Halyna Chernyshova never believed her quiet Ukrainian town would be taken by Russian soldiers.
But when they arrived, she was warned they wanted her dead.
A beloved village leader, she was told her position meant Moscow's forces would consider her their number one target in the town.
So she began an almost month-long campaign to stay alive.
Warning: This article contains details readers might find distressing.
The scars of a brutal occupation are still evident on every street in her township of Mokrets.
Homes have been left as mangled wrecks, ammunition and unexploded shells line the laneways and deep tank tracks are imprinted into the bare, black earth.
These dark, muddy fields were supposed to protect the locals from Russia's advance, but not long after the war broke out they became "trapped," Halyna tells the ABC.
She never expected the danger they would face here, and certainly never dreamed she might be the subject of a manhunt in her own home.
"We all thought, 'Why would they come for a place like this?'" she says of the quiet, rural villages she governs, about 70 kilometres east of Kyiv.
Many here believed that the twin villages of Zavorychi and Mokrets would be unnavigable for heavy war machinery.
"Wooded areas, floodplains, lots of wet swamp-grounds, we thought it would be impossible," she says.
"But they came from directions we did not expect … we were trapped because we helped our own military blow up bridges to stop them from getting closer to Kyiv.
"Then brutal torture started."
Troops and tanks descended on the tiny villages and Halyna worried deeply for the women, children and elderly that had sought salvation there.
It was in these early days that she said she received a warning from Ukraine's military: They believed the Russians had a plot to kidnap and kill her.
To keep everyone safe, she would first need to stay alive.
In other towns across Ukraine, devastating stories have emerged of village leaders being brutally killed.
In Motyzhyn, a small town on the north-western outskirts of Kyiv, the female village chief was found with her husband and son in a shallow grave.
Halyna Chernyshova says it was her fellow villagers who kept her alive, and she is proud that "no-one here betrayed us".
The whisper network that kept Halyna alive
For days, Halyna says she crept from house to house under the cover of darkness, never daring to return to her own home.
"People were sitting in the basement with small children, and it was very cold because there was no light and gas," she recalls.
The villagers would send secret messages amongst each other to try and find a safe passage for their leader.
"People endured all this bravely, everyone was trying to inform each other about the location of the enemy equipment, of the soldiers," she says.
"This saved me … but we also passed this information to our armed forces too, to stop the attacks."
As she hid from the invaders in basements, cellars and attics, she got to work, helping and healing the worried and wounded.
"In addition to being a head of this village I am also a doctor, I provided the medical care," she says.
"I saw it all with my own eyes, the atrocities are incredible.
"The shelling happened every day, starting in the morning and lasting till evening, sometimes until very late at night.
As the occupation turned into a weeks-long ordeal, the townspeople started another mission.
Together, they launched their own evacuations of the vulnerable.
"We moved our children out of here until the Russians started laying mines on the road … and when they realised food was getting in, they shot any car they saw.
"Children were very scared, they cried and did not understand why they needed to hide, why shots and terrible explosions could be heard all the time."
After a month of persecution and torment, the Russian forces started retreating almost without warning, and Halyna could "breathe again".
She was alive and she had saved some of her fellow villagers.
But still, hers is a town in mourning.
"A father was shot in front of his children … and he was just one of too many, we lost some of our best," she says.
She is now dedicated to rebuilding her community, to repairing the torn-up roads and the ruined houses, and to removing the landmines left in their fields.
But she knows the worst scars are the ones no-one can see.
Hope and healing a 'duty' in liberated villages
Halyna Chernyshova is not the only woman working to restore a semblance of normal life in these liberated villages.
She's relying on the work of soldier Liudmyla Korol — one of the few women in the local territorial defence force — to support this town through its difficult recovery.
When the women meet on the street they greet each other with a warm embrace.
Liudmyla is dressed in a camouflage uniform, with her hair pulled back under a black beanie and two Ukrainian flag patches on the side of her shirt.
She is in the village not to fight, but to find those who are struggling.
"This is my service to my country, to deliver the humanitarian aid in this region," she says as she walks through the village.
Her duty is to heal some of the traumas people cannot see – the empty stomachs, the orphaned children and the broken hearts.
She meets a distraught woman in the street, whose home is now uninhabitable, who has no clothes left to change into, and whose husband is missing.
Liudmyla listens to Valentyna Prysiazhniuk's story, with one hand on her shoulder, and the other hand furiously writing notes in her book.
Moments later, she directs almost a dozen male soldiers she works with to start a search for a body in a yard.
The earth is disturbed and there are blood stains inside the home, but no-one knows exactly what happened to the man Ms Prysiazhniuk was married to for more than three decades.
"We do not understand this war, why did they come and what do they want from us?" Liudmyla tells the ABC.
In her pocket is a picture of her 24-year-old son, who is fighting on the front lines in the east of Ukraine. She has not heard from him for several days.
"I am a mother, I have children, but all of us are defending our country now," she says.
"Since February 24 [the day of the invasion], this our duty."
She watches as the male soldiers scout the garden for signs of a corpse, and gently touches Valentyna Prysiazhniuk's shoulder.
She knows that healing is impossible for this woman until they find her husband.
Fight to heal 'silent injuries' of rape victims
Nataliia Leliukh is another woman trying to help these communities come back to life and trying to heal the wounds invisible to many others.
The worst damage in this region cannot be seen, but has been inflicted upon the bodies of women, she believes.
For weeks now the gynaecologist has been travelling with her team to treat women from recently liberated towns and villages.
"Currently, I have a number of patients [in the Kyiv region] that I treat for their post-rape wounds," she says.
Ukraine's Ombudsman for Human Rights has said it has evidence that sexual assaults by the Russian military have been committed "on a mass scale," which Moscow has rejected.
Nataliia Leliukh has great concerns about the "silent injuries" women will suffer for years to come and how it may affect the country as it tries to rebuild.
"The war will have long-term consequences for women … and not just because of the sexual violence," she says.
"The injuries I've seen need full medical treatment … but the women in occupied villages, we cannot get to them, and we may not for some time."
While the military works to remove mines and as locals try to rebuild their homes, she hopes the support will be there for the women who will wear the scars on their body forever.
Halyna Chernyshova's greatest hope is that her village has seen the worst of the war, and that they can work towards a better life for their next generation.
"Our people are very courageous and we are very united," she says.
"This is our country, and we want to see our children grow up here.
"We won't stop fighting for that."
