Ольга Чернікова Olga Chernikova

In Western Ukraine, I had no problems because people are very kind, they are trusting, they are hospitable. These were the first phones like this, even now, you know, we have a family, for example, my mother, my son, me, I have a dog and three cats. And the people who stayed here in Lviv are already family, you know? A big family, someone needs something, a holiday, we came to visit. I know Lviv very well, Truskavets and the region. There are families who left the Donetsk region. When I was leaving, my mom said, "Don't show your passport that you are from the Donetsk region." I said, "Stop it". It so happened that so many families became mine, first as friends, then as family, then as I said, as help for each other. And to this day, since [200]8, I have been keeping in touch with Western Ukraine, and I can never say that it is somehow bad here, that I have not been accepted, fed, or met. Even those who went to Lviv in [20]22... The first thing they did was call and say, "Olya, let's go." Because they knew that my mother was [recovering] after COVID, but that was later. In Sloviansk... Sloviansk is a city of ceramists, there is ceramics there, people used to make ceramics there. These are more pragmatic people, people who know how to work. I respect everyone, that is, there are no bad people, there is your personal attitude towards them. When you treat them well, you trust them, when you want to trust and believe, they feel the same way, they feel it. It's just that it's easier for me to communicate personally here, but there, yes, they don't trust me as much as in Western Ukraine, they check me out. Because there is indeed this echo of "Donetsk people", it's like a mentality. [People] are very hardworking, you won't believe it, they are workaholics in the East, people who collect everything bit by bit. This is a hundred percent [true].

— And I also remember, before the [Euro]Maidan, the Sochi Olympics started, and I vividly [remember] the eyes of [Viktor] Yanukovych, who was watching and looking so very sad. Then there was the Maidan, and our people from Kramatorsk and Sloviansk went to this Maidan, and there are photos. We went like this: those who were pro-Maidan and those who were from Donetsk, that is, those who stood near Kyiv and waited to see what to do next, I know people like that too. That is, there was already a division. It was already clear to see, and I started striking out, because I have an economics degree and am an accountant, I write in notebooks and then write it down on my phone. I began to cross people out of my life. Just because we speak different languages, different languages. We can't "you are telling me one thing, I'm telling another", we don't understand each other. — What was going on in Sloviansk at the time? — Oh. It was so quiet. I just remember when the Maidan started, everyone was in front of the TV and watching what would happen next. But I really remember when all this stuff with the "DPR" started in Sloviansk. I went to church, it was a Saturday, before Palm Sunday, which was still according to the Moscow calendar. When I was returning from the service, cars with wheels [tires for barricades], some big trees were already driving around the city, and you could see campfires . That is, they began to set up checkpoints. And on Sunday, we knew exactly what was going on. Because we were shown all over the world. That, for example, the priest where I used to sing, he was for the Kyivan Rus. There were checkpoints. Later, my mother and I would cook borshch and take it to our boys, and there were neighbors who made okroshka and took it to those who were at the DPR checkpoints. There was a division, and there were those who understood what was coming - they just packed up and left Sloviansk. And there were those who had their own business and made money on it, which meant that prices went up when the city was already surrounded and no one wanted to understand what to do about it.

I will tell this through the eyes of a simple person, not a public figure, but just a woman. We woke up at five o'clock when the planes were flying, we heard shelling and realized that it was the Kramatorsk airfield. We woke up and realized that there was a war already by watching the TV. We got dressed with our son, went to the store and saw the lines at ATMs. People were already standing in line at the shops. We withdrew money, we took what we could, it was like this, some kind of... I have bronchial asthma, I bought some medicines and came home. It was a Thursday. On Saturday I went to church, and there were people who did not want to enter a Moscow Patriarchate church. I held this service. On the way home, you know, I felt like crying psychologically. I came home and told my mother... I told her that I had a personal question, my mother was recovering from COVID, my son and I both had it, but I could only smell the aroma of coffee, I couldn't drink it, and my mother was seriously ill. I was crying, I said, "Mom, this is not what happened in [20]14, this is for a long time." And then the spring was cold, it was chilly. On March 1, people started to leave. There were queues in the shops, prices at the market went up, you could buy Artemivska salt for 70 hryvnias. Queues at pharmacies, you can't buy iodine, something you could take two days ago, you couldn't do it today. You see how the city just becomes empty, you go home, you have bread in the fridge so that you can [eat] for a week or two. You stock up on some flour, put something together, and watch TV. We have an antenna, and they didn't cut us off immediately [from Russian TV], so it was an information war. It was just an information nightmare, what Russia was saying would happen. You see the planes flying, we were already under fire. Then, in March, people started to leave, the market was empty, the streets were empty, in April you see ATB and Eva [store chains] leaving, and the city just became like you saw it in [20]14, when you came to get your things [from the evacuation], it was empty. You know... Those women who, for example, were sick together with my mother, and you realize that you need to help, you take that flour... I had three or four women whom I would bring [things to], they live on the fifth floor, yes, the fifth or fourth floor, I would just bring [things to] them. Because I knew it was hard for them to go downstairs. The shops are closed. The prices. And then things started to happen. You saw the humanitarian aid, there were no groups, they just tell you that they are distributing it over there. They distributed it, and then those people were gone. I stayed home until April, cleaned everything, looked around and went to work at the cash register. I was just going crazy, I didn't know what to do. That is, a person who used to do photography and wanted to open her own photography school, to carry out social projects, to engage in community activities, sits down at the cash register because you realize that you have a child, a mother, who will not leave, and if she does, she simply will not be able to endure physically. You are nothing without some kind of space, and I realized that. Plus, we had decided, we had animals. We decided to help people, not to leave. The overall picture was of an empty city. It was only later that the guys appeared, the military, that's another page, but at first you have this, you walk on foot, pharmacies are torn open, sirens, your room becomes like this... I took down the plasma [TV] and said, "We don't watch TV". That is, we get information about the city on the Internet. You close the windows because there is the curfew that starts. It started at five at first, and it was already dark, the lights were turned off, and then it went on. This is war already. This is such a period. The girls [from the Women’s Association Pani NGO], we were going to... Zoom did not work in Donetsk region and it does not work now, we were going to meet with the girls on Meet [Google Meet]. They thought that I was mentally unstable, that I should be evacuated, but I said that I needed to help people here, and I stayed.

In the end, I wanted to tell another story. It became a barrier for me, another barrier, a psychological one. On April 14 [20]23, last year, it was Good Friday, before Easter, according to the Moscow Patriarchate. What is this called? We were under fire [in Sloviansk]. I was standing in a store, my kid was on duty, and my mom was at home. After fifteen explosions, I stopped counting. And then we were burying our acquaintances. And [then] a family died, I consider them to be family. That day I realized why I couldn't pack my bag in [20]22. The family came, I was photographing a wedding, a woman and a young man. Time passes, and I am a family photographer. They hire me, I take pictures, and she's already pregnant. And then I see her, she's walking around the store, she's lost her mind, because she came from Dnipro, with a three-year-old boy, to her husband, and he was evacuating people. She went out to buy bread on Friday, and the child and his father stayed [at home], and they died. My son took this guy out of the ambulance, he died in his arms. Then I sent that photo to all my [Russian] acquaintances and asked, "Is it there Banderites that you're killing?". And this is the realization that I did the right thing, that I did not go anywhere in [20]22. I have already started working with people: just talking, question and answer. Because consciousness needs to be studied, people need to be taught, because it is awareness, and many people don't know.