I probably won’t post any more missives from my Ukrainian second-cousin-twice removed or whatever, but I did think this was worth a quick read. Bits are redacted. (We’re trying to get her into Canada actually, but her husband may be conscripted at any time.)

Thank you very much for your support.  I’ve just noticed your letter in my mailbox.
In main , we are doing fine.  I know that you phone to my mother regularly.  So you know how are they doing. As russian troops go back from Kyiv region to Belarus,  it’s comparatively quiet in Baryshivka region. But people say that russians left explosives and mines in every village or town they stayed in,  so it’s still dangerous to come back there.
Probably you’ve already seen all those horrible photos of Bucha after russians ran out of it. They even had mobile crematorium to burn out bodies of civil people to hide their’s crimes. I have no words to describe my desperate…
My former colleague and her daughter were hostages for 5 days near Kyiv . They were forced to seat in a very small basement of their private house.  Russians  came into a little village with tanks and other military armor. They took all the money women had and told them to stay in the basement.  Here in Ukraine our basements are not the same as your’s in Canada.  It’s a really cold place under the ground. People use to keep there potatoes,  carrots and other vegetables  from their gardens during whole winter. There is no water or heat or toilet down there. Usually there are no windows also. So poor women lived in such awful conditions while russians stayed in their house. Russians dug a big whole in the backyard and parked tank there to hide it from Ukrainian solgers. All days long the tank was shooting above the heads of women. I can imagine the terrible roar. After couple of days russians brought 5 people from the neighbor housies and put them into the basement of my colleague. They were women and elderly people with health problems. Russians took away all the phones so poor women couldn’t call for help or to get any information about the situation in their region. My colleague told that russians were drunk  and aggressive almost all the time. On one  of that moments of aggression one of the senior officers came down to the basement and decided to scare his hostages even more – he interrogated them very roughly and in the end he shot 2 people just in the eyes of poor women…. and left bodies in the basement so everyone left alive have to live near the dead bodies… I talked with my colleague by the phone after she was saved from this  hell. She said that she think she is out of her mind and she can not be normal adequate person after this. She is over 70 and her daughter is over 40. And the most unbelievable thing is that they were saved just thanks to one of the russians private. He came to them and said that he didn’t want to come to this war and wanted to help them. On that day there was green corridor arranged in the region and the russian private let people escape from the basement.  Now women are in Lviv on the western Ukraine.
This history is one of the hundreds , thousands. And I really don’t know if I can ever hear or read all of them because any normal psyche can not hold this horror out.
Me and my sister decided to stay wherever we are till the situation is pretty good in our regions.  For now the region is quiet but almost every day and night we here air raid sirens. Only this sounds can drive one crazy,  I assure you. But we’re still hoping, we’re still working and still waiting for peace.
Hugging you….