This is one of a series of occasional dispatches about life during the war in Ukraine.
PREOBRAZHENKA, Ukraine – This small village in southeastern Ukraine seems peaceful at first glance, a typical Ukrainian village with rich fields and well-kept courtyards. But it was not spared by the war.
Tamara, 59, a resident, said: “At night, it was quiet, so we heard shelling in the distance. “During the day, we grow as many vegetables as possible — no one knows what winter will bring.”
When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last February, she and the three nieces she is raising moved into her home’s cellar, because it was “noisy and scary” outside. But within a few days, they realized that it was impossible to live there in the wet cold.
“Many villagers left when it all started, but in the end most of them returned,” Tamara said one recent afternoon. “Here we have our own house, our own garden, our own vegetables, but what do you do when you are far away without money and no home? So we stayed.”
A few days later, the shelling left three people in Preobrazhenka seriously injured, according to local authorities.
But it was silent when Tamara spoke. Her granddaughters are helping with the garden and playing with their little dog, Javeline. They knew well that the village had held two funerals for soldiers killed in the war against the invaders, and a third was about to take place. The youngest Yana, 9, said: “We’re not sure if we’ll go to the funeral tomorrow, but you know where it will be, everyone will be there.
Another villager who asked to be named, Yurii, 69, was joking and laughing until he started talking about his family. One of his sons is on the front lines.
On the third day of the funeral, the village was packed with people early in the morning. People lined the main street, holding flowers and flags, waiting for the funeral to bid farewell to Ruslan Serenkov, 37, a machine gunner who died on June 5 on a combat mission near Bakhmut.
His widow, Nadiia Serenkova, 34, now faces raising their two children, Sophia, 8, and Illia, 12.
“I can’t talk about him now,” she said of her husband. “I can’t imagine my life without him.”
Misfortune is no stranger to the Serenkov family. His mother, Asiaia, 81, is from Kazakhstan and his father, Petro, 72, is from Belarus. After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster sent radiation into Belarus, they left their home in the city of Homel, starting a new life in Preobrazhenka.
Asiia Serenkov said that her son liked the army. Not long before he died, she said, he said to her, “Mom, you can’t imagine how many good people there are. I should have enlisted in the army much earlier.”
