I remember how my generation — when we went out to the square, it was exactly my classmates, my university friends, my colleagues, my generation — they went to the orange side. Because we understood that this [the rise to power of Viktor Yanukovych] would once again lead us back to what we had just broken free from, to the Soviet Union. And it really was such a dividing line between good and evil. Because I remember when we arrived, those on the orange side were always smiling, with flowers, cheerful; while those who came from the other side — those Titushky [pro-Russian, unprofessional mercenaries, the term only was coined in 2013], but back then they weren’t yet called Titushky — still, they were always sullen, in leather jackets, with angry faces. And I genuinely felt: here is good, and here is evil. Even though, as I said, my parents are Russian, they’re from Siberia. We always spoke Russian. My parents always wanted to move to Russia because all their relatives — my cousins, my aunts and uncles — had all stayed there. And my parents wanted Ukraine to return to Russia. But we, the youth at that time, we were twenty-seven, thirty years old — yes, probably already thirty — we didn’t want all that. Because we understood that everything was going backward again. I’m glad that back then… Of course, Yushchenko also ended up… He disappointed me, for example, because he did some things but didn’t live up to our hopes. But the experience of the Orange Revolution remained as an understanding that we could stand our ground and achieve something, rather than just going with the flow. It was, you know, the realization that this is possible.
Well, with relatives, that’s a whole separate and difficult story because they are all either doctors or construction workers. That is, people dependent on the government. They sympathize with us a lot. In the first days, they used to call, "Oh dear, oh dear…" But when I said that Masha and I were going to a pro-Ukrainian rally, [they said,] "Are you stupid? Why are you doing this? You need to protect yourself and your child. What difference does it make to you — Russia or Ukraine? Russia will come anyway." That made me so angry. I said, "We are fighting for our freedom, how do you not understand that?" I showed them a live video right from the center of Kherson, where we were all standing with yellow-and-blue flags. The whole of Kherson had come out. I showed it to them live on video. And they said, "You’re weird. Why do you need this?" These people don’t understand; they still live in the Soviet paradigm. For them, even now, as my brother in Moscow said, "Anyway, might is right." I told him, "Don’t you understand that this is fascism? ‘Might is right’ — that’s fascism." He said, "Why are you twisting things?" They don’t get it… They worry about us, they’re very scared, "Oh, when will you stop getting bombed?" But the fact that we want to defend our independence — to them, that’s foolishness. [They think] we should have surrendered, and then there wouldn’t have been war, there wouldn’t have been so many deaths. That’s the situation. At the same time, my friends — the parents of children with autism, who had vacationed with me in Crimea for many years — on the first day, called and said, "Forgive us, we don’t know how we got to this point, it’s our fault that this happened." So, some people realized that they were also to blame for letting the government in their country get to this point. But with my relatives, it didn’t work out that way. I can’t judge them because I think that if I were in their place, I don’t know how I would think. To understand the need for freedom, you have to feel it. And if you’ve never experienced freedom, you have nothing to compare it to. You think, “Why is it needed?” That’s what I believe.
That fear, that intimidation was somehow… You know, exactly like in the Soviet Union. When you know, you can’t say too much. In an instant, that fear of a totalitarian society returned. I don’t know how… It’s a method because you get on a bus, and there are posters hanging inside: [what to do] if you see a suspicious person, if you are taken hostage… And this constant tension. All those posters had such terrifying faces on them. Gatherings of more than three people were banned. Right away, on the Koktebel waterfront, all the street vendors and street musicians were dispersed. There were always jazz musicians playing there. No more than three people could gather. The waterfront turned into a dreary prison-like landscape. The Tatars used to set up their dastarkhans [traditional dining space] there, always with Eastern music, carpets, hookahs, kebabs. They were all dispersed. In the three years we lived there, everything got covered in mudslides, buried in garbage, shattered by the waves. Apocalypse. Where there had been life, an apocalypse happened. At school, they cut down the football goalposts so that children wouldn’t gather in groups of more than three. It felt like people were enforcing this ideological madness not just diligently, but excessively. To show their leadership how so very Russian they were, how pro-Russian, pro-Putin they were. It was horrifying. We, of course, couldn’t endure it. I realized I simply couldn’t handle it emotionally and, of course, financially as well. About seventy percent of our regular guests were from Ukraine, ten percent from Belarus, and ten percent from Russia. Even those from Russia stopped coming. A few would trickle in. We had always welcomed families raising autistic [children]. People knew about us, word spread, and that’s why they came to us. But I understood that this was a dead end. At that time, I didn’t think war could happen, didn’t think about it at all. We kept waiting, kept thinking: any moment now, everything will go back to normal, any moment now, they’ll announce that this was all a mistake. It just couldn’t be real, right…
