Now your surprised me… How do you know we are DRIVING into the air raid shelter ? Because that‘s something we really do - and I think we are the only once.

Our raid raid shelter is an underground parking next door. At the beginning of the war we‘ve spent night after night sitting on chairs, our dog in panic when explosions shuck the walls.

After a while, especially because our dog loves to be in the car, we decided to drive by car into the shelter, park the car at an empty parking spot, my wife and me sitting in front, the back seats covered with soft blankets for our dog. For us it‘s more comfortable (and we can charge our phones to be informed when drones and missiles coming in) and our dog just sleeps, not panicking, no matter what.

The night I finished the trip report one of the 2 heaviest attacks was going on. We knew already around 10 pm that this will be the case.

So at around 11 pm I packed the necessary in the car, pillows, drinks and snack for the 3 of us, a case with all documents and valuables.

At 3 am we were woken up by 3 heavy explosions, windows vibrating. We quickly put on the shoes (always sleeping dressed), went to the car and drove into shelter.

The next 3 hours there were multiple explosions around us, the engines of the drones constantly coming nearer and going away. Meanwhile, after 3+ years we became specialists about ‚explosions‘, hear the difference between an intercepted drone and missile, especially when a hypersonic X-47 (Kinshal) is hit midair and in case a missile/drone hits a target.

At 05:40 we had a hit in very close proximity, the walls and our car were shaking, at 06:00 the alarm was over.

Since we were in the car anyway we didn‘t drive home straight away, instead decided to drive through the city, make an inspection about what has been hit. It was a brand new apartment building 4 blocks away from us, which as hit (as we found out later) by two Iskander-M ballistic missiles, totally destroyed, the road blocked by police, lots of ambulances standing in front of the building, firefighters trying to extinguish the fires. We saw a lot of shattered windows, even at buildings one kilometer away.

The result of the night ? 24 civilians killed, including children as young as 2 years old, more than 250 people hospitalized.

Maybe now you understand why driving 200+ km/h is a minor risk for us, why we want to live each day to the max. Because we clearly understand that each day could be our last day. And then there‘s a U.S. president who is surprised that we hate ruZZians…

Honestly, I don‘t care too much about myself. I‘m 55 years old, I had a fantastic and interesting life, more than most people could dream of. If it ends here and now I really don‘t care. But my wife is just 23 y.o., she still has all her life in front of her, getting heavy medication including a ketamine therapy, sometimes 3 days just sleeping and moving like a zombie… that makes me really, really angry.

So angry I wanted to sign up at the army voluntarily, but they didn‘t want me. Too old, without any experience (I never served). Instead we decided to rise funds, in which we (especially my wife) are quiet successful. Meanwhile we have supported the army, especially the unit my father-in-law is serving in, with more than 100K U.S.$.

That‘s life, we can‘t chose - but we need to make the best out of it. If we only sit in shelter, crying = Putin (we call him Adolf Hitler 2.0) has won. And that will not happen.