"As long as I lived in Kharkiv, I never thought it (the war) would ever happen. And to be honest, many people in eastern Ukraine speak Russian and half of Ukraine is Russian-speaking. There was never any hatred, no racism. God, we never had such a problem. When they came to liberate us, we were always surprised. There's so much propaganda! My sisters live in Russia. One niece is in Moscow. She went on the computer (Skype) and wrote: "Uncle Lesha - the war has already started with the bombing - be a little patient, you will be liberated soon." It's as if they have come to liberate us! And Zhenya texted her that when the war was over he would take a practice grenade and come to visit them to liberate them from their apartment (laughs). But they don't understand. That's how the propaganda goes on all the time - Skabeyeva, all those Solovyovs and the whole society - they have all these brains so brainwashed. But there are a lot of smart people in Russia who understand what's really going on."
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
"I came down from the eighth floor with my bag. All the elevators in the city were suddenly shut down. I'm on crutches. Well, I was lucky, I got to the fifth floor, a man came down, the building was empty, he took my bag and carried it, I got there on my own. I called a cab down the hall. The guy came quickly, we got in and went to get Zhenya. So I drove through Kharkov and two things came to me. First, I saw a lot of destroyed buildings. Thank God - the conservatory was intact, there's a statue of "Fiddler on the Roof" - that's also intact. But next to the SBU department everything was destroyed, then the mayor's office was destroyed. The Cathedral of the Assumption, which the Germans left intact, was also damaged downstairs. This, by the way, is the cathedral in honour of the victory of Russian arms over Napoleon".
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
"Well, the next day they started bombing us - door to door and everywhere, especially in the accommodation quarters. Our misfortune is that Kharkiv is very close to the border to Belgorod Oblast and they can get us out of there. They fired rockets at us, but they can hit us not only with rockets but also with ordinary weapons. They are sitting in the Belgorod region and they are shooting at us with impunity, they can get us as far as North Saltovka - a large district. They were firing from grads - floberts, but they didn't reach us, they approached them and started attacking. Planes started flying and dropping 500-kilogram bombs. It's terrible. A plane flew, flew by, but the sound of the grenade and the rocket was different. I sat there for a month and began to distinguish between them. And the bomb, it's falling, and before it goes off, there's this roar like hell has opened up. You know, like all hell breaking loose.
(DeepL)
Alexey Ereshchenko was born on 31 August 1951 in Kholmsk, Sakhalin Oblast, in the former USSR. His parents went to Sakhalin to earn money from war-torn and half-starved Ukraine. They returned to Krasnodar Krai in 1964, and his father built a house in Temryuk. In 1970, Alexei graduated from the technical school of the sugar industry. For two years he served in the army in Kirovograd. There he married, worked and in 1984 graduated from the institute by distance learning. He moved to Kharkiv and made a good career - he reached the position of head of the dispatching service of the main networks of Kharkiv region. He was a party member, graduated from the Higher Party School and was an external instructor of the district party committee. At the beginning of perestroika, in 1991, he left the party. In 2012, both his legs were amputated due to diabetes, and he continued to work as a rank-and-file engineer in his company‘s dispatch service. In 2015, he was baptized in the Orthodox Church. He has played guitar all his life, writes poetry and prose, and publishes on the Beginning Author website. At the beginning of the war unleashed by the Russian Federation on Ukraine, in February 2022, when Kharkiv was bombed, he was in his apartment on the 8th floor because he could not go down to the fallout shelter. Two months later he left Kharkiv by refugee train to Mukachevo and then by bus to Prague. In Prague he was placed in the Prosaz Home for the Invalids, given a visa and pocket money. His ex-wife and two sons and their families remained in Kharkiv.
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
