The pain of loss

war story

Vovchansk, Ukraine - Oct 3, 2024

The pain of loss

By Ilona Batulina

Vovchansk, Ukraine,
Oct 3, 2024

aiHow does it feel to know that your hometown is destroyed?

aiWhen you look at the photos, you don't even understand what the place is at first, because everything around you is just ruins. You look at a pile of bricks or one of the walls that is still holding on by the skin of its teeth, and then you recognize that this is the school you went to.

aiOr you look at a barely green rectangle, and it was an artificial turf soccer field where children and adults used to play; a place where you used to perform when fans from the Netherlands came to your city during EURO 2012.

My native Vovchansk will always remain my hometown, and I will always remember it.

aiThere are still walls next to the field - it's a house of culture where many concerts and performances of famous artists took place. The park you always went through to school or walked in with your friends is now just burnt tree trunks.

aiThe district of apartment buildings has turned into a ghost, as has almost the entire city. Like many other Ukrainian cities: Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Maryinka, Mariupol, Avdiivka - and, unfortunately, this is not the whole list.

aiAs in the lyrics of a Ukrainian singer's song: “I want to go home. Where everything is known to me. Maybe there is no home anymore. But I want to go home. ”

aiI will never forgive what the Russians did to my life and the lives of Ukrainians.

aiRuins and pain are what Russia leaves behind. Together we must defeat the enemy so that we never feel the pain of loss again.