My name is Anastasiya, and before the full-scale invasion, I was the happiest person... As it turned out later. It seemed that I had already achieved everything: dream job on television, the most powerful love by my side, joint trips around the country and the world. Thoughts swirled in my head then: all this can’t be so perfect...
On February 24, 2022, my ideal life was destroyed, but I had a crazy belief that I would get everything out. On the very first day of the full-scale invasion, my home and parents found themselves under occupation on the left bank of Kherson region. And in the evening, I saw my beloved Oleksandr Makhov off to the Military Commissariat. He was a reservist and from the first day of our relationship he warned me: “If something happens, I will go to war. Here are my collected things, there is an extension cord, a sleeping bag, a travel rug, dishes, cigarettes...”. February 24 was the day I saw him in person for the last time, and I could not imagine that on May 9 I would be sitting next to the closed coffin of my fiancé.
When Sasha was buried in the ground, I was sitting on the bed in the evening and thinking: “Is this it? A person dies, and what next?” Since then I have started to protect the memory of a Luhansk citizen Makhov, because he had always protected me.
Now there are streets in Kyiv and Izyum that have been renamed in his honor. And, exactly three months after Sashko’s death, I have got a military ID and went to war. And let no one doubt, but I will walk with the Ukrainian flag through the small homeland of my beloved - Luhansk and my Kherson region.
I will do my best to rid our country of traitors. Everyone should be punished, because they are the same murderers as the russian occupiers. After the victory, I will continue to fight for the memory of Oleksandr Makhov. I must show the whole world a documentary that Sashko didn’t have time to show. And there will be a book where I will describe in detail what kind of hell the soldiers of the 95th Airborne Assault Brigade went through near Izyum, where my fiancé died.
There are no more plans. It is difficult to plan something for people whose plans were destroyed by the news of the heroic death of those who were dearest.