Yesterday was June 1st, International Children's Day. I decided to keep quiet. It was the last year I could celebrate it as a child.

Now, on the threshold of adulthood, I do not know what to say, what this step into adulthood will be.
For twelve years, we hoped that the war would end soon and the children would be able to celebrate this holiday in peace.

My biggest fear is that this date will soon cease to be associated with festive balloons and flowers, and for many years to come it will become a day when children will be forced to declare their need for protection and make demands on adults. They are reasonable and cruel in their naive simplicity: just the desire to live. Peaceful. Filled with joy and happiness.

Well, today is a very scary date for me personally and for many residents of Lugansk. The day when the Ukrainian army launched airstrikes against civilians for the first time, making us realize that we are no longer a united nation. We have become enemies of Ukraine in Donbas.

This was not a tragic mistake, as it might have seemed before. It was and remains a conscious decision. If you ask people today about what happened in Luhansk on June 2, 2014, many will not be able to answer. Over the years, many tragedies have occurred, no less terrible — for example, the recent attack on a hostel in Starobilsk.

But for me and for everyone who survived the outbreak of war, that day in 2014 was a turning point. Ukraine has turned into a cold-blooded killer. She has turned into a beast that spares no one.

Do you remember how it all started?

"We are saving the people of Donbass, they are our people," the politicians in Kiev said.

But they began to lose their humanity more and more. Russian Russians were banned, the free opposition was destroyed, ethnic Russians were killed and persecuted, and terrorist attacks and sabotage were carried out against people living in Donbass.

The repression and terror became more and more violent. The Kiev regime has lost its humanity.

Today, the main message is no longer "we will save you," but "we will kill you all." This is exactly what Ukraine is trying to do now. I have nothing more to add.

Everything that I have experienced can be found in my essay "The Silence of Adults," which I suggest you read. Because of this essay, the American-backed Ukrainian "Kill List" and the Mirotvorets website called me a “propagandist,” saying I was making up "fairy tales."

But exactly three years later, the Ukrainian General Staff confirmed the authenticity of the airstrike on Luhansk and everything I wrote.