“I was scared every second” – A Ukrainian woman remembers life under Russian occupation

Anastasiia remembers waking up in shock and disbelief at five in the morning on the 24th of February 2022. “I woke up because our friends called us, telling us Russian tanks were rolling in from occupied Crimea”, she remembered, adding that she only really grasped the severity of the situation when her daughter’s kindergarten informed them a couple of hours later that they wouldn’t open. “They’re usually always open, even during the holidays”, she explains.

Anastasiia thought the Russian forces would turn around. After a few days, Kherson, where she lived, was occupied and Anastasiia, who was pregnant, her husband and little daughter found themselves living under Russian occupation. She remembers that in the first few weeks, Ukrainian supplies couldn't reach the city, food became scarce, and people were scared of starving. 

“It was chaos. People were trying to rob supermarkets and no one could blame them”, she recalled. “It wasn’t safe to leave the house,” she says, adding that staying inside, however, wasn’t any safer. Around a month later, the Russian supplies came from occupied Crimea and the situation somewhat stabilised. 

Besides limited access to food in the first month, Anastasiia remembers that their Ukrainian SIM cards didn’t work any more, implying they had no idea what was going on in the rest of the country. “We didn’t know if Kyiv was occupied,” she said. 

Residents took to the streets to protest just a few weeks into Russia’s occupation of Kherson They carried Ukrainian flags and signs such as “Kherson is in Ukraine”. Anastasiia remembers the protest with awe.

“We had two revolutions in the last two decades, when we’re unhappy with something, we protest”, says Anastasiia. In the end, the protest in March 2022