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8:42 am: Near Kharkiv, Ukrainians begin a difficult reconstruction
Galyna Kios and her family survived holed up in a dark basement, cooking on a makeshift wood stove, as Russian troops took possession of their village, thirty kilometers from the Russian border in northeastern Ukraine. Fortunately, the occupation only lasted a few weeks, before the Ukrainian army retook Kharkiv.
“I saw what they had done to my house, what was left of it”, testifies this 67-year-old woman, widow and mother of four children, while philosophizing: “Material goods are not worth living “. “I am happy that, by the will of God, I am alive. Everything that is lost is material, we can rebuild it,” she adds, recalling what she thought that day.