Long before the humanitarian disaster in the isolated village became world news, Valentyna Demydiva and her family, neighbors and acquaintances in Oleshky were cut off from the outside world. She describes an existence full of fear, with death ever present.
- Russian soldiers who were killed and civilians who stepped on mines lay there for months... the dogs tore parts of them. We tried to bury our own, but not the Russians. The elderly who have died remain in the houses, no one takes care of them, she says.
Two years ago, the last grocery store in Olesjky, in Kherson County, closed after both the milk delivery and goods truck hit mines. After that, the inhabitants were forced to rely on a monthly ration of flour, buckwheat and canned goods delivered from Russia, as well as what they managed to grow in the garden.
- I baked bread a few days a week, which we shared for breakfast and dinner. During the summer we also had cucumbers and tomatoes.
Sometimes someone had leftover vegetables that were sold at the market to the highest bidder.
- Once my husband Oleg came home and said: "I managed to pull off a head of cabbage, cook borscht." I was standing by the stove and then he said: "Do you know what that head of cabbage cost? Four thousand!" (hryvnia, equivalent to roughly 850 kroner), says Valentyna and shakes her head.
Everyone wanted meat, but it was almost never available. She remembers when one of the community's last horses was killed in an explosion. They wanted to take care of the animal but no one dared to go near because of the threat of drones.
- In the end, it was also eaten by the dogs.
Pretty much every single house in the small town has been destroyed by artillery or by the drones that are constantly moving in the air.
- That buzzing sound... it's the worst.
One day last spring, an ambulance came to the village with some food, says Valentyna. Then she found herself in the eye of the drone pilots.
- We had received some processed cheese, macaroni and two frozen fish. On the way home through the park it appeared. It turned sharply and came down towards us, it was big and dark gray and the cameras looked like eyes.
With her hands clasped and her eyes raised to the sky, Valentyna shows how she begged for mercy, how she appealed to the soldier behind the levers.
- I shouted: "We are not soldiers! Don't move! Look here, we have nothing, I walk with a cane and my leg hurts!" It sank even lower. I begged, "Please, leave us alone, we're just old people going home!"
The drone slowly lifted off towards the treetops before it turned and flew away, she says.
Now Valentyna has arrived at a hospital in Kiev after a long journey via the Crimean Peninsula and Belarus. She was evacuated along with just under 1,000 other Oleshky residents during the short-lived truce agreed by Ukraine and Russia to save the civilians from starvation.
But for husband Oleg, the rescue came too late.
- He kept saying: "Soon, soon ours will come and free us, let's wait a little longer."
She hides her eyes in her pink cap and tears run down her cheeks. Her voice breaks when she talks about her husband.
A month ago, Oleg was out on a life-threatening mission together with some other men from society. They had found a path to the neighboring community of Radensk, where food could still be obtained.
- It was his birthday... he went there with some friends and suddenly it exploded. His heel was worn away and the shinbone was crushed.
With a wheelbarrow, the comrades managed to take Oleg to the medical center in Oleshky, which was still open. Once there, the staff was able to stop the bleeding. Valentyna visited him there every day and he slowly got better.
- But when I got there last week, Oleg hadn't eaten. I gave him some stew but he said: "You know, my head is spinning. Just let me rest a little. I'll eat it later."
Then everything went quickly. Oleg stopped breathing and after several resuscitation attempts, the doctor concluded that he had suffered a blood clot and died.
Valentyna's world collapsed after her husband's death. During the last time in Oleshky, she distracted herself with a single mission: to succeed in burying Oleg.
- I knew that the dead were just lying there in a room upstairs. The doctor said, "Take him, we'll pretend we don't see anything."
But Valentyna never managed to find anyone who could help get Oleg's body out. Now she fears that his remains have been sent to Russia in connection with the ceasefire.
- But really, no one knows anything about it.
Together with the rest of her family and with friends from the neighborhood, Valentyna is now far away from the horrors of Oleshky. But in order to truly be free, she must be allowed to bury her husband.
