“Unbreakable mom”: Yulia lived under shelling and lost her husband in the war

Yulia is a 40-year-old indomitable mom from Kryvyi Rih. Until February 24 last year, she lived in Ingulets, worked at a school, and raised her daughter with her husband. But the war destroyed the family’s peaceful and happy life.

“Kryvyi Rih is a sprawling city, and we live in the southern part of it, in Ingulka. On February 24, we woke up to explosions. Russian missiles were flying near us. During the spring and summer we got used to the shelling. They were constant, almost every night. At that time, Russian troops were not far away, and the shelling was frequent. There is no alarm during artillery shelling, it is impossible to track it, so we learned about the shelling when we heard explosions.”

mom Yulia

Yulia decided not to leave the city, and spent the night in the corridor with her child.

“Several times shells exploded very close to us. And one summer, at 5 am, a cluster bomb landed in the yard of our apartment building. At first we woke up to terribly loud explosions, and then we heard a rustling noise – small cassettes were exploding. In our apartment, the window frames flew out along with the glass panes. Everything that could be broken broke. A car in the yard burned to ashes. That morning, three people died – a father and a girl who were doing exercises on the sports ground outside, and a woman who was going to the early shift at a kindergarten. Death was very close…”

“In September, my husband was mobilized. He had never held a weapon before, he worked as a crusher at a factory. I was terribly worried, living from call to call, text to text. Yeah, I got a message that I couldn’t reach him, so he was fine, just out of touch. On October 19, he and his group launched a counteroffensive in the Kherson region. And I did not wait for the call.”

“I don’t remember what I felt after October 19. First, I received a notification that my husband was missing. And I was looking for him around the clock: I called all the authorities, looked through Russian groups on social networks: what if I saw a familiar face among the prisoners? I could watch the videos of the wounded 350 times, trying to find someone who looked like my beloved.”

“Then I found out that my husband’s group was taken in a sack and covered with tanks. This area was still a gray zone, so our military could not get there to take out the bodies and understand who was captured and who died. This area became accessible only after three weeks. All this time, the bodies were in the open air, in the rain and sun. And when they were brought to Kryvyi Rih in November, they were almost unrecognizable. My husband was very fond of leather bracelets. One of the victims was wearing a bracelet just like his.”

Unbreakable mom

“At the identification, I felt that my beloved was lying there. But I didn’t want to be uncertain and bury a living man. So I applied for a DNA test. The term is three months, but the waiting list is another three months.”

“I felt very strange: I was crying and then laughing. I admit that I didn’t want to go toUnbreakable Mom. I did it for my daughter. Now I realize how right that decision was. At my first meeting with a psychologist, I cried the whole time. I just cried all the time. And now I can smile. I began to understand myself and my reactions more. Now I know I can help my mother-in-law, who is mourning her son. And to survive the results of the DNA test and the burial. I tried to be strong for my mother-in-law, for my child, but then I realized that I needed to give myself time to be weak.”

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Photo: press service