I recently received the messages sent to me by people from Luhansk back in the summer – journalist

In late December 2023, mobile connection appeared for a short while in occupied Severodonetsk. Journalist Maryna Tereshchenko received the messages that locals sent her back in the summer.

She spoke to Hromadske Radio about this.

She says that last August–September, the situation in the occupied parts of the Luhansk oblast deteriorated sharply, and the number of people who were willing to speak and report what was happening in the area dropped by many times.

"They either left or shut themselves off and did not want to talk for fear of persecution by the occupation authorities. I personally had a boom when connection appeared in Severodonetsk, near the Municipal Medical Center No. 2. I started to receive Telegram messages that people tried to send me six months ago. I realized this by their content: people were writing around the beginning of June. For example, "I planted tomatoes, I managed to buy seedlings, I made a trip to Luhansk." And I understood that this all was six months ago. People were trying to write to me about what was happening to them, how they were getting by," Maryna Tereshchenko said.

She learned from the messages that in the summer people in Severodonetsk planted gardens everywhere, even upturning flower beds and parking lots, "to survive through the winter somehow."

"Indeed, the humanitarian situation there was difficult. People had no money to buy food. You could only get humanitatian aid for clearing the rubble or doing something else for the occupation authorities. But, say, my former neighbors, very old people (the woman is unable to walk), they were buying seeds and planting flower beds together with other elderly people who stayed in that house," the journalist reported to Hromadske Radio.