'We want peace': Ukrainian woman on life in Kharkiv

(NewsNation) — Ukrainian woman Marusia Yelizova returned to her war-torn hometown of Kharkiv, Ukraine, despite it being under Russian attacks after fleeing to Czechia three years earlier.

NewsNation's Connell McShane met Yelizova and her family in Poland after they left Kharkiv amid the war in 2022 en route to neighboring Czechia.

She returned despite the dangers after her mother lost her job and Yelizova failed to find one while taking refuge on foreign soil.

"I gave up at that time. I stopped to fight for my life," Yelizova said of her time in Czechia. Now, she says, "we live on a bomb. I work, I go outside, I don't know when or where the bomb will fall, so it's like life on a bomb."

Her previous home was sold prior to moving to Czechia, and now, Yelizova lives in a flat thanks to help from Ukraine.

"It's really scary because there are pieces of the bombs that fly everywhere," she said.

Yekuzova "cannot feel" peace as an imminent hope for the region, but she still desires it.

"When we tried to be refugees, we were thinking we would never come back to Ukraine if [Kharkiv] is part of Russia," she said.

"At the moment, we feel that we want peace. We want to be Ukraine, of course, but we want peace."