In a parallel life, I could be in Mariupol. It’s been a month since we’ve been hiding in the basement. There are nine of us here. My sister and I, our neighbors and their families. There were more of us, but a neighbor tried to bring us water and came under artillery fire. Didn’t come back. Someone said that they saw his body being thrown into a mass grave.
People survive here, these are real hunger games. There is nothing in the city, no electricity, no gas. Last night we counted more than two hundred explosions. We can already distinguish what exactly they are shooting with. Airplanes often fly over the house. You hear this sound, and you pray, you pray that this time everyone will survive again. The plane flies over the house. This time it passed, but it means that someone else was unlucky.
In the morning, some people try to get to the river to get some water. People often gather at that place as you can hear some news there. Yesterday, they opened fire on people. My friend barely made it back.
My sister’s husband passed away in the second week. At that time, the house was still half intact and it was possible to take some things, he came out when a shot rang out, we were covered with rubble, and he was pressed with a slab so we could not get him out for a long time. In an hour we did succeed and we then took him to the basement. Shrapnel remained in his stomach, blood flowed from his leg. I took off my shirt and bandaged his leg. It was the hardest night. In three hours, the shock passed, and he began to feel pain. He screamed and begged to be killed, it was an impossible scream, the children’s eyes and ears were covered, he screamed, cried, begged to be helped. He said that he loved us and said that everything was fine. We decided to take him to the hospital. We did not know if the hospital had not yet been destroyed and if anyone was there at all. But we found a car the next morning and took him to the nearest hospital.
Only half-ruined walls remained from it. But there were a lot of people. They were moaning and waiting in the corridors, there was a lot of blood, and some of the people were already dead. In two hours we found a doctor who directed us to the operating room, we made our way through the shelling and waited until the enemy artillery turned on again. We hid in the basement. After a few hours, we returned again, but the sister’s husband was no longer found. For the next week, we went to the hospital every day, but the body was gone.
The shelling has intensified in the last two weeks. the russians are wiping Mariupol off the face of the earth, we haven’t seen the sun for two weeks. We’ve eaten twice a day, in small portions, and had to change the cellar. I had to leave the old neighbour’s body, it was already the third day as it smelled. There is almost no food left, it is becoming more dangerous to walk to the river. They say that you can evacuate to russia. Filtering takes place before and then people are sent to camps. This was said by one drunken soldier. Better to die than go to russia.
