Oleg Fedotov
We do not use bomb shelters, because experience has shown that in villages they are not safe — in practice, they become graves the moment they are hit. The force of an explosion immediately buries the shelter under earth, concrete, bricks, and debris. In rural areas, people have traditionally used their own cellars as shelters — places where food is stored throughout the winter.
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, people did use these cellars for protection. But after many fatal incidents, they stopped. Instead, people began to hide inside their homes, following the “two-wall rule,” or taking shelter in bathrooms. Humans adapt to almost anything, and this was one of those moments when people realized that in villages, no one hides in cellars anymore.
The photograph shows our son. At the start of the full-scale invasion, he was afraid of sirens and explosions. His mother and I tried to calm him — we showed him cartoons, played with him, and did everything we could to distract his attention. Later, he saw a Siren Head toy, which helped us redirect his fear into those cartoons. For a while, he genuinely believed it was just a game, that Siren Head was coming toward us from the forest. This lasted for some time.
As he grew a little older, he naturally began to overhear adult conversations. One summer day, he asked me,
“Dad, why do the Russians want to kill us?”
I was shocked and, for a moment, did not know how to answer him properly. In the end, I explained it to him.
This, too, is one of the forces shaping a generation of children of war. They do not need propaganda speeches — they have seen and heard everything with their own eyes and ears. This is a new generation that has witnessed Russian brutality and cruelty firsthand. This is especially true for children who have lived through occupation.
When the Russians captured villages, they forced local residents to live in cellars and barns, while they themselves occupied the villagers’ homes. People were not allowed to leave the cellars without permission, and exceptions were rare. There was a case in which Russian soldiers forced a young woman to remain in a cellar during winter with her three-month-old baby. Due to stress, the woman lost her breast milk, and only a few times was she allowed to go to neighbors to get milk. On one occasion, at a checkpoint, she spent an hour and a half trying to explain that she only wanted to get milk for her child. That day, she was lucky.
She stood on her knees, facing the barrels of machine guns. These are not stories invented for films — they are real stories from real life. And this is only one episode.
I understand that this may seem strange to some, but this is the reality. There is no real chance of survival in a cellar: it will collapse, leaving no possibility to escape on one’s own, and before rescuers can arrive, one can simply suffocate from lack of air. Inside a house, however, there is at least some chance of survival.