-Tell me please, here... Was the bombing here since the first days, or...?
-No, not since the first ones. For three days we were [shelled] from mortar launchers.
-Where did they shoot from?
-From over there, from the woodland, they shelled from there, from the mortar launcher. They would drive up here by a vehicle, throw [shoot], and then flee immediately. For three days. Then in the evening, it was on the 8th [March, 2022]... the 8th. I sure remember that. No, not true, the 9th. On the 9th, in the evening, a helicopter came flying. It came from the end, from there. It made three attempts, a missile did not expl... They bombed ours, a little, they hit them. There, it felled my fence, the windows flew out, well, but that's ok... I'm lucky. Well, they tried to knock it down, but they didn't knock down the helicopter, they tried hard, but it must have been a good pilot, he flew there near the houses, and they didn't. They didn't hit it, to be brief. And then I and my wife hid in the cellar, and we say...
-In what cellar did you hide?
-This one.
-Show it. Well, we don't need to go inside, just show it. So it was clear where all of this took place. So you were sitting in the cellar, right?
-Right. We were sitting in the cellar. Here they flew, here, brought their soldiers, and again began launching mortars.
-Uh-huh.
-Here we sat in the cellar.
-I see. Uh-huh.
-I went out, the soldiers yelled at me because they were shelling mortars, "Old man, hide." I hid again, and I was sitting with my wife, and I said, "Something is going to happen, Ira." And she said, "Why do you think so?" I said, "They missed a helicopter, they are not going to get away with it." And about 30-40 minutes later, I heard a plane flying. I said, "Cover up your ears, and open your mouth." I hugged her so. It flew past, and then about 3 or 4 seconds later, maybe 5 - the earth shook, and then: "Hooh!" - and all. I didn't hear anything else. I must have been stunned. Afterwards, I couldn't hear for two weeks, or my hearing was poor. -This bomb fell over there, under the birch tree.
-Show it.
-There was a cellar there, old lady's.
-It's on the neighbor's...
-Yes.
-Uh-huh.
-It hit right in the cellar. Right in the cellar! We were sitting in this cellar, and it hit that cellar. This was one bomb, and then... Where this little tree is standing, in front of the tree the second one fell, and the third one fell there, near the road. Here, near the road, at the neighbor's.
-Uh-huh.
-Over here.
-In fact, it ruined everything here completely.
-Yes, it did, there three things [bombs] they dropped.
-And your house, can it be restored?
-No. No. It's concrete blocks, the walls moved, the load-bearing wall tilted, there are no partitions there.
-And the roof fell, too.
-All this all, I've lifted it with jacks.
-I see.
-This all, I lifted it myself. My household, I had a shed here.
Uh-huh.
-I've already repaired all this, this side of the fence. There was no fence.
-It flew off, sure.
-It all flew off, and this I've repaired. From the materials that were left, brick, I fixed it. And here, I had a shed, and...
-And have you planted veggies this year?
-Sure.
-But there's so much scattered here.
-Yes, I looked for things, I found mines, I found two missiles.
-I understand very well that here...
-In this business, I...
-And here, turned out, people haven't come back? This, straight here?
-An old woman is living with her son.
-Well, alive.
-Yes.
-Alive, thank God. Because if they had been home..
-They fled early.
-If they had been in the cellar...
-They fled earlier. They only, so to say, Russians only showed up here, drove by, and they fled immediately.
-And Russians, did they appear here quickly?
-You know, we hadn't even expected it.
-Very quickly.
-Very quickly. I have a boy, he's at the front now. Still before that, as soon as it [invasion] happened, they went to Makariv, to the military commissariat. What were we supposed to do? He is young, served in the army, and all, a young man. Someone from the military commissariat came up to him and said, [he smelled of alcohol] fumes, he said, "You are young, do you want to live? Then run back home. Run away from here, f***." To be brief, he came back here, and literally, in 2-3 hours they were in Makariv...