I'm just talking to you in this mood right now. At work, I am completely different. When I come to work, whatever happened at home, how it happened to me, does not concern these people. I come to work and I am cheerful, I am happy, I am strong. And I encourage people to be like that. We do not talk... we talk about the war — yes, we do. But we don't talk about death because we make nets — they protect us. And we talk only about everything positive. All these sorrows, all these deaths that are happening on the frontline now, which we read about on the Internet, we hear from someone. It is forbidden to talk about it here — forbidden. Because we are making protection. You know, in [20]15, a sniper came to us and asked, "Say, are your nets and ghillie suits enchanted?" I said, "Why?" — "We were driving, one man was driving in your ghillie suit, eight of us were in the car. We were hit. Everyone was wounded except for the one who was wearing the ghillie suit. So, are your ghillie suits enchanted?" I said, "Seems like they are." Because we do not allow talking about death. Indeed, if a person comes in with a heartache and wants to say something about death, we forbid it. Everyone immediately [says] no, no, no. We talk about buttercups, flowers, and anything else. But there are some topics that we avoid. We avoid this topic. At home, watch TV, cry, laugh, whatever you want. Here, you have to be focused only on protection, only on being positive, so that this positivity can be transmitted to our guys through our nets. Transmitted through the socks we knit, through the mats we make for the seats, through the blankets, through the sniper gloves we knit. We made ghillie suits. So that only positivity, so that a person puts on this ghillie suit, a person hides under this net. Let it really protect them. And only positivity, only positivity.
My house overlooked the airfield. And I could see, there is another road through the fields. I could see this road. I stood at the window for days on end. I cooked, I did everything, I ate standing up, I stood there eating. I just watched TV and what I saw through the window. Whoever was passing by, two passed by, two armored personnel carriers stopped here in the old town. And then two of them broke through to the airfield, and two others ended up in Sloviansk. I saw these two armored personnel carriers. I didn't know what was happening where, I just saw it. I stood by the window. I stood by the window from morning to evening, looking at the airfield — hearing everything. We were being woken up by shots. In the morning, at about half past four or five, it differed, they were rousing the whole neighborhood, and they were shooting at the airfield. And then there were rumors that snipers were perched on some of the houses. And I know that my daughter and her neighbor went to the attic and climbed up on the roof to see if there were any.
While my grandparents were alive, my parents spoke Ukrainian with them, but teaching in schools... we came to Bakhmut, there were only two Ukrainian schools in Bakhmut (Artemivsk at the time). There was already one when I was brought there. And it was very far away, in another district. I started going to a Ukrainian school in Krasnopillia, and I was transferred, and I had to go to a Russian-speaking school starting in the third quarter. It was hard for me, but it was necessary, and everyone switched to Russian. And gradually, we all switched to Russian.
Just imagine, I came to the plant, now it's Energomashspetsstal, a very large factory, everything is fine. And I went to the gatehouse, said that I was going to get hired, to look for a job. They let me in without a pass. And I was walking around the factory, and the road was covered with snow, a path — two people passed. I walk around the factory, and there is no one. You see, the factory is standing still. I came to a department and started talking. I was lucky, let's say, because just two weeks before I arrived, a designer who had been working had died. The factory was not operating, and the work he was doing had to be continued urgently. People were working, coming in one day a week. They came in four days a month to check in and see if there was any work. A little bit, the plant was hanging on, something was being done. And I came to this factory, and I was hired. Everyone was shocked because they didn't accept people, and here I was from the outside. They thought I was someone's niece, some other kind of relative — someone had taken me in. But it just so happened that a person died, and I was hired to take the place of that deceased person, and she was doing this work in this department. It was purely a coincidence.
It turned out to be very interesting. When it all happened on the 26th [April 1986], my husband was about to go on a business trip to Kyiv. My supervisor at work came and said, and he's an energy professional himself, said, "Don't let your husband go." He came to my house, he heard that my husband was going on a business trip, "Don't let him go there, there's radiation." Well, my husband disobeyed him and went, but he came back from there — there were few people in Kyiv, the shops were stocked with everything, there were no crowds. He brought some wallpapers, and we put up new wallpapers. For the corridor, he also brought... I forgot the name of the material. Overall, everything was fine. Well, we were young. Thank God, nothing happened. My sister lived there in Kyiv, and she had a daughter like mine, a year younger. They brought her here to us, to the Donbas.
Nadiia Kalinchenkova is an engineer and volunteer who, together with the Razom do Peremohy (Together to Victory) volunteer centre, weaves camouflage nets for the Ukrainian military. She was born on March 24, 1952, in the city of Hlukhiv, Sumy region, where her father served in the military. As a child, she moved to the city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region. She graduated from the Kramatorsk Industrial Institute with an engineering degree and worked in mechanical engineering, contributing to the design of new workshops and factories in the region. After Ukraine gained its independence, her colleagues used to call her a “nationalist” behind her back for her pro-Ukrainian stance. From April to mid-June 2014, she lived in Kramatorsk, occupied by the DPR militants. Then, she moved to Makiivka with her grandson and returned to the city after its liberation. In the fall of 2014, after the Donetsk regional administration was moved to Kramatorsk, she began volunteering. At first, she helped IDPs, and in November 2014, she became involved in weaving camouflage nets. She continues to volunteer even after the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion, weaving socks, camouflage nets, special protective gear, and gloves for snipers with her colleagues.
