Oles took the kids to Zakarpattia, his homeland, towards the end of January 2022. However, he and his wife stayed home. He felt that the war would indeed break out.

Oles, a surgeon with 24 years of experience, works at a city hospital in Kyiv.

The morning of February 24th he went to work in Kyiv, as he understood he might be needed. And February 26th their village was occupied, and Oles was unable to return. His wife was hiding from the bombings in the cellar, then at the neighbors’, and around March 7th left with them.

In the first days of the full-scale invasion, a military aircraft fell onto their street. The debris broke the roof of the house, but it remained standing. Several days later, during the artillery strike, the fence and dog enclosure were destroyed, but the house was only hit by debris and again remained standing.

The family hoped that this would be the most of the damage to the home, which they had built for over 10 years. However, on March 15, a direct strike hit their residence and destroyed it completely. From all sides of the house, glass flew out; this suggests that the shell exploded in the home itself. Debris was left everywhere: on the gate, on the trees, on the fence, and on the streetlights. In his trunk, Oles still carries larger pieces of debris that destroyed his home completely.

They were four living as a family: Oles, his wife, his 19-year-old son, and his 14-year-old daughter. They made in their home everything for the family to have peace and happiness. Oles himself welded the base of the stairs and worked together with the builders. He told that he did absolutely everything; only painting he didn’t like.

The covered winter terrace, open summer terrace, large grill, greenhouse, outside paths — there was everything and even more. Only the sauna remained to be built. “But the biggest pity is the photographs, from my childhood, from my parents’ childhood, these photos are irreplaceable,” said Oles.

The family really wants to come home. Before winter, Oles threw out all the trash. In winter, he hasn’t come by a single time. “It’s hard for me to be here when there’s only ruins around. I come here like to a cemetery. I will rebuild all this, even make it better, however, the time that I lost, those 10 years, I won’t get back. If I could get the time back, I wouldn’t even be sad and I would rebuild everything anew,” tells Oles.

The family only wants to be here. Not too close and not too far from Kyiv, with unbelievable nature, peace, and quiet.

Thanks to OLX Ukraine, a 4-Module NEST-house іnstalled for the Seikovskyi family