"If we stay here and don't leave, we will die here"

I am a native Mariupol resident, but it so happened that in 2011 we moved to Donetsk and lived there until 2014, when my first occupation took place. We left our apartment in Donetsk and returned to Mariupol because our company was transferred here. It was a little easier for us because we were returning to our hometown, but we had nothing in it. 

All these years, from 2014 to 2022, we lived in Mariupol on the Left Bank, on Peremohy Square. All of our leisure time was spent on the Left Bank - Veselka Park, the descent to the Azov Sea, Morskyi Boulevard - this was the route of our walks. During this period, we also had our second long-awaited daughter.

Death on the eve of war

On the eve of the invasion, I suffered a great tragedy - in November, my mother died of Covid-19. I took it very hard. In January and February 2022, I simply did not see my life continuing. That was my state of mind. My husband said to me: "Come on, we have children, pull yourself together, we have to move on". But I couldn't see anything at all, it seemed to me that nothing would happen in Mariupol - these were my feelings. And the fact that there would be a full-scale invasion, well, of course not, I was driving these thoughts away from me and could not even think that this could happen. That's why the outbreak of the war found me at home, like everyone else, at four in the morning. My godmother, who lived on Svobody Avenue, called and said: "Inna, it has started, I am coming to you".

Donetsk has led to confusion

Everyone read the news and understood that this was happening all over the country. We had to decide what to do next - whether to stay or pack up and leave. We stayed in Mariupol and remained in the city until 21 March 2022. Of course, we didn't expect it to take so long, we kept hoping that it would be over quickly. You know, we went through the occupation of Donetsk. It was very confusing for us. We immediately refuelled the car, bought as much as we could and continued to wait until there was still light until 26 February 2022. And then the water disappeared, and on Tuesday there was no gas supply.

Every day it was getting worse. The shelling was already reaching us, our yard, and the glass in the windows in our house was starting to shatter. Cooking was "not difficult", except that you were constantly being bombed. You couldn't be near the fire because shells were falling all the time, you could be killed there. The main issue we had was water. When men went to fetch water, it was almost like going to death. At first, we got water in kindergartens, there were wells there, then we went to hospital No. 4, then we drained all the batteries and went to look for boilers. We cooked on fires, and we could burn many things - doors, window frames. People took out everything they could, plus whatever they could find around.

"It was a terrible blow! Fire, corpses, huge shell crater"

On 13 March, a plane dropped an air bomb on us. It was in our yard, at 32/42 Peremohy Avenue, near the first entrance. At 9:20 am, we came up from the shelter to our ground floor apartment to have breakfast, tired of the darkness and dust. My youngest daughter, Anna, was standing in the kitchen... It was a terrible shock! A fire, corpses, a huge shell crater from high explosive aerial bomb. Everything was covered in dust and smoke, and there was nothing in the apartment - no doors or windows. It was all flying, and it was flying at the child.

The shelling continued. Three bombs were dropped, one in our yard, another very close by, it didn't explode, and the third one on Pashkovskoho Street. My husband was on the street at the time, he was blown into the entrance by the shock wave, just thrown in. Mykhailo, the eldest son, was in a shelter, he was just in shock. We grabbed our wounded daughter and ran to Hospital No. 4. As we ran, I was shouting loudly: "Help, people, help, the child is wounded!" Our doctors understood what had happened and that they were going to be carrying people en masse, so they waited outside. When we ran up, they grabbed the child and immediately examined him. Then they came to me and said: "Don't worry, we'll do everything now". Anna had an injury to her face and needed stitches.

After that, we could not return to the apartment because it was without windows and doors. We lived in a shelter, and I treated my daughter's wounds myself. After the bombing of the house with phosphorus shells and the fire on the roof, which the men extinguished with their bare hands, my husband came and said: "We cannot stay here any longer. If we stay here and don't leave, we will die here anyway".

 Now my daughter's condition is satisfactory. Sometimes she starts to panic when the alarm goes off and asks: "What is it - is it flying or not?" We are making every effort to ensure that Anna does not remember what she went through and has a full life.

"We rode the rails along the fence of Azovstal"

Sometimes we had a connection, and on the fifth floor we could miraculously catch and even send a message. Thanks to this, we found out the route to leave the Left Bank and on 21 March 2022, we decided to leave for Zaporizhzhia. Our car burned down in the yard, and my little car, which was still undamaged at the time, remained. We left in it.

Everyone told us that it was impossible, because on 21 March it was no longer possible to drive past Azovstal, cross the Left Bank and move to the Right Bank. Well, I'll tell you that it was possible, once we drove through. We were driving as a family, plus my godmother and her children in the car. And her husband was following us in their car, because it was almost not suitable for road use at all - no doors, no windows, all crumpled up. It was absolutely impossible to drive there with children. But he drove, he followed us. And we drove in two cars, following the route that we were told step by step, along the rails along the fence of Azovstal. That's how we left.

There were corpses lying on the road, shells, cars, shot military, civilians, mines... It was just horrible.