When the Russians arrived at her home, Viktoria Scherbak was with her 17-year-old daughter. Scherbak explained that she was a Russian teacher and disabled, but they wouldn't listen. "There were five of them, armed. They took us outside, took our documents, our phones, put a bag over our heads and led us to the prison," recalls this 56-year-old Ukrainian from Balakliya, in the Kharkiv region, close to the Russian border.

Mother and daughter spent three days in a tiny cell with two other women. There was not much air. Soldiers regularly came to see them, drunk. One night, one of them came in his underwear to interrogate them. One of their cellmates was tortured with electricity. The other, aged 22, was taken away several times. "She came back exhausted and beaten. They raped her and forced her to make videos about how great it was to live in Russia now."

Scherbak was terrified that her daughter would suffer the same fate. During an interrogation, she said she was planning to leave the city with her daughter to go to Kharkiv and then abroad. Her torturers threatened her: "They told me they were going to interrogate my daughter and rape her in front of my eyes. I fainted." Scherbak interrupted her story. Her hands were shaking.

'Permanent anxiety'

The town of Balakliya was under occupation for six months, until it was liberated by Ukrainian troops in September 2022. Even today, the teacher, who has switched from teaching Russian to English, is caught up in her nightmares. "I have flashbacks, my heart problems have worsened, and I've developed a stomach ulcer." The images of planes razing the city at the start of the invasion often come back to her. The bombing burst the windows of her apartment and made "clouds of smoke like mushrooms." "This fear is still with us today, we feel a permanent anxiety," explained Scherbak.

The full-scale war Russia has been waging in Ukraine since February 2022 has caused trauma on a level that is unprecedented in the country's recent history. The soldiers fighting on the front line are not the only ones to suffer the effects. Civilians, suffering from bombardments, occupation, the loss of loved ones, the destruction of their homes and their forced departure, are also victims. All generations are affected, regardless of where they live, near the front or in the rear. "I haven't met a single person – man, woman or child – who hasn't been traumatized," said Ilya Yesiley, a psychologist and volunteer with the humanitarian foundation of Olena Zelenska (the wife of the Ukrainian president) dedicated in particular to mental health problems.

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