Tamara, 69 years old, the meeting with Tamara and her granddaughter Zhenia took place in Avdiivka, a small town directly on the front line, controlled by the Ukrainian army.
In May 2017, Tamara's daughter (Zhenia's mother) and three more adults were killed by a grenade and her grandson was seriously injured. In the meantime Tamara and her grandchild Zhenia have moved to a safer place.

»Zhenia came to Avdiivka together with her mother from Kyiv, hence the mother wanted to pick up certain medication; they hadn't been here for months and were living in Kyiv since December 2016.
My grandson Artiom was also in the house unexpectedly and is now laying seriously wounded in the hospital in Dnipro.
Artiom had brought sweets to the children into the house and showed them something on the computer. It was 19.05 pm when Artiom went to the others outside the house, who sat under an awning as a grenade hit this place. All four people, who resided there, were killed and Artiom was very badly injured, it was a horrible sight. At the moment my husband and I were not at home. Zhenia and her four-year-old girlfriend Sasha were still in a room in the house and could also have died.
My grandson Artiom has been in an artificial coma since, he has just woken up, but then fell into a coma again. After he woke from the second coma, he is in need of rehabilitation. My grandson has been very badly injured and the doctors were not able to give us hope, he can die any minute. It is a miracle that he has survived his head injuries at all.
When the grenade exploded, Zhenia and her friend in the house thought that balloons had burst and went outside. Outside, everyone was lying around and was covered with dust and when the children saw what happened they ran barefoot on the street and screamed so that the neighbours came out of their houses. It was just coincidence that the children survived. I'm now trying to organize all necessary documents for Zhenia, so that we can go to Sloviansk, because it's impossible for us to live here any more.
Did you hear it?
(At this moment of the conversation with Tamara, we note detonations about 2 km away from Tamara's residence.)
This is nothing compared to what happened here. Sometimes the walls wobble from the detonations. We need to get out of here. My grandchild Zhenia is now afraid to be alone in the house and in the dark.
When we go to the place where everything happened, it is quite impossible. There, everything is still stained with blood and Zhenia takes flowers and lays them down there for her mother.
I grew up in the Kharkiv region. My father was Russian and worked as a train driver and my mother was Ukrainian. I remember many things from my childhood, for example the winters and how we played outside. When I was four years old, my parents separated and I lived with my grandparents and an uncle on a farm. There we had chickens, geese and a cow. My grandparents worked hard and were like parents for me.
All my wishes relate only to Zhenia and my grandson Artiom. Now, Zhenia has only her grandmother and her grandfather. I deeply hope that Artiom will survive. The parents of Zhenia were divorced and her father died a long time ago.
Sometimes Zhenia meets her girlfriend Sasha, who is also alone now and her grandma takes care of her. Nothing is worse than losing your own children.
All the talk about the war is totally useless, we just want it to stop. We are constantly under pressure, especially the children.
It is destiny that I have not been there that day and every time I go to the house, the neighbours tell me that it could have hit them, too. I'm now trying to take care of the needs of Zhenia. The police also took care of Zhenia and took her to the sea during the summer holidays.
I wanted to give the clothes of Zhenia's mother to neighbours, but Zhenia wants to keep her mother's clothes as a memory.
So, what can I do?«

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