The diary entries of Olha Volodymyrivna Shevchenko, a resident of the village of Blahodatne in the Chornobaiivka community of the Kherson district (previously known as the village of Petrivske in the Bilozerka district before decommunization and the amalgamation of districts), were written during the occupation in the spring of 2022. The village is located on the border of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions and remained on the front line for nine months.
Olha Shevchenko is a former teacher of foreign literature in Blahodatne. She was born in the village of Chornomorske in the Golopristansky district of Kherson Oblast. Since the late 1980s, she lived in Blahodatne. She began writing her diary entries in the last part of her work notebook (to hide them among her work notes) on March 30, 2022. The diary is written in vivid language, with humour and optimism, which also intertwined with moments of despair in the hope of liberation. On May 22, 2022, on her birthday, Olha made the last entry before the tragedy that struck her: on May 25, 2022, an aerial bomb hit her home. Miraculously, her mother survived, but Olha was injured in the leg. Villagers took her to the hospital in Kherson, where she received the necessary assistance just in time (if they had arrived an hour later, her leg would have needed to be amputated). On July 3, 2022, she made her last entry in the city of Kherson, describing what happened on May 25, 2022.
In July 2023, Olha Volodymyrivna gave an interview to the Kherson media platform "Vhoru," where she mentioned the diary she had kept during the occupation, which she had not opened until that day. Following this publication, Roman Kabachiy, a senior researcher at the War Museum, suggested that the author transfer the diary to the museum. A few days later, Mrs. Olha agreed, on the condition that she would retype the diary for herself in electronic form.
On August 1, 2023, Olha Shevchenko made an entry with an explanatory note regarding the diary and added several stories. On August 4, 2023, her diary was delivered to the museum. This artefact is a vivid testament to a person’s experience in an informational vacuum, where the role of rumours begins to prevail, prompting people to take impulsive actions.
The diary has a soft dark blue cover with the inscription "25 MY DIARY" in a rectangular frame. The edges of the cover are stitched with orange thread. Inside, on the white front endpaper in the upper right corner, the owner’s surname and initials are noted. The diary contains a total of 74 pages, 71 of which are filled with the author’s entries. Page 47 is folded inward as it serves as a divider between working notes and personal memories, which begin on the reverse side of page 48 and end on page 70.