Don't cry.
We are all right.
Everything is fine, son.
There, there, dear.
We are strong.
We have withstood it all.
We have waited -- WE have waited for the Ukrainian flag.
- Today, I came back to my hometown
for the first time in more than six months.
When I left, [Izyum) was still Ukrainian.
I'm not recognizing my hometown.
Everything has been burned down.
The bombing, the artillery shelling,
we didn't know whether our house was there or not,
whether it had been destroyed or not.
[Then one] evening, my friend called me
and said, "Izyum is Ukrainian now.
There's a flag."
I was holding the phone in my hands and,
to be honest, I was crying.
I really wanted to go home.
It was all I had,
my life's work has gone into this house.
What's important is that our family is all safe,
that we will get back to our house.
We will rebuild Ukraine.
Vitya, I'm so happy to see you.
The scariest thing was that they could have died
without getting help.
There was no pharmacy there, no hospital.
One couldn't but any medicine there.
I don't know, to be honest,
how one could have survived that at all?
- There was nothing in the shops.
- Nothing's in the shops.
And no medicine anywhere.
Imagine, he's on medication, and so am I.
- I have brought you medicine. - You have!
And there was nowhere to buy it.
Viktor called saying, "If we flee, we'll take you with us."
And I said, "Son, we won't leave our home."
If we were to die, then we would die in our village.
We would die here and be buried here,
at the cemetery where our whole family is buried.
- Mom, when you managed to call us
[the Russians] didn't bother you, did they?
- No, they weren't bothering us. What can I say.
I was calling and there was a car stopped -- wiretapping.
They were sitting on top of the car,
one walking back and forth with a machine gun.
And what could you say?
"Everything's fine, we are healthy and well."
Absolutely nothing else.
- And if you did, they would get you, right?
- If you say anything --
they got one lady here, she's still missing.
When the Ukrainian army came, when our tanks arrived,
people were greeting them on their knees.
They were holding bread and salt and standing by the highway,
greeting them.
This was so touching.
You couldn't look at that without crying.
- My life got split into before and after.
Before the war and after --
these are completely different things now.
We missed so much, old man.