only exacerbate the conflict. who accidentally fall into the Epicenter of hostilities implies constant tension and death for civilians as well as fear, feelings of defenselessness, and helplessness.
This shelling was a great lesson for me. I would never have thought that I would have to lie on the floor and protect the children at the kindergarten, run with them to the basement. After this shelling, you know, I realized that the main thing in life is the life of children, the life of our loved ones. All the rest like documents or work issues are meaningless trivia compared to the borderline situation I have been to.
[1] Women, war and peace, 03.12.2017, https://www.womenwarpeace.org/home/
Cover photo: zn.ua
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