When we left Kherson and first arrived in Chernivtsi, then here, I had cognitive dissonance. In Kherson, it was a ghost town, people were darting [across the streets]… To give you an idea, at night, they [the invaders] would drive past my windows, shooting out store windows and looting everything. We had a Rozetka, a Foxtrot [electronics stores], mobile phone [shops]. The jewelry stores — they looted those on the first day. I thought, maybe they’re hitting the pharmacy. Maybe that guy with such bags to an APC [armored personnel carrier] is carrying something from the pharmacy. Perhaps bandages. But when I went outside, I saw that the pharmacy was intact, but the jewelry store was smashed. You sit there thinking, “He's shooting at the ground floors, what’s stopping him from shooting higher?” And people [moving] in quick dashes like this, that is, the city was deserted. Then I step out in Ivano-Frankivsk: in the city center, musicians are playing, people are strolling with ice cream, with cotton candy. It felt unreal. Surreal. I’m grateful to Ivano-Frankivsk. First of all, we have a community here, civil society organizations working with children with mental disabilities welcomed us so warmly. We visit Maria Chervak. They invite us to all their events. The Rokada Foundation constantly calls, "Do you need anything, any medicine?" In the summer, they organized hippotherapy for us, for free, too. We also go to Invasport [a sports program for people with disabilities] — they have a great coach, a wonderful attitude toward the kids. We attend activities at the shelter. At the Help Point. It’s all for IDPs, but it’s the locals of Ivano-Frankivsk running them anyway. We go to pottery [classes]. I really love this city, I love [the way people here] treat us. I go to the hub for psychological workshops. I just completed a training program for women entrepreneurs, it was a free course, too. There are a lot of opportunities for IDPs. The attitude is genuinely positive. I remember in the beginning, Chernivetsky ASC [Administrative Services Center], where we came to get registered, they just flooded us with food, hygiene [products], and we could also get clothes. We had arrived with just, as I said, a pair of socks and a pair of underwear. The clothes were good. I got clothes for both myself and Masha, all for free at the ASC. Because in the beginning, it was kind of scary. Now we’ve adapted a bit because the mind just can’t live in constant stress. And thanks to the psychologists — they help too. The psychologist at the hub at King Danylo [University], I forget the name, really helped me. And the psychologist from Help Point — she’s from Nova Kakhovka herself. Her apartment was completely destroyed.
When we arrived in Ivano-Frankivsk, we naturally started looking for different groups and organizations that work with people with mental disabilities. And it so happened that I started leading some workshops myself. I was told about a shelter, I was invited there. In the summer, I took part in a project… we were doing a puppet theater. It was an interesting play. This time, we made hand puppets because I was afraid to take on a large project. It was only for a few months. For three months. I didn’t dare to use large puppets, rod puppets, or marionettes. We made hand puppets. The theme was Kotyhoroshko [a Ukrainian fairy tale character]. Our Kotyhoroshko wore pixel [camouflage, which is associated with the Armed Forces of Ukraine]. He defeated a serpent with a tricolor tongue that lived in a castle strikingly similar to the Kremlin. When the serpent spewed its tricolor fire over Ukraine — damaging critical infrastructure or tanks — Kotyhoroshko and his brothers in arms, who were also in pixel [camouflage], [fought back]. In the end, they defeated the serpent. And from under its belly, a suitcase with a nuclear button tumbled out. One of the [serpent’s] heads devoured another. The children loved the play. We even recorded a video of it, and I hope we’ll be able to add voiceover soon. After making the puppets and performing the play, the children — actually, they’re already youth, adults, some even thirty years old, with various diagnoses, Down syndrome, and autism — started asking to continue, to come to do some activities. Now, I do art therapy with them. Mostly right-hemisphere drawing. And sometimes, for specific holidays, we create [themed crafts]. For New Year, we decorated the shelter with snowflakes. For Valentine’s Day, we made valentines. But my main focus is still on art therapy because I feel like they don’t even realize what they’re capable of. I watch them draw, and when they suddenly discover, “Wow, I can do this!” — I think that’s an important mission: to help them believe in themselves, to give them a tool for self-fulfillment. Puppet theater is a very powerful tool for self-fulfillment. A person who struggles with speech, who doesn’t know how to move on stage, steps out, performs something, sees the audience’s reaction, hears applause, realizes they did well. And that kind of self-fulfillment is something everyone needs. But for someone who has always felt different, it’s especially valuable.
Nataliia Haidai is a civic activist in the field of inclusion and a twice-displaced person. She was born on May 21, 1971, in Kharkiv. As a child, she was passionate about creativity, an interest she would later return to in her work with children with mental disabilities. In 1988, she entered the Kharkiv Institute of Engineering and Economics, and by her fourth year, she had already started working at one of the city’s first commercial banks. In the early years of Ukraine’s independence, she actively participated in shaping the country’s new economic reality while working in an investment company. In 2004, she participated in the Orange Revolution in Kharkiv, on Freedom Square. Together with her husband, Nataliia Haidai faced the challenges of raising an autistic child. Alongside like-minded individuals, she co-founded the Autyzm. Osoblyvyi Vsesvit NGO (Autism. A Special Universe). Until 2017, she lived with her family in Crimea, in the Koktebel settlement, where she worked on rehabilitating autistic children. In 2017, her family permanently left occupied Crimea for the Kherson region. However, due to Russia’s full-scale invasion, they could not stay there for long either. Nataliia participated in pro-Ukrainian rallies both in occupied Crimea in 2014 and in Russian-occupied Kherson in the spring of 2022. Now, in 2024, she lives with her children in Ivano-Frankivsk, where she actively collaborates with civil society organizations, organizing charitable and cultural events.
