HOW DID THE WAR BEGIN FOR YOU? The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation Continues to Collect Stories and Testimonies of Civilians in Donbass

The armed conflict in Donbass has been going on for seven years, but peace is still somewhere far away. People continue to die and millions live in a climate of constant stress and fear. Each of them has his or her own story. The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is convinced that all of them should be told. The Foundation established an online Museum of Civilian Voices and set itself a task to collect 100,000 testimonies from people whose lives were divided into before and after because of the conflict. The first 1,000 stories have been collected. One of them was told by Tetiana Gololobova, a medical worker from Krasnohorivka. She recalled how the war began for her, what was the hardest challenge, why her values changed drastically in recent years and who helped her and millions of other civilians to survive…

At the end of June 2014, hostilities raged in Krasnohorivka. Tetiana Gololobova, a doctor and a young mother, tightly snuggled her two-year-old daughter in her arms. Someone advised her not to stay in the house for the night, but to hide in the cellar. This saved the lives of Tetiana and her kid. 

‘It was a sleepless night. We almost did not sleep because there was a shelling and everything was shaking. The artillery guns were firing. We were dressed. We did not have a cellar in our house. We brought a supply of water and food, as well as our documents to the neighbours’ cellar to be able to hide there in case of shelling. Sometime closer to the morning everything stopped, calmed down and then we left for our parents’ place,’ the woman recalls.

She says she was not leaving for long. She thought she would go to Mariupol with her daughter, would swim in the warm see and in a couple of days everything would be over and they would come back home. But their house in Krasnohorivka is now destroyed and there is simply nowhere to return. 

‘Losing your own home is the worst thing. It is horrible when there is nowhere to live. In fact, your life simply burst up,’ Tetiana says.

In Mariupol Tetiana had neither friends nor relatives. She admits that the first year in the new place was very difficult:

‘I found a job and a place where to live, but emotionally it was very difficult to realize that you had lost everything. I cannot say that there was not any help, but still it was hard. Then we first came across the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation that was providing humanitarian aid – food assistance. And my child was small. She was only three years old then. We received food assistance every week.

Tetiana often recalls her home. She understands that her life will not be as before and recounts how the war changed her values:

‘I do not plan any serious things any more. Because of the war, values change, for sure. While earlier I could plan a certain amount of time in advance, now I cannot. I got used to preparing for anything in advance. However, values are reconsidered and you live differently. I dream about my own apartment or housing. When we lived in Krasnohorivka, then things like family and home were a constant and nothing could change it.’

Today Tetiana works as a doctor in Mariupol. She is back to the front line again, but this time in fighting the coronavirus.

‘We have quarantine because of the coronavirus now. We are a specialized organization and cannot switch to teleworking, change the working schedule or shifts. We work around the clock and do not have days off. In fact, we have irregular working hours and no holidays or leaves. Round-the-clock permanent work,’ says Tetiana.

Recently, the woman again met the staff of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. It was at the hospital where the Foundation brought some tests and medical equipment.

‘We did not have such equipment. It remained in Donetsk. Now, thanks to the Foundation, we carry out examinations for the entire Donetsk region,’ the doctor notes.

The story of Tetiana Gololobova is one of a thousand testimonies kept by the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. This is the largest collection of stories from civilians of Donbass in Ukraine.

‘The key task of the museum is to collect, structure and show to the world testimonies of civilians from Donbass who found themselves amid the war and are surviving it right now. All the stories are from the first person, primarily in the format of video testimonies, video interview. We want to establish the world’s main archive of Civilians’ stories. We plan to collect 100,000 testimonies by 2025, but the big dream is a million stories. We believe that in this way we preserve voices from the past and present for a better future,’ says Natalya Yemchenko, a member of the Supervisory Board of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation.

Every story matters. Please, share yours! Follow the link https://civilvoicesmuseum.org/ru/my-story and tell us how the war began for you and what it changed.