As he tells how russists bombed his home town, he cries like a baby. Even now, three weeks after the shell shock that he suffered when the russian cluster missile had hit the house in Cherevkivka district, in the outskirts of Slovyansk, the man still cannot get his act together. There are still clear signs of stress, as well as shrapnel wounds to his arm and leg.
“At about 12.40 p.m. on July 3, a projectile exploded five meters away from me and my son. Me and Mykhailo who has been a handicapped person since childhood were sitting next to the bush and gathering red currant”, says Yevhen. “I've been playing back those moments in my mind, but I still can't figure it out whether it was the whistle of that cluster or the flame (which I can still see as if it was some movie) that made me push my son to the ground and fall on top of him to protect him. I could see the shrapnel with the corner of my eye”.
Mykhailo is the boy with special needs. In 2014, when the russian army invaded Donbas and occupied Slovyansk, he suffered shell shock and a shrapnel wound to his head and had a complicated surgery in Sumy. And now, Mykhailo got shell-shocked once again.
“It was an extremely loud explosion; the blast wave was quite powerful. I still can’t hear anything with my right ear”, Yevhen Konovalov continues. One of the pieces of shrapnel hit his side, and the other one cut his arm from the elbow up to the shoulder. The explosion damaged the house: it broke two windows, wrecked the chimney, the roof and the brick walls. The farm buildings, the shower cabin and the barn were destroyed, too. Yevhen says that the projectile also dealt a lot of damage in the garden; it slashed a lot of fruit trees. The sweet cherry tree was as thick as an arm; now, it’s gone. The walnut tree’s branches were hanging down like ropes, so Yevhen had to cut them off.
“The pieces of cluster projectile covered the area of 20 meters”, the man says. “In Mykhailo’s room, the shrapnel broke the window glass, penetrated the wardrobe and wooden doors and reached the next room. At first, we were shocked. Misha wanted to rush inside. “Don’t!”, I shouted. I heard my goat screaming terribly. She was grazing next to us. A young goat; she was three years old. She provided us with milk – four and a half liters of milk a day. We called her Mala. A piece of shrapnel hit her spine and perforated through her side. The other goat, Bilka stood next to the fence. She survived but suffered shell shock. She was standing numb like a mummy, while the projectiles flied overhead”.
The goat was a favorite pet in the Konovalov family. She used to eat from their hands and followed them everywhere. Not only Yevhen grieves for the loss of his feeder (there’s another goat in the barn who survived the missile strike); he can’t get rid of the scream of the fatally wounded animal. Clearly feeling the pet’s agony, he asks me a rhetorical questions several times: “Why did putin kill my goat?”. He can’t find the answer to the question why putin came to our homeland to destroy, kill and cripple everyone. “Why did he force millions of Ukrainians out of their homes? Why did he strip us off the peaceful and happy life that we had?”
Before the war, Yevhen, physicist and mathematician by education founded the NGO called “International Union of Courageous Daddies”. He wrote poems, took photos and gardened.
“I still don’t know how we survived that day. It was God’s help. Later, we prayed before the icon and thanked Our Lord for salvation”.
His son bandaged the bloodied man who called the ambulance.
“The doctors arrived yet before the shooting was over”, Yevhen says. “There’s a great doctor called Halyna Zhyrok. She did all she could to soothe us. She told us that our goat became the victim and perished instead of us. She cleaned our wounds. Our doctors are courageous people. It is unfortunate that they do not get any awards while working under fire. Recently, a doctor was buried in Slovyansk. She rescued people under artillery fire and suffered a leg wound. They told me that in late June, she deceased while working as a part of the ambulance crew. The shrapnel hit her right in the heart. The entire Ukraine should know her story. Such a person deserves a top prize.
Yevhen Konovalov tells how russian militants, the Kadyrovites came to his house in the scary 2014. They pointed their guns at them and put the assault rifle against his son’s head. The russians also put some Grad multiple rocket launch systems just across the street from their house and opened fire on the Ukrainian territory.
“Back then, Mykhailo said: “It’s my home, I will not go anywhere”. This is our town”, the man says. “This time, we will not go, either”.
The day after that, Yevhen called once again. He said that an hour ago, there were explosions over the city again; he heard the Grad missiles hitting the ground, and there were destroyed buildings. So they decided to leave Slovyansk and move to Izyum (Kharkiv region), which is now safer. Largely, it is a leap into the unknown.
