Ukraine war diary: My girlfriend and I bought a new mattress for our apartment in Kyiv. We used it to cover the window when the shelling began.

This is the first day of the war. In truth, we didn't really know what to do when the war started, and so we had a makeshift approach to keeping ourselves safe in the middle of an active warzone.

The left photo shows mine and my now-fiancée's apartment in Kyiv. We'd spent months refurbishing it, had finally started buying furniture, and were preparing to move in. The last thing we needed was a bed and a mattress, but the invasion had broken out before we could use it.

As the war started and shelling began raining down, we were aware that if our window blew up, it could severely injure us — or worse.

So we thought, if we couldn't sleep on our bed, it could at least save our lives.

You can see the balloon I gave my fiance on Valentine's Day, and just ten days after, we had to put a mattress next to the window to make sure we didn't die.

We only stayed in Kyiv for three days of the war. We spent most of this time hiding in bomb shelters and planning on how to keep safe — how to survive.

After three days underground, it became clear that we'd need to flee to a safer part of the country. Soon we found a home in Boryslav, west of Lviv.

At the start of the war, we were completely lost. We didn't know what to do or how to cope. But after a couple of weeks, many of us sat up and thought, "OK, we have to do something."

However, I couldn't fight. Not because of physical limitations, but because I didn't have any experience fighting, and I just would have been an easy target.

I knew I could do more with a laptop than with an AK-47.

So the first initiative I worked on was WarStop.com, where we set up Amazon wish lists to supply Ukrainian soldiers with goods that would keep them alive on the front line.

This image was from the end of March when the first orders started flooding in. You can see piles of generous donations behind me and Juliana, who runs To Fulfil a Dream, an NGO that provides assistance and support to Ukrainian refugees and our soldiers.

Here I am with my — at this point, to-be — fiancée and her mom and little sister. This was the first time in months that we could try to enjoy some form of normality.

It felt really strange to be sitting in a café next to the windows, a part of the room you normally would avoid.

It was such a novelty to drink coffee and have cake, even in Truskavets, a city far away from the active fighting.

Honestly, it felt amazing, it was a breakthrough in life in a war. But it was still scary, still dangerous. There was still the voice in your head saying, "This is crazy, get out of here."

But either way, you had to try to get back to normal, because if you remain scared every single day, you'll just burn from the inside.

In May, I got engaged to my girlfriend of seven years, Natalia.

I was initially planning to propose to her at an Imagine Dragons concert that was supposed to be held on June 3, but that was cancelled for obvious reasons.

I proposed at home instead, in our apartment as just a small surprise. Though it might not have been what I envisioned, I wanted to do it then rather than continue to wait through the war.

I actually had a photo of the exact ring I wanted in my pocket before the war started, and I had been waiting for a nice moment to go ahead and buy it, and to propose. But when the war broke out, I realised I had no idea when this nice moment would come about, so I decided to propose without waiting.

The war has made it so you now go after what you want. You do things now without a delay because now there's a real chance that the next day, you might be hit by a rocket. Now you can't live life on pause.

This photo shows Natalia and a pug we were looking after for a friend. For us, we took summer to try and enjoy our lives. War was still raging, but we wanted to find happiness in these times.

We're very lucky that we live near the Carpathian Mountains, so we're surrounded by natural beauty and can escape the real world for a minute when we want.

In these times, it was really nice to just go out and feel normal.

And yes, even during a war, a 10-year-old will be grumpy about being dragged out on a walk.

This photo was an incredibly special day for me and my team. I'm part of Car4Ukraine, an organization that turns cars into trucks for the Ukrainian military to use.

In August of 2022, the Minister of Defense gifted this medal to Roman Hapachylo, the vice president of our organization, who acts as the face of it all.

It felt amazing that not only had we found a way to help the people fighting for our country directly, but our country recognized us for that work.

It was a moment where, even in such a dark time, you knew you were doing the right thing.

While we celebrated Car4Ukraine in August, that didn't stop when September rolled around.

This month we marked the production of our hundredth truck to be sent to the Ukrainian military.

