They gathered two groups of nurses: “Here! There is a comrade among us who is not our comrade. You have to explain why you don't want to [join the Komsomol].” There was some kind of story that emerged… I won't be explaining it, and that's it! That's it. It went on like that for an hour and a half, probably. "And let the head of one group speak. Let the head of the second group speak. Let someone else speak, let someone else speak... Let your group leader speak now.” — And you just sat there and didn't say anything? — I just stood by the blackboard... And they... Anyway, all this was going on and on. And then the meeting was over. Then I guess they told my parents about it. I came home. Of course, my dad gave me such a piece of his mind that God help me. That he would be deprived of his party membership card and “is it really that hard for you, fool, to join that Komsomol? You'll pay two kopecks of dues, and you'll forget [about that]...”. And that was it... I mean, it was such a huge scandal. And then it was over. They left me alone. — They just didn't give you a place in the dormitory? — No. I mean to say that the girls (we had a group of nurses, there were only girls there) were all on my side. No one wanted to talk about it out loud, they were afraid, yes. But in terms of the fact that after everything, they supported me in some ways, they said, “Don't get upset” and all that... And then my class teacher quit, who worked there. She quit. Without explanation, in the middle of the year. And then there were rumors that she supposedly supported me too. And that's why they made the conditions unbearable for her
I remember that... What I remember, I remember that we went for a walk to Yuvileinyi Park. And my brother was there with me. As kids. It was very warm, and it started to rain. We were still walking in this rain. And then we came home. And my parents were very frightened. They made us all take showers immediately. “And you won't go outside for three days.” But nobody told us what had actually happened. It was later that we found out that there, yes... Because they gathered everybody at school, told them that there was a disaster. And, as it happened often in the Soviet Union, these collections for affected children. "Bring candy from home, we'll be sending parcels. Bring albums from home, colored pencils, maybe some toys.”
Then came the seizure of the executive committee. Within probably two hours... There was a period of chaos, confusion about what was happening. We realized that it was a terrorist attack, and then we were shocked that it turned out that there were so many alcoholics and drug addicts in the city where you live. Because at all these checkpoints that were in the city, at the barricades, there were so many [marginalized] people that you had never seen before. And you thought to yourself that, geez, where were they all before? Why haven't we seen them? We walk around the same city, we ride transportation, we go to schools, to hospitals, to parks. And there [were not] so many people like this..... It was unexpected.
The mayor was [Hennadiy] Kostiukov. I think, if I'm not mistaken, this “people's militia”, they were already called what? NOD [People's Liberation Movement]. They were walking around with “NOD” badges. And they demanded that he resign as mayor. He resigned. Then they, I think, gathered everyone (both the authorities and the deputies who were left) in the Stroitelei House of Culture and explained to them that now, you see, there will be people's power here. And they should take an oath and work according to the laws of the “DPR”. All of them refused. <...> And they [“DPR” representatives] lived on their own for a while, without the authorities. They realized that they couldn't cope with anything at all: neither with water nor with anything.... And then there was such a discourse that people, to the best of their abilities and preserving their lives, worrying about their safety, are trying to [support] the city's basic functioning somehow, but without coming into contact with NOD members. And no one will take any salary [from the NOD], nor sign any oaths, documents, and so on and so forth. And they [representatives of the official municipal government] found premises for themselves at that time and worked there on all these things [functioning of the city]. — Who was the acting mayor, who was in charge of the city then from the Ukrainian government at that time? — Initially, it was [Andriy] Borsuk. And then he called from the plane and said that he was leaving for Munich. — Who did he call? — Andriy Viktorovych Pankov. — Your husband? — Yes. And he said that he was leaving the city and not coming back to Ukraine again, that he was already on the flight.
The city lived, somehow, in a kind of manual mode. In the sense that stores opened when the owners were ready to open them or when people were ready to come out to work. I can't say, I can't even remember now, how and where we got our groceries. It was probably the market, most likely. It was quite worrisome. But I had information that the liberation was likely to be on July 5. I had this information since June 30. — Did you have contact with the military at the time? — Yes. — Were you helping them in secret back then? — Yes. — Were you afraid? — At that time, no. — When did you become afraid? — After the liberation. — When you understood what you were risking? — It was scary that it could happen again. No one wants to go back to the atmosphere [of violence]. Whoever has been in violence doesn't want to go back. And when you think about the fact that you can go back into the atmosphere of violence, you are more scared, you run out of resources. When that happens for the first time, you're resourceful, you're trying to do things that will help you. And if you've lived through that experience once and come out of it, you still come out depleted, you run out of resources. — When the liberation happened, did you have the feeling that it was all going to happen again? Or not? — I did. I had a sense of some kind of constant threat. There's no safe place. You're never safe all the time.
Halyna Pankova (née Simashova) is a public figure, teacher, head of the Center for Psychosocial Support and Rehabilitation, and clinical psychologist. She was born in 1972 in the Arkhangelsk region of the Russian SSR into a family of a military pilot. She spent her early childhood in the northern military garrisons of the Soviet Union, and since the age of six, she has lived in Kramatorsk. By first education, she was a nurse and worked for a long time in the surgical department of a hospital. Later, she received a degree in finance and taught at the Donbas Institute of Technology and Management. She lived through the occupation of Kramatorsk in 2014. Together with her husband, Andriy Pankov, a local official, she helped the Ukrainian military defending the Kramatorsk airfield. After the events of 2014, she focused on community activities in the organization Art Platform Mriya (Dream), which developed the festival movement in Kramatorsk. She obtained a degree in psychology. During the full-scale invasion, she participated in a mission of Doctors Without Borders, providing assistance to residents of frontline and liberated settlements, and worked in the contested areas. Now she works for Project Hope, providing psychological and rehabilitation assistance to civilians.
