They emerge from eight months of Russian occupation. Two sisters, refugees from the Kherson region, confided in franceinfo as Ukrainian forces arrive at the gates of this city in the south-east of the country.
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Sitting on her bed, in her blue bathrobe, Valentina raced against time. “We knit socks for Ukrainian soldiers. So that they put them on the forehead when it’s cold.” With her sister Anna, Valentina lived under Russian occupation for eight months before her village of Mykhailivka not be released. franceinfo met them as Ukrainian forces are about to retake Kherson. The liberation of the city would be kyiv’s biggest victory since the start of the conflict.
The two sisters are in Kryvyi Rih, one hour from the front, in a reception centre. “We lived all this time with fear in our stomachs. Life was unbearable. We couldn’t sleep, we were like zombiesremembers Anna. They were looking for alcohol, they were drinking, they were smoking cannabis. They were shooting machine guns at night for nothing.”
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Anna and Valentina now see the advancing Ukrainian troops and hope the worst is behind them. “We try to forget what we went through, we hope it will get better, we are grateful to our boys, to our army. We have a deep respect for them to still be alive“, confides Anna. Her sister continues: “If Kherson is liberated, we will be free too. We believe and we hope that all this will be over.”
“Glory to Ukraine“, launch Anna and Valentina. Their first package of socks must go to the front in a few days, before the temperatures drop.