Loads of people from the Car4Ukraine family came together to celebrate. This was roughly half of the people involved in the project, everyone from making our stickers to installing machine guns onto the backs of tanks.

It was amazing to look at the last seven months and note that we made great waves in supporting the Ukrainian military.

With the good weather, and the unity between all the people and visitors, the event felt like a light in the darkness. It was one of those moments when we realized that Russia had no chance.

This photo was a truly crucial moment for my fiancée and me, as it was the first time we'd returned to Kyiv since we fled our apartment on the third day of the war.

As we stood at the entrance to our apartment complex, we remembered how shrapnel covered the space around our apartment after the Ukrainian air-defense system destroyed a Russian rocket.

When we returned to the apartment nine months later, the marks of the war were less scary but still so obvious. Here we're standing in front of a military hedgehog, a form of the static anti-tank blockade that stops military vehicles from entering certain areas.

Even though war felt like a part of life by this point, it was still a shocking thing to see. Imagine you're coming back to your apartment, your home, and you are greeted by a huge structure that is in place just to make sure that tanks won't enter your home. It was jolting.

In November, I went over to Denmark to meet two people who were helping Car4Ukraine and were, in turn, helping the Ukrainian army.

Here I'm sitting with Pelle, who gave our project 10 cars in total. He found them, fixed them, and then supplied them to us.

Next to him is Yette, a retired doctor who saw adverts of people selling items that could be of use to soldiers, things like warm clothes and binoculars. She managed to persuade people with an offer they could not refuse: take no money for your things and instead donate them to Ukraine. She managed to amass hundreds of items for our effort.

It was amazing to meet them, strangely, because they had no relationship with Ukraine. They had no family there, no real links to the country, and it's not like they had loads of money to give. Instead, they were just regular Danish people who sincerely wanted to help Ukraine.

In December, I continued to see people who were working to do anything to help Ukraine. This photo is of some kids running a bake sale.

This was cute, obviously, but the context is more important.

The two children on the right are the kids of a family friend. She's a single mom and had some financial difficulties due to being one of the seven million people internally displaced by the war. In addition, there were delays with her social-support payments, so it's been a hard time for her in many ways.

Her children raised about $70 with the bake sale, which translates to at least two weeks' worth of food. But when her children came home with the money, she wanted it to go to the people fighting for her country. So, she gave it to me so I could give it to the soldiers through Car4Ukraine.

On New Year's Eve, I travelled from the relative safety of our home in Boryslav to the warzone of Bakhmut to meet soldiers and deliver a fleet of cars to the front lines, and I spent the first day of 2023 right next to the active fighting.

It was strange to start a fresh year, a chance for a new beginning, hearing the sounds of shelling nearly a year after Putin's invasion began.

It was interesting to be with these people at such a big celebration, very far away from our homes, when we hadn't known each other a year ago. But now this cause has united us.

It was scary and definitely dangerous — my fiancée was very worried — and I was aware there was a real chance of being killed, but it was still the right thing to do, to go into the fighting to help in the way that I could.

Nearly one year to the day after the war started, I saw my parents at home in Kherson for the first time in over a year. It was unforgettable.

They had no idea I was coming, and I used the Find My Friends function on my iPhone to see where they were. My dad was in the supermarket, so I went in and turned to corner to see him browsing the aisles. I went over to ask if he needed a lift home.

"Where the hell did you come from?" he asked, and we hugged for the first time since Putin invaded.

We surprised my mom at home with flowers, and we were all crying over finally being back together again.

Though it was beautiful to see my family again, being back in Kherson was difficult.

I could barely recognize the roads I grew up on. The street my school was on was totally besieged.

A place that should have conjured happy memories instead felt like a set from a post-apocalyptic movie.

From the grounds where I played soccer to the shop where I used to buy fries as a teenager, it was all gone. Nobody was there. It was a shadow of what it once was.

The feeling of uncertainty is still very present as we move into the second year of this war.

However, one thing is clear: We have to keep going and live our lives no matter what.

Ukraine will win the war, 100% — and this will include the liberation of all our territories, including Crimea.

During this trip back to Kherson, for the first time, since I moved out of the city at age 18, I realized that I actually want to come back to Kherson and help rebuild it.