Among ruins, the 73-year-old woman is looking for intact, strong bricks. The couple only has an old barn left: no windows, doors, nothing. However, she believes that it will become a shelter, so she single-handedly bricks up the window frames. A fellow villager bricked up a stove so that they could have heating in the future shelter.

She says, “I was working the day before yesterday, and I thought, they should come to see me now and see how an elderly woman, covered in cement and sand, sculpting a stove”.

Her husband is 80. They built a house together and had a farm. “We had two goats. Both died.”

Now they live a kilometer from home, with their son. His house was also slightly damaged, it is cold there, and there is almost no light, but at least there are walls. The occupation affected the whole family: their house burned to the ground, their son had no windows and the house was hit by missile fragments, their grandson had an apartment on the top floor, a missile hit the roof, and now there is no ceiling. At least they covered what was left with a tarpaulin.

After surgery, their son is almost paralyzed in half of his body, so he can’t help his parents. He is the one who explained what the family had to get through during more than 2 weeks of occupation. His parents are calm and don’t share much of their troubles.

Mykhailo’s wife comes to the ruins every day. She looks for something to do, heats a kettle on a surviving street socket, and charges a flashlight or a phone.

Although they were evacuated to Volyn and could have stayed somewhere there, they wanted to be at home, on the land where they spent their whole lives.

The modular house for the Protsenko family was installed with the help of AGCO Ukraine which donated $15,000. We’re grateful for this generous donation!