Aid for Nastya, Kolya, and Vanya

Hello friends,

Maks here. This is my cousin and her family. They have been drastically affected by the war in Ukraine. My family and I have been providing financial aid to her during this difficult time, but they want their story heard and any additional help you can offer them. Nastya is an artist and really wants to share with the world of what their happy life was like before the war and humanize a conflict that seems so far away to some.

Here is her and her family's story. I hope you will consider reading it and helping them out!

SLAVA UKRAINI!

Hello everyone!

My name is Nastya,

I am from Ukraine. Before the war and the invasion of the Russian army, I was an absolutely happy girl, daughter, mother, wife, photographer, and just person. My family lived in the suburbs of Kyiv, in Gostomel - a small but gorgeous and calm town. Incredible nature, parks and smells of the forest - this is what we loved so much.

I am a family photographer. I just love taking photos of newborns, pregnant women, children and creating at-home family photoshoots. Photography is my passion, my work and a massive part of my life, without which I cannot express myself.

I take photos of families, their love stories, weddings, births, first years, first steps, last day in the kindergarten, first day at school, birthdays. All the most precious and important - I save the happy moments of the family on the photos ❤️

The greatest happiness in my life is my son Ivan. He is 4 years old, he is an incredible, kind, funny and cool boy, and he is also sure that he is a Spiderman.

Ivan was a very long-awaited child for us, because my first pregnancy ended tragically, and at 13 weeks the baby stopped developing. I was mentally and physically dead for a whole year, I stopped communicating with friends and relatives. I had a deep depression. I thought I would never be able to have children again. Therefore, when God gave us a son, it became the greatest happiness for me. In order for him to be born safely, I spent all 9 months in the hospital and was not at home for a single day. But everything ended well. And now we are the parents of such a wonderful boy. My husband Kolya is a film director.

Before the war, he worked on Ukrainian television, filming series and movies. He worked long hours and very hard, because the filming schedule is just crazy, but I always support him and more than happy when his series are shown on TV and my son and I watch them. And Vanya always said: “I want to make movies like dad.”

But… On February 24, our world and the world of every Ukrainian family collapsed. At 5.30 in the morning we got a call from a friend who lives in Kyiv and he said, “get ready quickly, the war has begun.” We jumped out of bed, collected one bag with documents and things for the child. I took only the clothes which I was wearing, plus warm pants and a jacket. Ivan woke up and we told him "we were going on a trip". And after 20 minutes we got into the car to leave. In the sky there was a glow from falling bombs, the sounds of explosions, and 30 helicopters of the Russian army were flying over Gostomel. We were lucky to leave on time. Because everyone who stayed at least a little longer could not leave the town. Most of our neighbors and friends sat in the basement without food, light, and heat for 14 days and waited for evacuation corridors, but there were almost none of them, because the Russians shot civilians and cars, even with white flags and the inscription “children” on cars. We never could have thought that our little Gostomel would become the epicenter. The Russians razed our city to the ground.

All those who remained in the cellars were held hostage, killed just for fun. In our house, all the apartments were broken into and everything inside was stolen or destroyed. We had a wooden floor and a ceiling in our apartment, which my husband made with his own hands, they tore off these boards and then made fires right inside our apartment. We got a call from a neighbor who couldn't leave and told us all about it, but that was back in the early days of the war. Now, for more than 2 weeks, there is almost no connection with Gostomel. The fighting continues every day, because of this, people cannot be evacuated. My friend’s grandmother couldn’t leave due to her age and one day she went out to cook food for herself on a fire near the house (because there was no water and light there from the first day of the war and people melted snow on a fire in order to somehow survive). At that moment, a shell flew into the yard. She was torn apart on the spot. And now there are such terrible stories in almost every family, from those who did not have time or the chance to evacuate. We made it and it saved our lives.

We first went to Kropyvnytskyi to our parents, and then together drove for three days towards Lviv in western Ukraine. We were on the road for 17 hours each day, stopping to spend the night just with kind people whom we did not even know. They just helped us. It is calmer here, because it is closer to the border with the EU countries and further from Russia. But still, sirens sound every day and night and we have to hide in a shelter because there is a threat of an air raid. There were also several explosions. I do not have words to describe how scary it is, because we understand that there is no safe place in Ukraine right now. But I don’t want to go abroad, I want to be close to my relatives, parents and help my country as much as possible. You know, my child perfectly copies the sound of a siren now... and every day he asks when we will go back to Gostomel, because he did not take his favorite Spiderman toy and now it is left there alone. And I say soon, but I already understand that we do not have a home to return to.

I feel ashamed, but I would like to ask you to support my family. Because we are completely out of work. And here we need to rent housing, and because of the large number of people it is very small and it costs a lot of money. And how much longer we will have to be here, we have no idea. My husband was not paid wages for the entire month he worked. We are just left with nothing. And I couldn't take my camera with me and it's a very painful for me. I collected money for a whole year, I had just bought it and could not take it, because I only thought that I needed to take warm things for the child and documents. But now it would give me the opportunity to take photos for donations, get a little distracted from terrible thoughts and anxious states, take free photos of refugees like us, who arrive every day at the station, or photograph newborn children and families at home. I want to take a look at some kind of used camera so I would have the opportunity to buy it.

Every day I think we've lost everything. I cry, cry, cry, but then I understand what it is a blessing that we did not doubt our descisions for a second, managed to leave Gostomel and stayed alive. Life is the main value! I believe that we will win and rebuild everything. And we will still live a happy life in our small apartment in the small town of Gostomel, which has already been given the title Hero City. And we will give birth to another daughter(I really want to)!

Thanks to everyone who read this story. It was so important for me to share it. ❤️

My Instagram and work pictures: nastya insta

This is us before the war.