“I used to dye my hair a lot, and then I realized my natural hair had grown out, and I liked it so much. I had long eyelashes, and I looked so good,” Kotova recalls.  Then, in an instant, everything went dark. “The missile hit right after I thought that.” It was Jan. 14, 2023, the day when Russia unleashed one of its deadliest attacks on Ukraine, striking an apartment building in Dnipro and killing 46 people. "I didn't see or hear anything, like the missile flying… There was none of that,” Kotova says. “At some point, I felt that I was thrown back, and that was it. My brain just stopped working. I don't remember anything at all, just darkness."